Myths, Missteps, and Folklore in Network Protocols.ppt

Copyright 2002 Radia Perlman and Charlie Kaufman. All Rights Reserved. Myths, Missteps, and Folklore in Network Protocols Radia Perlman (radia.perlman@) Why this talk? Learn from mistakes Understand oddities in today’s protocols Counteract “religion” aspect Mark Twain: “It’s not what you don’t know that’ll get you. It’s what you do know that ain’t true” Be provocative. Start lively discussion Pet peeve: teach networking as a science, not like a trade school Myths Technology that is most successful is the best technically Everything in standards makes sense If a conference or journal accepts paper A and rejects paper B, that means paper B is not as good as paper A Example Sometimes you need to know the history in order to understand something Topic 1: Bridges, Routers, and Switches, Oh My! Myths bridges were designed before routers, because they are/were simpler switches are a technology newer than bridges that make bridges obsolete A bit of background ISO’s OSI Reference Model, network layers: 1: physical 2: neighbor-to-neighbor 3: talk across multi-hop path 4: end-to-end A bit of background ISO’s OSI Reference Model 1: physical 2: neighbor-to-neighbor 3: talk across multi-hop path 4: end-to-end 5 and above: boring A bit of background ISO’s OSI Reference Model 1: physical 2: neighbor-to-neighbor 3: talk across multi-hop path 4: end-to-end 5 and above: boring layer 1 relay: repeater layer 2 relay: bridge layer 3 relay: router OK: so what is layer 2? If I ran the world no such thing as layer 2 relay My discovery of true definition of “a layer 2 protocol” OK: so what is layer 2? If I ran the world no such thing as layer 2 relay My discovery of true definition of “a layer 2 protocol” anything designed by a committee whose charter is to design a layer 2 protocol So, where did bridges come from? In the beginning... There were routers I was DECnet routing architect Layer 3 requires endnode cooperation put an envelope on the data, with source, destination, hop count