Future of the Internet Symposium: Do We Need a New Generativity Principle?

Details

Author(s):
Publish Date:
September 8, 2010
Publication Title:
Internet Architecture and Innovation Blog
Format:
Op-Ed or Opinion Piece
Citation(s):
  • Barbara van Schewick, Future of the Internet Symposium: Do We Need a New Generativity Principle?, Internet Architecture and Innovation Blog, September 8, 2010.
Related Organization(s):

Abstract

From the op-ed:

Most network engineers agree that a number of developments put pressure on the Internet’s technical foundations. These include the Internet’s growing size, its transition from a research network operated by public entities to a commercial network operated by commercial providers who need to make profits, and its transition from a network connecting a small community of users who trust one another to a global network with users who do not know one another and may even intend to harm one another.

When network engineers think about how to address these challenges (whether it’s in the context of incremental modifications to the existing Internet infrastructure or in the context of clean-slate approaches that aim to design a new Internet architecture from scratch), they need to decide whether using the end-to-end arguments as a technical design principle still makes sense. In these discussions, one class of counterarguments comes up again and again: that the end-to-end arguments constrain the development of the Internet’s architecture too much and prevent the network’s core from evolving as it should. For example, researchers advancing this argument assert that the end-to-end arguments prohibit the provision of quality of service … in the network, require the network to be simple, or make it impossible to make the network more secure. As I show in my book (pp. 106-107, 366-368), these claims are not correct. The end-to-end arguments allow some, but not all forms of quality of service; they do not require the network to be simple, or “stupid;” and they do not make it impossible to make the network more secure.

Of course, these insights alone do not imply that the end-to-end arguments should continue to guide the Internet’s evolution in the future (a question I take up in my book). It does mean, though, that the end-to-end arguments are not automatically out of the running on the grounds that they restrict the evolution of the network too much.