From: Scott Schremmer (scotths@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 04 2004 - 01:34:46 PDT
This paper gives an overview of the development and implementation of the
Internet Protocol suite by DARPA in the late 70's and 80's. The paper
presents a list of goals the DARPA attempted to implement and their
success in doing so.
DARPA's priority as part of a military organization caused them to value
continuity of service when parts of the network are damaged over other
goals such as accountability of the use of resources. The protocols were
designed with this in mind. Ironically, the tradition of lack of
accountability of use of Internet resources probably led to the low cost
access to many resources we see today.
The paper does a good job of explaining the issues and how they were dealt
with. For instance it explains the split of TCP and IP and the existence
as due to variability of desired reliability between different services.
It is interesting that the paper was written by an individual who worked
on the early design of these protocols. However, the paper would be more
effective if his and others specific roles were discussed. This would
allow for a better sense of perspective regarding his opinions and
perspectives.
Many of the issues presented in the paper are still present in current
technology. For instance, the issue of reliability versus latency is
important in modern voice over ip technology.
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