[e2e] not quite the differentiated services I was thinking of

[David P. Reed]

Jing Shen wrote:

> So, is there any way to introduce more intellegence into IP network?

Let's examine the term intelligence, here.

It seems to me that there is a lot of intelligence in the various
networks that underlay IP. That's the virtue of the hourglass model -
you can put brilliant technology under IP, all focused on making the
network the best it can be at transporting IP packets. The intelligence
is of a sense-and-respond, adaptive type that actually configures the
network based on observed use, rather than requiring the users to ask
permission for new uses or to declare their pattern of use in advance,
which is what would be needed if the network were truly braindead like ATM.


Now there is another interpretation of "intelligence" which is
specializing the network for specific application layer functions.
That's the meaning of the term "Intelligent Network" in the old AIN
telephony model. Specialization isn't intelligence, though - it is
making the network less capable in fact. A network that can only carry
voice is not intelligent, it's stupid. A network that can only carry
voice and TV on-demand is only slightly less brain-dead.

Intelligence is needed in the network to be adaptive to a widely varying
and hard to predict set of future usage scenarios and load mixes - but
binding the network to a fixed set of uses, limiting it to the
imagination of those who cannot conceive that applications like the web
could exist (where one transaction involves dynamic selection of content
from a broad set of 30-40 sites not known in advance to the requestor,
as many web pages do), that's not intelligent, that's dumb.