[e2e] Open the floodgate

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Wed Apr 21 13:58:11 PDT 2004


    > From: Jon Crowcroft <Jon.Crowcroft at cl.cam.ac.uk>

    >> I wonder if Injong Rhee has ever heard of XTP? :-)

    > I'm not sure what your point is
    > XTP had a LOT of good ideas but was a kitchen sink protocol by the time
    > everyone climbedon the bandwagon
    > ...
    > the actual work on BIC (as opposed to the crap written by the reporter)
    > ...
    > the stuff people have actually invented since the boring old farts like
    > thee and me actually had a new idea...there are people trying to move
    > right along, despute carping or journalism, and it ill behove s us to
    > diss them without reading more.

My post was responding to the initial post, which only referred to the press
article.

My reference to XTP was prompted by said press article, which seemed to take
the line that "TCP is old and obsolete, and here's this new thing which is
infinitely newer and much superior, and should/will replace it". Well, that's
a song we've heard before, neh? XTP was the best example that flew off the
top of my head.

I referring to XTP, I was *not* saying either that i) TCP (either the
original, or the one we actually use today) is perfect, or ii) there aren't
improvements we ought to make to TCP, iii) that there aren't interesting new
ideas that don't fit into the TCP paradigm, etc, etc, etc, etc.


    > TCP has a few good ideas - most of which were NOT in the original
    > design

I think the fact that (by and large) TCP's which incorporate those
improvements will interoperate with TCP's which don't have them is, in
itself, a tribute to a powerful aspect of the original design, one which is
hard to describe precisely (it's not quite "simplicity"; "adaptability" it a
bit closer, but still isn't quite it), but is definitely one that doesn't get
as much attention as it should.

	Noel


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