[e2e] TCP Framing

[Bob Braden]

  *> 
  *> There are certain things that should be decided
  *> by standards organizations and certain things that should be
  *> decided by the market place.  My view is that the best standards
  *> are those that allow the optimization versus generality tradeoffs
  *> to be resolved by the market place while still insuring full
  *> interoperability of the various competing design points.
  *> 
  *> 

Jim,

I would suggest that the marketplace is most specifically a poor place
to make wise high-level technical decisions.  One could make the case
that TCP/IP has been so successful just because it was allowed to
mature in military and academic environments that shielded it from
irrelevant marketplace pressures for many years.  X.25 is a good
example of a technology that did not have that advantage.  There are
also XNS, WAP, VHS, and lots of other examples of market-driven
entries.

The marketplace is concerned only with optimization, since it is
necessary very short-term in its outlook.  Any "optimization vs.
generality tradoff" performed by the marketplace will certainly end up
with generality getting the short end of the stick.  Of course,
generality is in the long-range best interest of the marketplace, but
the marketplace itself is like a 5 year old child, incapable of seeing
its long-range best interest.  This is why there are grown-ups in the
world.

Bob Braden