Sigcomm 2012
In preparation for SIGCOMM 2012, and general directions on broader architectures.
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Current Literature
The Evolution of Layered Protocol Stacks Leads to an Hourglass-Shaped Architecture
- [John] It would be helpful it seems to propose an opposite extreme, a minimal model that is all about function and purposeful design, as a contrast.
- [Dirk] It just needs a focus on what matters in a successful architecture: the ability to construct something against some metric of optimum. His paper doesn't give that. It simply says that every house finally converges to four walls with a roof, despite a wide range of inefficiencies in, e.g., insulation.
Architecting for Innovation
- [Dirk] Response to page 26 "Modularity is a basic tenet of system design... architectural modularity requires more than layering: it requires that interfaces be both extensible and abstract. By “extensible” we mean that new functionality can be added to a particular component, and utilized by other components that are aware of this change, without rendering unmodified components obsolete... For instance, interfaces should not pass network addresses or particular byte layouts, but instead should pass names and structured data"
This does point to extensibility but it does not bring home the point fully (and might even carry a dangerous side point): extensibility is important (we're saying the same) but it seems to imply that this should be done through extensible interfaces (option fields, schemed data instead of bytes/bit?) rather than extensible layering. The latter would be our message, wouldn't it? Now, the authors might have this in mind but focus in their paper on what they call the 'network API', so it seems to be all focussed on that. An architectural layering message extends this to an approach of layering/modularizing that is not limited to the 'network API'.
On the positive side, this is something to build upon since WE can bring this point home. It's a direct conclusion from the tussle paper, i.e., modularity matters and this modularity matters at design time, calling for an architectural approach that provides such modularity (here, modularity is a more general form of layering).
Information-Centric Networking: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
- [Dirk] The paper makes a very valid point about caching, something we've said in the PURSUIT project all along: caching through 'storing interest and data requests' is unlikely to be efficient nor sufficient. There is a role for managed caching, while this type of lateral caching is likely to be similarly ineffective as web proxying. That's why we've developed managed caching solutions in PURSUIT (ad were critiqued for it).
- [Dirk] The paper underestimates the challenge in naming. Pointing to their own work, published in the SIGCOMM ICN workshop, they lay to rest the naming discussion, which I believe is utterly wrong. Their workshop contribution (on the separation of real world identities as long-lived identities and shorter lived labels) is only the start of the necessary discussion. If you want to get a hint on the extent of the discussion, you can ask Karen Sollins ;-)
Naming in Content-Oriented Architectures
Sigcomm Paper Components
Examples of Bad Waists
- [John] there are some interest "fish parts" example, one of the most infamous is the giraffe neck and some nerves in it that used to be straight in fish but ended up in a tortured curve in the giraffe:
http://14-billion-years-later.tumblr.com/post/2962924626/the-evidence-for-evolution
- [John] Burning fossil fuels is one. Settling conflicts by warfare is another fundamental one. Monotheism. QWERTY. Irregular verbs... IP is not a particularly bad example. Windows is maybe better?
- [Dirk] In any sigcomm exercise, it's not only political interesting (necessary?) to point out IP. Many things are right there but, in a subtle way, pointing out the things that (architecturally) have led to problems is important and can provide a way forward. The CCR attempt had many points already that we can built on.