[e2e] the evolution of deployability

[Jon Crowcroft]

thinking about this on the way back from the very fine ICNP conference
this year, we note that in rough decrease order of complexity:
multicast, mobile, ip, intserve, differve, ecn ...
(literally in the case of the last 1 bit change, well, 2, ok)
we see higher and higher barriers to evolution over the last 10++
years of the internet - each case takes exponentially more effort to
get the infrastructure to change, and not just because it is bigger
and more heterogeneous - i wonder (and this was something that Mostafa
Ammar, one of the panelists at ICNP talked about very nicely) if one
could actually go so far as to form a proper (econometric, or systems
science or perhaps even ecological) theory of network evolution? we
must have other examples that someone could give us Bell, Hooke and
Chandle on ?

measuing complexity is a computing/information science capability, so
then what other things to we need to draw on?

cheers
jon