[e2e] Port numbers, SRV records or...?

[Joe Touch]

John Day wrote:
> At 6:49 -0700 2006/08/17, Joe Touch wrote:
>> John Day wrote:
>> ...
>>>  What I find really remarkable is the inability of current
>>> researchers to
>>>  see beyond what is there.  It is interesting that they are so
>>> focused on
>>>  current developments that they are unable to see beyond them.
>>
>> Yeah, so far all they've come up with is:
>>
>> - the web (addressing at the app layer)
>> - DHTs (hash-based addressing)
>> - overlays (arbitrary addressing using the Internet as a link layer)
> 
> The web on the one hand is just a souped up version of Englebart's NLS. 
> Addressing within an application doesn't count.
>
> DHTs- How to turn one flat address space into another flat address
> space.  I see you haven't seen through this one yet.
> 
> Overlays - an interesting thought but for now really just trying to
> paper over the real problems.

So basically anything that doesn't look like the conventional Internet
addresses doesn't count? Maybe it's *that* kind of metric that exhibits
the 'fascination with the past' that we're accusing the new generation
of... ;-)

>> It's sad that they haven't gotten beyond the Internet's original vision
>> of email and remote login. Oh well, back to the drawing board ;-)
>>
>> As to whether we are scientists or technicians, that depends on your
>> definition. The last time I checked, scientists created theories about
>> reality and validated them via observation and iteration. There are
> 
> That is only part of it.  Remember Newton's Regulae Philosphandi
> (guidelines): (in part) Theory should be the fewest number of concepts
> to cover the space.

A variant of Occam's Razor, of course. IMO, better to recall Maslow,
"when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
Just because you can't map these new ideas into Internet concepts
doesn't mean they're not useful, or that they're 'complexities' as per
below.

> This is why I said engineers are infatuated with creating differences,
> while scientists are infatuated with finding similarities.  I don't see
> much simplification in the Internet over the last 35 years.  In fact,
> what I see are complexities heaped on complexity.
> 
>> plenty of those out there; in a sense, the Internet is just a theory
>> about how to network, and the iterations are about resolving the theory
> 
> Ahhh, now I see, this is the root of the problem.  The Internet is not a
> theory.  It is a very specific engineering example.

The concepts of the Internet can be abstracted, even if they originated
as an engineering example.

>> with new uses and ideas - including indirection, virtualization,
>> separating process (function) from location from communication
>> association - which is how this discussion originated.  It's in the
>> abstraction of these ideas that there is science.
> 
> You are getting closer.

Some of us have been here, working in abstractions for a long time,
having a hard time explaining it in terms of the old Internet just to
make it accessible and convincing.

Joe

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