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by contingencies
2491 days ago
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Setting aside the cultural baggage of its authorship and nomenclature, from a purely objective standpoint I could not pass Introduction / Motivation without attempting to elucidate the objections I felt to its generalizations. The most frequently cited architectural flaw is the lack of a coherent security design: The success of IP is simplicity/general utility - the ability of the system to support different use cases as a packet-switched alternative to previously dominant circuit-switched telephony systems. This is precisely the capacity of the system to vary service types and levels based upon application requirements. Viewed in this lens, not having a 'coherent security design' is the core feature, not a bug. many question whether the basic service model of the Internet (point-to-point packet delivery) is appropriate now that the current usage model is so heavily dominated by content-oriented activities: CDNs, content-addressable P2P networks (torrents), and multi-mirror package management databases are all excellent, broadly deployed counter-examples. The fact is, by normalizing packet-switching, IP has made bandwidth so cheap that inefficient distribution becomes a trivialized cost. Again, this is a core feature. |
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The authors are not arguing against packet switching; they're questioning whether point-to-point still applies when a majority of the Internet is used for accessing content. CDNs aren't cheap, a content-centric network (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking) could substantially increase efficiency.