Re: What is the long term plan for Internet evolution?

[Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]>]

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote on 29/06/2021 19:44:
> telemetry. The reason we run application services over HTTP is really a 
> matter of inertia and the fact that there are simply not enough ports 
> for static port assignments to be viable.

nothing to do with the availability ports. It's that http provides a 
generic transport layer for transmitting any sort of data with low-brow 
signaling to hint at the data format.  It's inelegant in the way that 
any evolved generic protocol is inelegant, but mostly it works like many 
things that evolve to fit a purpose.  DNA coding is inelegant too.

> IPv6 is slowly deploying but that is only because the pain of IPv4
> address exhaustion is starting to become serious.
I've long given up any expectation that ipv6 will outlive ipv4.

You may be fighting a losing battle here.  Protocols and applications 
have evolved together and they work, so any attempt to change is 
battling evolution and that's an uphill job.  Likely, the only way out 
of this is revolution, i.e. when the internet is supplanted by something 
so cool that we nearly won't even bother using the internet any more 
because it's so meh and old hat, like the POTS.

Nick