• Author: Adriana
• Published: Nov 9th, 2012
• Category: Stuff
• Comments: 1

Daily links 11/09/2012

TAGS: None

One Response to “Daily links 11/09/2012”

1. 
   Dave Walker
   on Nov 11th, 2012
   @ 14:31 pm: 

   I reached a similar conclusion some months ago, particularly in the context of network protocols.

   Looking at the vast array of communications protocols which sit on top of a basic Layer 2 IP stack these days, I can’t help but think “if ‘The Network is the Computer’, then right now it looks like a VAX”.

   OK, 11 years at Sun dies hard, but I can’t help but be struck by the number of protocols which do pretty much the same thing – or which can have their tails twisted, to do pretty much the same thing – just in slightly different ways. As well as the obvious examples (such as remote graphical display, where you can choose between X11, RDP, ICA, VNC, ALP, AIP, etc…) at lower levels, there’s matters of distributed naming services (DNS, LDAP etc) where IPv6 can potentially change the rules.

   So, there’s a rationalisation needed – and IPv6 can change the Universe in sufficient ways that some of the compromises which were made (whether implicitly or explicitly) as a result of the nature of IPv4 can be changed. Just as RISC arose as a response to some of the shortcomings of the VAX architecture, I think we’re on the edge of something fundamental, in networking – and the proliferation of would-be de-facto standards in the Cloud space strikes me as symptomatic of it…