> From: grenville armitage <garmitage@swin.edu.au>
> a dictionary is hardly a compelling substitute for going direct to the
> paper(s) in which the end to end principle has been articulated.
I couldn't agree with your suggestion more; were I Tsar of the Internet, I'd
make it a rule to bind and gag anyone who utters the phrase "end-to-end
principle" who hasn't read this excellent paper, easily available here:
http://www.reed.com/Papers/EndtoEnd.html
However, I will differ with you slightly, in that reading this paper will not
necessarily produce 100% enlightenment. If you actually talk with the authors,
you will discover that in the time since the paper was written, their
understanding of what they were trying to get at has deepened (they now talk
about a "network end-end principle", which has important differenced with an
"application end-end principle"), and in addition two of them (Reed and Clark)
have since gone in slightly different directions in their thinking!
I was discussing this all with them at length, but alas I don't have access to
all my notes at this instant; perhaps I can produce another page containing
some additional commentary on the end-end principle, in addition to:
http://users.exis.net/~jnc/tech/end_end.html
which discusses one popular misconception about the end-end principle.
Noel