Re: Call for Papers: IAB Workshop on Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet (SEMI)

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 8:26 PM, Joe Touch <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> On 12/8/2014 7:10 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
> > If you believe in 'permissionless innovation' then everything is always
> > on the table.
>
> That's called "anarchy", and the results only serve to increase entropy.


My statement is descriptive, not normative.

If you don't want the Internet to be an anarchy then you have an awful lot
of toothpaste to put back into a very small tube.


> The Internet architecture to date has been what survived a
> > Darwinian process.
>
> First, it's not Darwinian so much as mutation caused by high-energy
> radiation, and no, it's not clear to me that "architecture" is
> surviving. Sometimes the result is just glowing goo.


What is surprising is that it is possible to describe what has survived in
a remarkably clean fashion with almost no recourse to special casing except
on the issue of syntax.

The glowing goo rarely survives long. My problem is that things get
described as glowing goo for no other reason than that we didn't think of
them.

Are we really taking the high ground in the architecture discussion here or
have we merely staked a position in an editors war?

The argument seems to be that we define the architecture, therefore
anything that isn't the architecture is wrong is an abomination and since
the only things that don't fit the architecture are abominations, this
proves we don't need to reconsider the architecture.

It is a hermetically sealed system of thought.


The real heart of the Internet isn't the narrow waist or even the
end-to-end principle. It is that the Internet is designed to support novel
functionality. The narrow waist is probably an essential consequence of
that goal.