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

[John Day]

At 7:42 -0700 2006/08/17, Joe Touch wrote:
>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... ;-)

No, that is not what I said at all.  I said, your example of the web 
was specific to a single application.  It does not address the issue 
of application naming in general.

If you boil DHTs down to their elements, you will find that they are 
nothing more than a somewhat inefficient routing scheme.

And as for overlays, they paper over the real problem which is 
understanding the deeper structure of what is going on below the 
application.

>  >> 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.

Precisely, the disease I see that plagues the the Internet community 
today.  They have a hammer and and only see nails.

>
>>  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.

Yes, as I often say, the number one principle of computer science is 
that we build what we measure.  No other science has that luxury or 
that curse.  Consequently we must often engineer before we can do 
science.  This makes it hard to separate principle from artifact.

>  >> 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.

And some of us here have been working on the abstractions even longer 
and in far more detail and over a much wider range of data than 
simply the Internet.

Take care,
John