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Vint Cerf on Why TCP/IP Was So Long in Coming
whitehartstag writes "TCP/IP is 25 years old this year. Vint Cerf says there was a long development cycle for both TCP/IP and for X.25, and we'd have been using TCP/IP much sooner if TCP/IP had been more marketable. 'Over the years, we can come up with many examples both of where the best technology did (or did not) win and of how marketing has defined a service. For example, many of the "best" features of frame relay, such as the ability to use Switched Virtual Circuits (SVC) in addition to Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC) were never widely marketed because the pricing was too complex. Rather, the PVC was a simple replacement for a leased line at a fraction of the cost with better performance.'"
I know that there isn't much real content on the web anymore, but that's not even an article. Where the hell is the content?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
So why is it normal for the immaterial to matter more than the significant? It is normal, but it is also irrational and nonsensical.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Apparently the "article" is a response to a comment (the only comment, mind you) attached to this "article", which is similarly content-free.
Unfortunately, for all of us, IPv6 is heading our way like some rusty old stream train. Its rickety and badly designed, but massive, and will squash anything in the way.
IPv4 at least was designed well, and has lasted a long time. However, IPv6 has no firewall/NAT support (if you are in a company, you have to have a firewall, else you run afoul of a lot of corporate regs like SOX, HIPAA, and if doing credit cards, PCI). You can't tunnel or VPN (if you do, you pretty much do IPv4 routing as a kludge.) Finally, it doesn't support a person having their own permanent IP range. You are forced to use a subset of the range of whomever you are connecting to, and if you change ISPs or peers, you have to completely re-IP your servers.
Of course, the opportunity was missed to have crypto at the IP level, rather than have it bolted/kludged on (like IPSec.)
This is a poor article, the slashdot summary is 95% directly quoted from the one page article.
That aside, the reason virtual circuits have never taken off is lack of physical media and field equipment. An ISP/Cable Company/Local Bell is not going to support running lines out to homes and businesses if they don't have subscribers for all their investment.
I've never seen an implementation where statistical multiplexing was implemented properly. I think it is just one of those things that look good on paper, but will never come into general use unless the technology and infrastructure support it.
Look at what they do now they run a T1 out to a DSLAM and split it up all to hell and oversell the bandwith going from the DSLAM to the ISP. Show me someone with 7MB burstable speed actually transmit at that speed and I'll do a goddamn backflip.
To read the historical analysis on the adoption rate of TCP/IP versus....??...is interesting to, well, um... you know, ... crap. No one.
Anyway, thank Gore we're not stuck in an X.25 world!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The ARPANET was an accademic network for sharing defense research. The story about its survivability for nuclear war is simply untrue.
Please name the "Local ISPs" that have multicast configured. I count Two out of Five core providers with multicast enabled.
I wouldn't call MPLS somewhat of a rarity. Simply put I disagree entirely.
He's overrated and forgotten a few things.
TCP/IP became big because there was no license.. unlike XNS and Appletalk.
and because it ran over Ethernet, all one had to do was drill a hole in a wire and tap into it with you AUI.
IP only started to shine once significant numbers of networks got interconnected.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Queue the "because it took Al Gore so long to take the initiative in creating it" jokes...
I personally believe it will never be adopted. The government keeps having meetings where they set dates for implementation, that get turned into dates to have implementation plans. Meanwhile the clock is ticking and its ten years later. The internet has changed from when they drafted IPv6, who is going to make thier customers flash thier home routers?
Time to punt and send folks back to committee. It is just as crufty as the OSI network stack. If they had just gone with the first draft and added more address space and a few header changes this would have all been taken care of a few years ago.
This thread needs more Christian Furries.
So I guess we can look forward to Ted (series of tubes) Stevens describe the Internet as a "series of PVC tubes". :P
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Only to find out that the original TCP/IP specification was designed by Leonardo Da Vinci and hidden in a strangely effeminate painting.
Which, of course, explains why it took so long to get implemented.
Frame SVCs wore never in huge demand. As Vint says, customers wanted cheap leased line replacements, and the ability to do hub and spoke and mesh networks cheaply. What do SVCs buy you? you already have to pay for the local loop. Cheaper Virtual circuits? Eventually the market moved to zero cir pvcs, which were as cheap as you needed.
Besides, there were carrier SVC networks, the protocol was called SMDS, and no one bought it.
"Rather, the PVC was a simple replacement for a leased line at a fraction of the cost with better performance."
Eh? I'll take a leased line over a PVC anyday in regards to performance. My experience with Frame Relay has been that performance is subpar, the provider overbills, burst capability is crap [and doesn't work with most QoS scenarios - as in you have to disable bursting]. I also question the cheaper part as we just switched from a 15 location frame-relay (256/512) WAN to point-to-point T1s for 1/3 the price.
But maybe it depends on your location and the competence of your local bell.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
Well, someone has intercepted the Australian packet because it hasn't made it here yet. I've been waiting patiently at the end of our pipe.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
The translation list is here.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Apparently Vint Cerf wasn't consulted for the original article, yet he commented on it by 7:42 am on the day it was published: 1/22/08 (although the article URL includes a datestamp of 1/21/08).
I wonder if his advanced monitoring capabilities include /.?
I've had very little luck trying to make a BSD use NAT on site local packets (which are explicitly defined as not being internet routable). However given how big the typical ipv6 subnet seems to be this issue falls by the wayside the moment you get one.
Your point still stands though - ipv6 is trying to do away with NAT and rightly so. If you don't have an address squeeze it seems horrible that you would use NAT - better to use a decent firewall...
It's just another example of the less effective technology winning out.
Can you say Beta max?
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I read the grandparent post and literally began to experience physical pain. I'd say a good 60% of every enterprise WAN I configure or interact with on a daily basis is MPLS or is in the process of migrating to MPLS.
The multicast argument was the portion that really brought the pain train, Terry Tate style. I don't even want to begin to discuss why that argument is so wholly retarded. It looks like you had the same opinion so I'll plagarize your comment and say that I, also, "disagree entirely" but I would like to indicate that my lack of agreement should be considered +1 Vehemence.
Don't you mean at the end of your tube? Cause the internet is a series of tubes. :)
Congress said so. It must be true.
Charles Wyble System Engineer
Of course, none of this matters if you're not using extranets. Any Enterprise-level network that exists in one physical location or connects to other locations over the public Internet or connects to other locations via leased physical lines has no need of MPLS or any other virtual circuit technology. Metropoliton networks, such as GMING, tend to use leased physical lines and point-to-point protocols such as ATM. As do most of the smaller-scale backbones (such as national DSL providers) who bought up dark fibre in bulk. If you're using an ATM network, you don't waste time with IP-based virtual circuits.
I've admined my share of b2b, national and international Enterprise networks. I co-founded the IPv6 backbone in the UK. I've run large-scale X.25, IP and ATM networks. Before that, I designed my own LAN and WAN wire protocols. I'm no Vint Cerf, but let's be realistic here. Anyone can make a claim, but it takes more than that to make a difference.
As for your multicasting commentless comment, the announcement of the dissolution of the MBONE in the mid 90s is quite sufficient as a reply. It's you against the world, and the world declared many years ago that you lost. That war is over and the multicasters won. Give it up. Accept defeat gracefully. The only serious resistance left are the ISPs for SOHOs and individuals and the increasing number of multicasting applications in Windows mean they will submit soon enough. Even mobile phone companies, such as Nokia provide their services by multicast. They have surrendered to the only rational networking technology for distributed services. The Infiniband Consortium and the Open Fabrics Consortium depend heavily on the multicast capabilities of modern technologies. Resistance is futile, you will be IGMPv3'ed.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The main thesis of this argument seems to be that the primary purpose of NATs is to work around the IP address shortage, which IPv6 eliminates. But there's another big reason to want an IP address in a private space: security. Do you want every script kiddie on the planet banging on your firewall day in and day out? I certainly don't. I much prefer to expose exactly one (1) IP address to the public Internet, and to leave provisioning of that node either to my corporate IT department, or the developers of my off-the-shelf home route. Either of which can do a better job of fighting off the barbarians than I can.
Some pundits insist that they can actually provide better security if they have a true peer to peer link. Possibly true if you have a lot of development and maintenance resources. But for most users, the simple solution, having an IP address that doesn't resolve outside your network, would seem to be the best one. To quote Monty Python, if you don't want to be seen, don't stand up.
I'm Australian and we just sacked the bloke who loved your Congress...... besides tubes are generally referred to as pipes here.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
You put WAY too much effort into that troll post. Seriously, is this what you spend your life doing?
The packet was deemed 'inappropriate' by the new government internet censoring system, that's why you never received it :P