Working in embedded, I am used to assuming most of those working with just local resources. > 1.The network is reliable. I don't assume my file system is reli

Working in embedded, I am used to assuming most of those working with just local resources. > 1.The network is reliable. I don't assume my file system is reliable. Flash fails. > 2.Latency is zero. Latency is non-0 even on local access! My team's requirements is that anything that may take more than ~1ms is done async. This includes memcopy! > 3.Bandwidth is infinite. Never has been, even locally. > 4.The network is secure. Local busses are not secure either. > 5.Topology doesn't change. I'll give'em that, although this is hopefully less of a problem now days, ignoring NATs... > 6.There is one administrator. Again, the industry has hopefully evolved to understand finer grained access controls. > 7.Transport cost is zero. Nope, never has been even locally. You doing something consumes resources from someone else. > 8.The network is homogeneous. Half the fun is in things being heterogeneous! Put work where it is best done at.