Re:The Twelve Networking Truths
by typhonic on Monday November 02, 2015 @10:36AM
(#10492349)
"In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." This seems like a good chance to acknowledge the author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
Re:The Twelve Networking Truths
by Gibbon1 on Monday November 02, 2015 @05:08PM
(#10495679)
My dad mentioned that about automotive design, pretty much everything interesting had been invented by 1940. After that it's all new manufacturing technologies, materials, or economies of scale. Or some other technology from another field. (Good example is developments in power electronics meant electric cars were viable again after an 80 year hiatus)
Re:The Twelve Networking Truths
by mikeash on Monday November 02, 2015 @02:19PM
(#10494337)
I think it means that you can take a bad foundation and push it forward amazingly far with enough effort, but you're setting yourself up for lots of problems if you do so, and you're usually better off starting from a solid foundation.
For a concrete example related to networking, transmitting bits over telephone lines designed for voice can get you amazingly far, but it still sucks a lot and you'll eventually hit a solid wall.
Re:The Twelve Networking Truths
by solotronics on Monday November 02, 2015 @04:34PM
(#10495439)
Universal Truth of the ISP:
- 97% of the time the issue is on the customer network
- its not the network, ex. you cant transfer files at 10g because your using single 7200 RPM HDD on each end :[
- often, the best network people in the company will be the farthest from customer interaction. Customers repel them with almost magnetic physical force.
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous
He noted "All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences."
As to why St-Exupéry's name was not included, I suppose the editor thought the reference was obvious, which it is indeed.
http://pastie.org/pastes/10477072/text
"(5) It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea."
I see this all the time. I'm pretty sure there have been no really original ideas in computing since the 1970/80s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table#History
Also I like that 'It Has To Work' is numero uno.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...
For a concrete example related to networking, transmitting bits over telephone lines designed for voice can get you amazingly far, but it still sucks a lot and you'll eventually hit a solid wall.
These truths apply to networking in general, and are not limited to TCP/IP, the Internet, or any other subset of the networking community.
Its not hard to come up with many examples particularly bloated one (ie pig like). For example... CORBA and SOAP.
- 97% of the time the issue is on the customer network
- its not the network, ex. you cant transfer files at 10g because your using single 7200 RPM HDD on each end :[
- often, the best network people in the company will be the farthest from customer interaction. Customers repel them with almost magnetic physical force.