[e2e] end of interest

[Mahesh Balakrishnan]

In a world where clean-slate designs are impractical, apparently. I do belong
to a generation of researchers who grew up on P2P and overlays --- and who
accept the presence of IP and TCP as religious imperatives that must be
engineered around. If industry realities confine us to particular
philosophies of system design we can stop arguing about their relative merits
and simply work with whatever is most practically deployable. Depending on
your point of view this is either an excellent thing or the end of pure
research as we know it. But I have to admit I don't understand how people can
talk of designing the next-generation Internet from scratch when the
economics of computer systems are so stacked against any kind of ground-up
innovation.

Also - if the router/ISP companies pushed us to the endpoints of the network
and now the software companies have pushed us up the software stack --- where
do we go next?

- mahesh


-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Huitema [mailto:huitema at windows.microsoft.com]
Sent: Fri 4/18/2008 11:27 PM
To: Mahesh Balakrishnan; end2end-interest at postel.org
Subject: RE: [e2e] end of interest
 
In what world are you living, exactly? What about systems like Skype, or Bit
torrent? They are definitely pushing the envelope of end to end designs, are
widely deployed, and are not controlled by major corporations.

From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org
[mailto:end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of Mahesh Balakrishnan
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 5:11 PM
To: end2end-interest at postel.org
Subject: Re: [e2e] end of interest


In fact there seems to be pushback from both ends --- we can't deploy
end-to-end protocols because major companies own the end-host stacks; and we
can't push mechanisms deep into the network because ISPs and router companies
own the network. Arguably the latter source of pushback played a major role
in the emergence of the e2e philosophy; but now we have equally powerful
commercial forces on the other side.

So effectively the only practical mode of deployment seems to be the 'almost'
end-to-end middlebox --- one hop away from the end-host but not quite into
the network (and the Maelstrom work I presented day before yesterday at NSDI
would be one example).

- mahesh

--
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~mahesh


-----Original Message-----
From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org on behalf of David P. Reed
Sent: Fri 4/18/2008 9:13 AM
To: Jon Crowcroft
Cc: 'end2end-interest at postel.org'
Subject: Re: [e2e] end of interest

I personally think that the network community has become frustrated with
the inability to explore end-to-end protocols because the endpoint
stacks are "locked in" by vendors in proprietary code.

<snip>

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