Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Or you have the network equivilent of "format wars" while the few 
> biggest networks try to out-grow each other and win the game...

Yep. But again that's going to win/lose on lots of features, one of which is 
how well the formats match what people want at the time.

The sad part is when a format gets entrenched and then people change how the 
work to a way that the entrenched mechanisms don't support well.

> Fortunately, somebody invented IP. Before that happened, it was crazy 
> out there...

Not especially. And IP didn't win. IP addresses a very small part of the 
networking stack. X.25 was around first, and had nationwide networks 
interconnected before IP was around. There was ISDN, SNA, and DecNet, and 
that was pretty much it.

Now there's SONET and ATM, which is what carries most IP traffic.

> Really? How would company X know that company Y is using a given 
> technology?

I'm pretty sure it's not hard to figure out what technology  your 
competition in network services is using. You think it's difficult to figure 
out what coding an iPhone uses over the air, for example?

> Similar constraints probably apply to things like water or electricity 
> distribution.

Yes. Around here at least, it's space underneath the roads to actually run 
the pipes.  Indeed, a huge amount of network monopoly power comes from 
having access to the land to run the network.  That's why telegraph 
companies were all owned by railroads.

> Yeah, because the postal address already existed in the first place. If 
> the post office hadn't existed first...

Exactly, yes.  But not because the post office was a monopoly.

>>> Even if the format of a
>>> postcode is standardised, you still need a single entity to assign them.
>>
>> Because ethernet MAC addresses and worldwide telephone numbers are all 
>> managed by the same entity.
> 
> ?

Why would post codes need a monopoly if phone numbers, IP addresses, and MAC 
addresses don't?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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