[e2e] Switched Ethernet is Not an End-to-End System; was Protocols breaking the end-to-end argument

[David P. Reed]

On 10/31/2009 05:46 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
> the fact that IP is a very thin abstraction of the Ethernet layer 2 
> and that TCP is a vehicle for resolving problems that are typical of 
> the CSMA/CD Ethernet environment
This statement is nonsense. IP is not a very thin abstraction of 
Ethernet layer 2.  IP is carried over many protocols other than the 
Ethernet. TCP is an end-to-end protocol for in-order virtual circuit 
data delivery, designed to work over IP, and to handle problems that 
have nothing to do with CSMA/CD.

> In other words: does the success of Switched Ethernet suggest that 
> it's better to think of network protocols as units of recursion than 
> as collections of statically-placed functions that operate once and 
> only once in the lifetime of a packet?
No.  This is also nonsense, and begs the question.  Network protocols 
have never been described as not "collections of statically-placed 
functions that operate once and only once in the lifetime of a packet".  
Nor does the "success" of anything in the marketplace suggest how to think.