Tervela Message Medium Blog

Every time I hear the phase “OSI Stack” I cringe. Perhaps it’s residual animus from my youthful days at Apollo Computer where those of us doing “second-rate” protocols like TCP/IP and SNA were mocked by elitist colleagues working on the Open Systems Interconnect model. I’m surprised they had time to look down upon us, especially given the demands of going to Europe to attend all the standards meetings. I sat in a dark office, reading RFCs, writing code, drinking crappy coffee and trying to make stuff work over this other “inferior” thing called Ethernet. My colleagues, meanwhile, were sipping espresso on Lake Geneva.

Amazing how time changes everything. My memories were stirred by a recent article in Network World by Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler “Why it's time to let the OSI model die.” I think it’s been six feet under for some time now, but I still think Steve and Jim made their new 3-layer model too complex. Perhaps it’s only 2 layers: application and network. We know company XYZ has an application group and a network group, don’t we? And, like two siblings, those two groups always get along, don't they? Maybe we do need a seven layer model again, somewhat like The Waltons of technology. And they may get along better, too. I’m imagining my new world… “Rob, I think you’ll need to speak with my dear friend in the layer 6 group. I think he’s drinking espresso in the cafeteria with the layer 1 and 3 guys.”

OSI. It’s dead. Go bury it on Walton's Mountain. So, where's middleware? Layer 2.5. At least it's stillbetter than 3.

G’night John-Boy.

=rob.ciampa

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