[e2e] the evolution of deployability

[Henning Schulzrinne]

Clearly, the difficulty of changing signaling systems in railroads and 
the limitations of traffic control on roads ("drive-by-wire") also 
illustrate the inability to change things once you have deployed 
technology. In the US, consider how long it is taking to convert from 
above-ground to below-ground electric and phone utilities.

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> 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