11 ms·
The Twelve Networking Truths
- dkuder 11y agoThere are errata: https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=1925 https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=1925
- symmetricsaurus 11y agoThere should be errata to the errata since the OPERA result of neutrinos traveling faster than c has since been refuted [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...
- Xophmeister 11y agoThe language used in the introduction alone was enough to make me check the date of publication... Those IETF jokers!
- debacle 11y agoI feel like these truths expand to many things, far more than just networking alone. Especially 2a and 11.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- papito 11y agoOh boy, this is 20 years old. Why is this even coming up.
- late2part 11y agoSantayana explains.
- sephronius 11y agorule (11) Every old idea will be proposed again
- robohamburger 11y agoSomething that is true after 20 years and still noteworthy seems like a good read to me. I agree the OP should add the year though.
- Aloha 11y agoa universal truth rarely ceases to be universal or true.
- typhonic 11y ago"In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." This seems like a good chance to acknowledge the author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
- nmc 11y agoSt-Exupéry never mentioned "protocol design". This is a pastiche, not a plagiary. As to why St-Exupéry's name was not included, I suppose the editor thought the reference was obvious, which it is indeed.
- jacobolus 11y agoAnyone in technology should read the whole chapter 3 of Wind, Sand and Stars, if they haven’t before: http://pastie.org/pastes/10477072/text http://pastie.org/pastes/10477072/text
- nmc 11y agoOP, please append "(1996)" to the title.
- patrickmay 11y agoA good complement to L. Peter Deutsch's of Sun Labs Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing: 1. The network is reliable 2. Latency is zero 3. Bandwidth is infinite 4. The network is secure 5. Topology doesn't change 6. There is one administrator 7. Transport cost is zero 8. The network is homogeneous He noted "All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences."
- nippoo 11y agoNumber 5 strikes home in today's world of big monolithic programs which each aim to solve all the world's problems... "(5) It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea."
- ams6110 11y ago(11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works. I see this all the time. I'm pretty sure there have been no really original ideas in computing since the 1970/80s.
- stephengillie 11y agoEverything that's new is old already.
- tacon 11y agoDistributed hash tables are a recent idea in networking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table#History
- Gibbon1 11y agoMy dad mentioned that about automotive design, pretty much everything interesting had been invented by 1940. After that it's all new manufacturing technologies, materials, or economies of scale. Or some other technology from another field. (Good example is developments in power electronics meant electric cars were viable again after an 80 year hiatus) Also I like that 'It Has To Work' is numero uno.
- mirap 11y agoCan someone please explain it to me?
- andrewflnr 11y agoWhat's the deal with #3 about flying pigs? I mean, I see why it's true (ish), but I don't see the specific relationship to network protocols.
- macintux 11y agoWell, it is an April 1st RFC, or perhaps he could be making the point that you can do things like make telnet work over UDP but why would you?
- agentgt 11y agoGiven this statement: These truths apply to networking in general, and are not limited to TCP/IP, the Internet, or any other subset of the networking community. Its not hard to come up with many examples particularly bloated one (ie pig like). For example... CORBA and SOAP.
- mikeash 11y agoI think it means that you can take a bad foundation and push it forward amazingly far with enough effort, but you're setting yourself up for lots of problems if you do so, and you're usually better off starting from a solid foundation. For a concrete example related to networking, transmitting bits over telephone lines designed for voice can get you amazingly far, but it still sucks a lot and you'll eventually hit a solid wall.
- solotronics 11y agoUniversal Truth of the ISP: - 97% of the time the issue is on the customer network - its not the network, ex. you cant transfer files at 10g because your using single 7200 RPM HDD on each end :[ - often, the best network people in the company will be the farthest from customer interaction. Customers repel them with almost magnetic physical force.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]