On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:07:24 -0500 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I'm a bit surprised at the frequency at which people who claim to be > networking protocol engineers fail to appreciate the benefits of clean > separation-of-function and layering. Hopefully the drawbacks are appreciated also. Quoting Rich Seifert, "Layering makes a good servant, but a poor master. Use layering to organize the way you THINK about networks, but don't let it restrict how you DESIGN networks." If I recall correctly, David Clark used to say something very similiar to this in a protocol workshop class at Interop awhile back. John