Perry wrote:

Pete Loshin writes:

...

I was simply observing that Perry's comment:

"...an internetworking protocol [e.g. SKIP] used by only one vendor gets nowhere."

is not necessarily true, and pointed to SSL and NFS as counter-examples.

I disagree.

First of all, NFS was not competing with other widely available standards.

Neither was SSL, for that matter. But it seems like every vendor who's written an S-HTTP browser/server is adding SSL for version 1.1.

Second of all, other vendors are committed to developing the other standard.

What good will it be to run SKIP when your Cisco router wants to talk to you with something else?

None, of course, just as rsh doesn't help me connect to a telnet server. My comment wasn't on the wisdom of SKIP, but rather on the specific statement Perry made about single vendors being able to drive certain protocols on their own (e.g., SSL and others). More interesting from the historical view (but lacking in crypto significance so I'll refrain from further posting on the topic) is the question of what other protocols have been put forth by single vendors and gained major market share. -pl