[ih] principles of the internet

[John Day]

At 10:38 -0700 2010/06/01, Dave Crocker wrote:
>On 6/1/2010 10:23 AM, John Day wrote:
>>    However, I would disagree with him that all
>>application protocols must be asymmetrical.
>
>Perhaps some other Dave posted what you are responding to, and I 
>missed it, but if you mean my note: I never made such a claim.
>
>I made a statistical assertion of what is and has been -- as you 
>also note -- but not what must be.

Sorry I misinterpreted this:  "At the application level, symmetry is 
either absent or a myth, for almost all applications." Although, I 
don't see any reference here that restricts it to the past.  I am not 
ready to concede that what we have seen so far is representative of 
the space.  As I said, everything so far is pretty rudimentary.

However, it is true that for data transfer protocols all properly 
designed ones are both symmetrical and soft state.  Of course, it is 
always possible to botch the job and violate that rule.

>
>>It is the case that once an asymmetrical protocol is introduced into an
>>architecture, it makes very difficult to build anything on top of it.
>
>like HTTP?

Yes, or X.29 or most anything else that came out of Europe. Building 
an asymmetrical protocol on top can sometimes work, but generally 
this constitutes a dead end.  This is where the distinction between 
the application protocol and the application becomes useful.

>
>>The running code/rough consensus is probably one of the more important
>>aspects of driving the Internet to a artisan tradition rather than a
>>more scientific one. This is has probably contributed most to the
>>stagnation we currently see.
>>
>>An odd complement to the aversion to complexity, there seems to be an
>>aversion to sophistication that leads to greater simplicity.
>
>I assume that the goal of this exercise requires ignoring the rather 
>remarkable complexity that has crept into much of the recent work in 
>the IETF?

Actually, I was referring to the choice of SNMP [sic] over HEMS.

While what you say is very true, there is nothing remarkable about 
it.  This is the normal course for a partial design that is 
independently patched to fix point problems.  It is exactly what you 
would expect.

Take care,
John