[e2e] Protocols breaking the end-to-end argument

[Dave CROCKER]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Thereby becoming a perfect illustration of the systems architecture truism
> that _interfaces_ between subsystems are far more persistent (lifetime-wise)
> than the internals of the subsystem.
> 
> Other examples of this phenomenon include the RJ-11 phone jack (both
> physically and electrically), the standard screw-in light bulb socket (now
> hosting those fluorescent spiral tube bulbs), etc, etc.


A particularly fun example of this is RFC 1001/1002, which re-implemented 
NetBIOS.  Preserve the IBM API, but use TCP protocols.  (There had been a couple 
of proprietary non-IBM TCP versions earlier; this created a standard.)

Had IBM published the underlying protocols, the TCP version would no doubt have 
been quite different.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net