[e2e] Internet "architecture"

[christian.tschudin@unibas.ch]

With everbody talking about architectures in plural, your "style of 
construction" definition could be misunderstood that net arch has more 
to do with personal preferences or artistic trait rather than science.

But the nice part is that it says: architecture is here even if the 
engineer is not aware of it.

Which is quite true for the Internet or SDN where we (still) try to 
understand what is going on, and at which level:

   is it a masterplan (or meta-architecture, à la Hausmann's plan for Paris)?
   is it a set of concepts (layering, e2e, CO/CL, globally unique addr)
   is it a set of mechanisms (TCP plus IP, OF)?

The meta-architecture discussion is interesting: why for example the 
Internet fails to be one, that there aren't more radical approaches to 
this than AN, or whether a meta-arch at the end is a set of mechanisms à 
la ANA, RNA or SDN.

In 2009 I helped organize the netarch2009.net symposium, currently I'm 
pondering to have a follow up event 5 years later. Writing this up is 
just another way of saying: yes, we should.

best, christian


On Mon, 15 Apr 2013, John Day wrote:

> I basically use the dictionary definition of "a style of construction."  The 
> important distinction being between an architecture and buildings built to 
> that architecture.  (I don't remember what dictionary I found that in.  It 
> was 30 years ago.)
>
> I would say that 90% of the usage in the field refers buildings, rather than 
> *architectures.*
>
> For example, the 7-layer OSI model is a building, not an architecture.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
> At 4:35 PM -0400 4/14/13, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>     > From: Jon Crowcroft <jon.crowcroft at cl.cam.ac.uk>
>>
>>     > architecure remains as hard as ever
>> 
>> I'm interested to know what 'architecture' means to you both; I know what
>> _I_ mean by the term, but I'm not sure the field as a whole has a 
>> consistent,
>> well-understood meaning, yet.
>>
>> 	Noel
>
>