View source for Talk:Sigcomm 2012 Draft

If we want to write this paper…

# There are two veins in the current literature, that of future internet architectures and a growing body of knowledge surrounding architecture in and of itself. The latter of these subsumes the former and realizes each as an instantiation as a particular architecture. Examples include Shenker, and Day. However, these boundaries are not definite, and the problem is that papers surrounding architecture may specify specifics of a particular instantiation.
# We seek to develop a general architecture in this paper, not a particular instance.
# In such an architecture, we keep in mind that the inter-domain layer is in fact a layer. This is one of several consequences of this more articulated architectural approach which will have specific effects on the Internet. 
# What is a layer? In seeking the general, we examine what we believe to be a general structure common to the Internet, physical statistical systems, the brain, social structures, and biology.
# We begin with several examples. From these specific examples we will extract general principles. The examples are: TCP/IP, layers in stat/mech, medicinal practice, and DNA.
# Lay out the examples…
# What are the implications? 
* "NGE relies on shared architectures to work.  If a bacteria gets a set of genes from elsewhere by horizontal gene transfer (HGE) it not only must be able to read the genes (shared codons) but the resulting RNA and protein products must plug into the whole protocol stack."
* "biological evolution is not like his model, though the mainstream cartoon version is (this is a great example of being misled by biomemetics, but we shouldn't be too harsh here as the G&H and Shapiro versions are very very advanced views of evolution).  Both G&H and Shapiro say it is in fact extremely different than the cartoon, and though the mechanisms are well known (HGE and other forms of NGE), the "big picture" consequences are not, and the role of layered architectures is just in its beginning (so there are many papers for biologists needed on this...).  But for us, the point is that we at least want to think about the real version of evolution and not the cartoon.  The cartoon is now primarily a rhetorical and pedagogical oversimplification with little relevance to reality (and most biologists really don't care, they are too worried about their molecule of choice).
The other is that both evolution (however clever it is) and intelligent design (only done by humans) can be grotesquely myopic.  Hemorrhagic fevers and aggressive cancers destroy their hosts so quickly as to be essentially suicidal for the parasite/tumor, and do so in ways that are horrific for the host. (If you believe this is the result of supernatural ID, then the designer is truly evil.) Similarly medicine for 2000 years was horrific for the patient.  Really explaining the essential role that architecture (and its hijacking of shared protocols) plays here is hard to do but I think the basic ideas are fairly clear, and familiar to networking people (don't smash the system, leave most intact and hijack it if you want to derive benefit, and/or do maximal harm).  (If you want to maximally harm patients, don't destroy hospitals and kill doctors, rather convince the doctors to use a set of protocols that do maximal harm but will also maximally persist.  That this was done by Hippocrates, Galen, and Rush, as in Rush in Chicago... who presumably cared about "doing no harm" is amazing…)"
# Examine Davrolis' paper. Show that his assumptions on the Internet's stack would apply equally well to biology. Since they don't apply to biology, in fact, they should be questioned. What's missing from Davrolis? An architecture…
# Davrolis' paper, to be truly like the Internet, needs better defined layers that would be drawn horizontally on his diagram.
# What does Davrolis' picture look like? Random mutation, entrenched core. Delve into medicine example, results of random mutation (cancer, etc.)…
# So, we need an analogue to the biological layering that gives us HGT, where intelligent change is possible. In short, we need an _evolvable architecture_… Pick out the good points of "Intelligent Design Enables Architectural Evolution"…
# So we want independent layers. No surprise, cite everyone who says multihoming, IP addresses are mixed layers.
# We need to strengthen the layers in the current Internet. Right now the layers are LAN, inter-domain, intra-domain. Wait, there are also the physical, link, internet, network, etc. layers. Which layers do we want? We want the ones that correspond to HGT, which assumes the structure of mRNA, tRNA, proteins already. What we want are layers on _scope_
# What are the properties of a layer?
* An address is only relevant within its layer. This is a realization of both Day (explicitly) and Shenker (Architecting for Innovation).
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