Government Support for Internetworking, 1983–1988

industry standard and quickly emerging dominant design, it also raised a bigger question: how could users combine networks into internetworks? This question vexed administrators in multiple agencies in the United States federal government who used many different tools at their disposal to hasten the emergence of the internetworking market-structure. In this chapter we focus on two agencies that proved especially influential: DARPA, within the Depart­ ment of Defense (DOD), and the National Bureau of Standards, within the Depart­ ment of Commerce.1 In previous chapters we saw these agencies flex their muscle to invest in research and development, recruit and train students and full-time staff, arrange for purchasing and procurement of computer communications prod­ ucts, and sponsor workshops and demonstrations. Despite the era’s prevailing rhetoric of “free markets,” these government agencies took deliberate steps to nudge internetworking markets towards maturity—with some impressive results. By the early 1980s, internetworking had become a two-horse race between the TCP/IP protocols championed by DARPA and the OSI architecture and protocols Government Support for Internetworking, 1983–1988