On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 10:47:36AM -0700, Edward E. Jaffe wrote: > >Why has TCP/IP so surpassed SNA? > SNA is/was proprietary while TCP/IP is/was open.
This is half of it. The other half is that SNA is designed for a world where computing power is concentrated in a few central hosts, while TCP/IP is designed for a world where everything on the network has some level of computing power. SNA assumes that the user is sitting in front of a dumb terminal and wants to use an application on a central machine. TCP/IP assumes that one user's terminal may be another's application host. SNA's assumptions were valid for the 1970s and 1980s. TCP/IP's are valid for the modern environment. In a way, IBM itself, by legitimizing the concept of the personal computer, helped to create the conditions that made SNA less than relevant. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
