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[Rick Smith at Secure Computing]

At 03:09 AM 2/15/01, you wrote:
>Rick,
>
>I suspect you arent going far enough back.
>
>X.25 has supported closed user groups since one of the early standards, and
>it was around before that - no idea when - i trashed all my standards docs
>for stuff like that a long time ago.

X.25 evolved after the ARPANET. I believe it grew out of Telenet's
commercial digital network service, which was started by some ARPANET
people, and was picked up by CCITT as the basis for the international
standard. I remember early X.25 specs were sprinkled with notes about
"Telenet" and "non-Telenet" features. I believe the PLIs and X.25 may have
evolved around the same time.

Also, my impression was that X.25 closed user groups represented more of a
"real private network" as opposed to a "virtual private network," since
they were enforced by the network carrier and not by the customers
themselves. By the same token, point to point digital service doesn't
really represent a 'virtual private network' because again the privacy was
enforced by the service provider.

Rick.
smith at securecomputing.com

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