لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Chapter 3. The Quest for Freedom of Choice
What You Will LearnAfter reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:What is the IETF?What is the difference between open standards and closed, or proprietary, technologies?What is interoperability?What is the benefit of interoperability?How do you create and maintain the technical standards that enable the Internet and its technologies to be interoperable?What is a reference model and why is it needed?What is logical adjacency?
The freedom of choice: It seems like such a basic right that people almost take it for granted. That's especially true when it comes to choosing whose hardware and software products to buy for your home or office networks. You're obviously free to spend your money on technology products in any way you please. Customers have grown accustomed to buying computers from one company, printers from another, and network equipment from yet another. More to the point, buyers expect all these different brands to work together perfectly. That capability is known as interoperability. For example, customers expect to buy a PC from one manufacturer, a network interface card (NIC) from another manufacturer, and local-area network (LAN) equipment from a third company and still expect all to work together seamlessly.Things didn't always work that way. In fact, it wasn't so many years ago when technology manufacturers couldn't imagine sharing their technical secrets with anyone and took great pains to ensure that if you purchased their brand, that you also had to purchase their peripherals. They made certain nothing else would work with their computer!This chapter introduces the concept of vendor interoperability, including how it became possible, how new technologies are designed for interoperability right from the start, and how the standards permitting interoperability are created and maintained. These important concepts, not coincidentally, also tell TCP/IP's story.
