[e2e] end of interest

[John Day]

At 16:23 -0400 2008/05/08, Craig Partridge wrote:
>In message <a0624081bc43fe0cb0d50@[10.192.29.66]>, John Day writes:
>
>>At 9:56 -0400 2008/05/01, Craig Partridge wrote:
>
>>>* Re-examining the middle of the network -- the best example here is what
>>>    if the router has a 100 GB hard drive in it -- and we view the contents
>>>    of the hard drive as entirely "soft" (can be lost in an instant).
>>>    Can we do nifty things?  [cf. DTN (which views the drive as reliable,
>>>    but similar vein), Van's talk @ Google, etc.]
>>
>>I think I saw that.  Was that the one where at the beginning he
>>called for a Copernican revolution in networking and then at end he
>>said don't bother touching TCP and below?
>
>I don't think it said don't bother touching TCP and below so much as said
>they don't matter.  That's certainly what Van said in a more recent talk.
>And I think it is right -- if you think you have a game changing paradigm
>that can work over existing stuff but might work better over new stuff,
>focus on your core idea -- if it works, the rest of the network will
>morph to support it.

Some time ago, Microsoft had the same idea about dealing with having 
half an operating system.  Didn't work for them, not going to work 
here.  Overlays are building on sand, or trying to sweep the mess 
under the layer.  They can't fix what is fundamentally an incomplete 
architecture.

>  >
>>>
>>>* Energy efficiency -- in this case I worked on an energy efficient radio
>>>    project and discovered there's very little literature on saving
>>>    energy in networks. (What are the design principles for an energy
>>>    efficient transport protocol?  Turns out that is a non-trivial and
>>>    often counter-intuitive problem that has you looking at old ARQ work...)
>>
>>So I take it from this list you don't see much in the way of new
>>fundamental results coming out of FIND or any of this "new
>>architecture" stuff?
>
>As I understand it, FIND is pushing a different axis -- it is looking
>at architectural issues raised by the innovative research.

God forbid, they should tackle the fundamental issues that have been 
around for a long time.  Better to declare victory and move on, I 
guess.  Problem is if they couldn't solve the old ones what 
confidence should we have they can solve the new ones.  Especially 
when it is highly likely the new ones would not be much of a an issue 
if they had solved the old ones.

Stagnation is so dull.

Take care,
John