Standards

Standards

The network industry uses two types of standards: de facto standards and de jure standards. To understand the concept of open systems architecture, you must be familiar with the concepts of de facto and de jure standards.

De facto standards arise through widespread commercial and educational use. These standards often are proprietary and usually remain unpublished and unavailable to outside vendors. Unpublished and unavailable standards are known as closed system standards. Published and accessible standards, on the other hand, are known as open system standards. Through the introduction of the OSI model, which is discussed later in this chapter, and the growing acceptance of the concept of interoperability, many closed proprietary systems (such as IBM’s Systems Network Architecture) have started to migrate toward open system standards. Certainly, de facto standards are not always closed system standards—examples of proprietary open system standards include Novell’s NetWare network operating system and Microsoft’s Windows.

The second type of standards, de jure standards, are nonproprietary, which means that no single company creates them or owns the rights to them. De jure standards are developed with the intent of enhancing connectivity and interoperability by making specifications public so that independent manufacturers can build to such specifications. TCP/IP is an example of a nonproprietary de jure standard.

Several permanent committees comprised of industry representatives develop de jure standards. Although these committees are supported by manufacturer subscriptions and major company end users, they are intended to represent the interests of the entire community and thus remain independent of any one manufacturer’s interests. Subscribing to de jure standards reduces the risk and cost of developing hardware and software for manufacturers. After a standard has been finalized, a component manufacturer subscribing to it can develop products with some confidence that the products will operate with components from other companies.

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