Internetworking Computer Systems: Interconnecting Networks and Systems (Prentice Hall Advanced Reference Series)

This book is today of historical interest. Today networking is ubiquitous, and it there seems to be an inevitability in it. This book reviews what was available in 1988, when Digital Equipment Corporation was quick to embrace the OSI layered system and others were not. The emergence of this technology was disruptive to organizations, and the book includes a short case study of the USDA which had computing centers spread across three main computing centers located in Fort Collins, which used Unisys systems while Kansas City and New Orleans had IBM computers. This was before there were standards like OSI and the USDA Office of Information Resources Management had to development there own system. The OSI standard was on the horizon and they proceeded with that in mind. There is much explanatory material. The book gives a sense of what it was like in the 1980s. It i snot an academic study.