Subject: What is the latest trend of network research ???????

From: [email-masked] (Zheng Youquan)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 15:12:41 +0800

Several month ago, DiffServ and MPLS is hot topic in network research.
But how about now about Internet?

---

From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 08:43:18 +0000

>>But how about now about Internet?

a brief history of time-wasting

in the early 80s, "research" concentrated on egp and dns  - this was
quite important for making the net scale - a little after this, the
"flavour du jour" was policy routing - some of this was quite useful -
a lot of it (mine included) was orthogonal to requirements...

in the late 80s, "research" concentrated on rpc transport protocols- 
this would have been useful if the CERN folks hadnt ignored all the
work (e.g. T/TCP) and done HTTP _ see below...

in the early 90s, "research" concentrated on ip/atm and trying to make
ip look as much like atm as possible (intserv) that it would fit
(square pegs and round holes) - this kept a lot of people out of our
hair while we got on with deploying IP everywhere as fast as
physically possible (and in some cases faster)

in the late 90s, "research" concentrated on http/tcp performance and
web cacheing - this was actually quite useful....

in the early 2000s, "research" is concentrating on making the
internet protocols look as much like the telephone net as possible to
make it easier for dinosaurs to survive meteor strikes.

somewhere along the way, a few neat hacks like multicast, mobile and
secure IP got devised....

:-) :-) :-)
j.

oh, the New New Thing? clearly its wireless ordering on the web
(WOW)

basically, the mobile phone business is making moves to do what
MSN failed and capture "the whole internet" by making itself the one and only
portal - in europe at least, they stand a chance of succeeding for 3
reasons
i) traditional telcos make dinosaurs look like rodents when it comes
to deploying fancy new fast access nets and services - newbies are
practically illegally
prevented from entering the market despite EU de-regualtion
ii) the mobile guys have practically no regulation 
iii) some mobile phone service providers are becoming credit card
companies -this is very very shrewd....think about it...

:-) partly

---

From: [email-masked] (Kai Henningsen)
Date: 04 Mar 2000 18:05:00 +0200

[email-masked] (Jon Crowcroft)  wrote on 01.03.00 in <[email-masked]>:

> MSN failed and capture "the whole internet" by making itself the one and
> only portal - in europe at least, they stand a chance of succeeding for 3
> reasons

No chance at all that I can see. Especially considering that per-minute  
charges from mobiles are about ten times as high as from traditional  
phones over here. Maybe if they come down. A lot.

> prevented from entering the market despite EU de-regualtion

Hmm. The best and fastest net around here seems to be the one from the  
former monopoly telco (much to everybody's surprise, including mine).  
Seems they're deploying fancy new access stuff like mad. OTOH, newcomers  
are certainly around, and have been for a long time.

> ii) the mobile guys have practically no regulation

Hmm. One of the mobile guys is the ex-monopoly telco. I don't see all that  
much difference between them and the others.

> companies -this is very very shrewd....think about it...

Haven't heard of that one happening over here. Oh, the monopoly telco had  
some news recently about doing something with banks - I suspect it's  
actually nothing all that interesting once you look past the hype.

MfG Kai