Federal networking standards: policy issues

■ A panel appointed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has recommended that the U.S. Government Open Systems interconnection Protile (GOSIP) policy, which mandates the acquisition of Open Systems Interconnection (0S1) protocols, be broadened to include protocols from the Internet Protocol Suite. This article reviews the major networking standards policy issues considered by the panel and draws on their discussions and conclusions, as well as on views raised by the many individuals and organizations who offered comments on the panel’s draft report. o meet requirements for data internetworking, the federal government in 1988 adopted the Government Open Systems Interconnection (0S1) Profile (GOSIP), based on the 0S1 international standards. The objective of GOSIP is to achieve interconnection and interoperability of computers and systems that are acquired from different manufacturers in an open systems environment. Beginning in 1990, GOSIP has been required by federal agencies when acquiring computer networking products and services and communications systems, or else to acquire services that provide equivalent functionality to the protocols defined in GOSIP. Because GOSIP standards were a result of the international standards process and were expected to be implemented worldwide, they were expected to displace the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite (generally known as TCP/IP) and proprietary protocols. In practice, some GOSIP prcduets have been much slower in coming to market than expected and have not been widely deployed to date, while TCP/IP standards have become commodity products that are widely used in LANs and private networks. More importantly, a substantial infrastmcture, the worldwide Internet, which supports the TCP/IP standards has continued to develop, while comparable infrastructure has not been developed for GOSIP. As a result of promoting GOSIP through procurement mandate, some agencies have acquired GOSIP-compliant hardware and software that is often not used or installed. In the meantime, agencies have continued to use proprietary solutions or have moved to adopt portions of the TCP/IP suite. As a consequence of this situation, the Federal Intemetworking Requirements Panel (FIRP) was established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), at the request of the Office of Management and Budget, to reassess federal requirements for open systems networks. The panel was chartered to recommend policy on the government’s use of networking standards, particularly the TCP/IP protocol suite (also referred to as the Internet Protocol Suite or IPS) and the 0S1 protocol suite and,