Open systems and OSI-the issues of convergence

Looks at some of the issues of openness as they relate to message handling, and compares the approaches of open systems with those of OSI. Open systems derives historically from the research arena, driven by the needs in the 1970s for computer networks for research purposes. The main impetus came from the US Department of Defence Advanced Research Project Agency. This agency funded the setup of a network linking research, establishments known as ARPAnet. The ARPAnet was predicated on primarily textual communication between people, coupled with the needs for data or file transfer between computer applications. The suite of protocols developed for ARPAnet evolved into what are now known as the transmission control protocol, and internet protocol, commonly abbreviated to TCP/IP