From: Daniel Lowd (lowd@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 03 2004 - 22:52:00 PDT
This paper discussed the environment and objectives that contributed to
the design of the internet protocols. I found the writing to be clear
and well-structured, offering a good summary retrospective on the
internet. In particular, the discussion of how different priorities might
have led to different protocols placed the current implementations in
perspective. Once a technology has become ubiquitous, it may seem like
the obvious method, or the only feasible one. A technology's history, as
this paper provided, tells an interesting story of decisions that can
give insight into current design challenges.
The biggest weakness of this paper is that it's over 15 years old. I
found myself curious to know how much things had changed since its
writing. Have there been any recent improvements in accountability, for
example, as commercial interests dominate the internet? I also wanted to
know a few more details or anecdotes here and there, to help me understand
the significance of certain problems. For example, did the "aggravating"
problem of specifying performance ever result in contracted networks with
insufficient performance?
Overall, I found this to be a readable and worthwhile introduction to
internet protocols, though an updated version would be even better.
-- Daniel
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Sun Oct 03 2004 - 22:52:00 PDT