The Legend of Network Protocol (III): The Glorious Family Goes East and West

TCP/IP is the most widely used network protocol family, but it does not represent all network protocols (it should be noted that TCP/IP protocol is not the collective name of TCP and IP protocols, but refers to the entire TCP/IP protocol family of the Internet). Even in the 1980s when it became the basic protocol of the Internet, eight complete protocol families had been formed in the field of network technology, each of which flourished gloriously. They are TCP/IP, Novell NetWare, IBM Protocols, ISO, DEcent Phase IV, XNS Xerox Network System, Apple Talk, and Banyan VINES. After nearly 50 years of development, there are thousands of network protocols today.

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(Photo source: Baotu.com)

The eight major network protocol families

Below is a network protocol relationship diagram, which lists the network protocol technology families that have been or are shining. Among these glorious families of network protocols, some have been constantly improving themselves and becoming mature in the competition, some have been adapted to other protocols after gradually becoming marginalized, and some have completely withdrawn from the stage of history. Even so, we can still feel the vitality of the network protocol technology field at the beginning of the birth of the Internet.

Following the clues, we will find that most of these protocol families are related to a certain company, including the well-known IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) and Apple (Apple Inc.), as well as the relatively unfamiliar Xerox (Xerox Corporation), Novell (Novell Co., Ltd.), DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), and Banyan (Enterprise Network Systems Corporation).

Among these technology promoters, each company is a vivid footnote in the history of network development. They either thrived due to their innovativeness or failed due to carelessness. However, in terms of their contribution to the development of network technology, one company must be mentioned, and that is Xerox.

Xerox was a god-level company of that era. It invented the copier, laser printer, Windows drop-down menu, mouse, graphical user interface (GUI), etc. Its greatest contribution to the network world was the invention of Ethernet. Just like the role of TCP/IP and routers, the emergence of Ethernet was the third engine that accelerated the popularization of the Internet.

It is obvious that Xerox is a company that has "IQ" but lacks "EQ" -

• It invented the world's first personal computer, but the first personal computer on the market was produced by IBM;
• It invented the photocopier, but ultimately Canon became the leader in the photocopier industry;
• It invented the laser printer, and at one point the most commercially successful was Hewlett-Packard;
• It introduced the page description language Postscript, and one of the most successful manufacturers in this field was Adobe;
• Jobs directly and Gates indirectly "stole" from Xerox, and derived the graphical interface with mouse, icons and windows into Macintosh and Windows;
• Xerox invented Ethernet technology, but Cisco became the biggest beneficiary...

It is clear at a glance that this is a company with a story. But we need to pay tribute to the epic evolution of network protocols, which was driven by many great companies like Xerox.

In the mid-1970s, Xerox proposed a set of network protocol software called XNS based on their research results on the Internet. Due to its early market development, XNS was adopted by most LAN companies. Each company further modified it to make it more suitable for its own system. The most famous modification was made by Noller, which directly became the IPX (Internet Message Exchange) protocol.

Some senior gamers should be familiar with this protocol. Most online games support IPX/SPX protocol, such as Red Alert, Diablo, StarCraft, Counter-Strike, etc. But nowadays, if you are sure that you will not play games online in a LAN, then this protocol will become dispensable. Noller is a time-honored network company. In the 1980s and 1990s, it once monopolized the entire network market, occupying more than 70% of the market share. Later, due to the company's strategic mistakes, it fell into a slump.

Novell NetWare is a family of network protocols proposed by Novell Corporation. NetWare system was once widely used to build local area networks. IBM Protocols, of course, relied on the blue giant's dominance in the PC/server field at the time, and IBM also had great achievements in the network field at the time. The world's first network architecture was proposed by IBM (1974, SNA). Apple Talk, launched by Apple, is more used in Apple series of personal computers.

TCP/IP wins by a narrow margin

In the early days of the Internet, the competition between the major network protocol families was beyond our imagination. When the Internet protocol technology was selected in the early 1970s, TCP/IP was not the destiny.

Early network research work at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) had already had important technological impacts, and people were once wavering between the two.

The TCP/IP protocol was chosen and ultimately won because of its openness. It supports intercommunication between multiple operating systems and does not rely on any specific computer hardware or operating system, nor does it rely on specific network transmission hardware. A key concept of the Internet is that it is not designed for just one application, but as a universal infrastructure, new applications can be freely developed on it, and the universality and openness of the services provided by TCP/IP make this concept a reality.

The impact of this kind of "open" and "private" debate on the ICT industry has always been obvious, just as the IBM PC swept the personal computer market with its openness and compatibility. In the past two decades, a large number of well-known telecommunications equipment vendors have gradually fallen behind or even disappeared in the industry trend of the technology platform shifting from "private" to "universal", such as Nortel Networks, while the upstart mobile operating system Android has quickly completed its market grab by fully opening up and rising from the ground. Today, Apple has taken up the banner of the "private" camp, but closedness can make its innovation unique, but it can also easily make it slide into the thinking of a monopoly, with unpredictable consequences.

Protocol competition has moved beyond the grassroots era

In fact, the development of network protocol technology has always been dominated by enterprises, especially in the early days. The reason is that a few companies at that time had a strong influence and almost formed a monopoly on the industry. Corporate private standards were often equivalent to de facto industry standards.

These mainstream technology companies at the time all had their own understanding of network protocols. They all wanted to restrict the development of others through network protocols and vigorously promote their own network protocols in order to monopolize the market. Obviously, this idea would hinder the popularization of the Internet. For a long time, many manufacturers said that their own was good, which made network equipment expensive and protocols incommunicable, which was destined to lead to the demise of some network protocols.

However, in the later evolution, network protocol technologies are based on international standard organizations such as ISO or regional standard organizations such as IETF. At this time, enterprises mainly contribute technology to them and participate in technical reviews. The final technical proposals are adopted by standard organizations through equal competition and selection of the best.

This model is acceptable because the Internet world has become so large that it is difficult for any one company to control it. The openness and transparency of technology based on standardization by standards organizations have become the basic guarantee for network protocol technology to play a role in a wide range of areas.

The leaders of network protocol standards have changed, but enterprises are still the main body of network protocol technology innovation. Of course, for China, which did not see the true face of the Internet until 1994, Chinese enterprises had no chance to participate in early network protocol technology innovation. This situation really changed after 2000.

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