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The Internet Is 'Built Wrong'
An anonymous reader writes "API Lead at Twitter, Alex Payne, writes today that the Internet was 'built wrong,' and continues to be accepted as an inferior system, due to a software engineering philosophy called Worse Is Better. 'We now know, for example, that IPv4 won't scale to the projected size of the future Internet. We know too that near-universal deployment of technologies with inadequate security and trust models, like SMTP, can mean millions if not billions lost to electronic crime, defensive measures, and reduced productivity,' says Payne, who calls for a 'content-centric approach to networking.' Payne doesn't mention, however, that his own system, Twitter, was built wrong and is consistently down."
So was a 1932 Ford. So were the highways in 1932. So was an analog computer in 1959.
The only thing wrong about the internet is that it has become obsessed with money rather than information. Technical issues will be worked out over time.
Free Martian Whores!
SMTP is a terrible example. Ultimately the users are the ones opening e-mails, getting browser-jacked and their passwords stolen because they don't know what is in front of them. Sure clients were the problem for a while but that "phase" has passed, developers have learned how to mitigate most attacks.
The only thing that is "wrong" fundamentally with the internet is the separation of DNS and the routing protocol.
For all intents and purposes a DNS failure causes a network outage. It also dramatically increases client latency when it is not configured correctly which look like network issues, but are not.
I'm sure when IPv4 was created the notion of mixing both services was unthinkable due to the additional amount of data needed to move names around at layer 2/3. This is no longer the case and we should really try to move away from a central naming system.