Jari Arkko wrote:
- Good architecture and good design. Placement of functionality in the right place. I suspect that we don't do enough work in this area. Almost all of our activities are related to specific protocol pieces, not so much on how they work together, what the whole needs to do, what etc.
Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
These days, this seems to be the domain of the "systems" standardization bodies, such as 3GPP and CableLabs. The 3GPP architecture diagram seems to be a good demonstration object, although it is not directly the fault of the IETF. (I think there are some interesting reasons for complexity here, in particular the need for interworking with legacy technology, that also appear elsewhere.)
I don't think "architecture" necessarily means the kind of "systems" architecture that the "systems" standardisation bodies are producing. While the Internet architecture has never been defined in terms of nodes and interconnections like the 3GPP architectures typically are, I still think we had a fairly well functioning and beautiful Internet architecture some 10-15 years back. So, it may just be harder to pinpoint what the Internet architecture was, even though I think that, for example, some of Bob Braden's slide sets give quite a good idea.
Consequently, the kind of "new" architecture work that I think we need might be called by some people something else, perhaps "vision", rather than "architecture". That is, like we've had the e2e principle for quite a long time, maybe we should try to develop a number of almost as fundable principles, like ones for wireless operations, mobility and multi-homing, o & m, distributed security management, etc. Then, by consciously applying those principles to existing protocol designs, sometimes perhaps working on simultaneously in enhancing an existing protocol and in creating a new "version" of the particular protocol, based on a completely different architectural design, we might be able to inch to a somewhat less complex overall architecture. OTOH, maybe I am just a dreamer and totally off the ground here?
I suspect a fair amount of complexity is because we had to bolt on various things (NAT traversal, security, reliability or large messages seem common after-market add-ons) or couldn't arrive at decisions during protocol design time.
I pretty much agree. Furthermore, more generally, I think that the current state of the architecture is pretty much a consequence of collectively not accepting the reality for a too long time. In my quite humble opinion, a number of vocal people at the IETF have far too long been preaching the architecture as it used to be 10-15 years back, disparately trying to clung to the ideal and ignoring the reality. As a result, the Internet architecture as-out-there-in-real- life has ran over the architecture-as-in-our-heads, causing a multitude of point solutions to be built to work around the problems in the ideal architecture.
So, as I state in my little web page, I think we really should work hard to create a new waist for the architecture. I, of course, have my own theory where the new waist should be and how it should be implemented, but I also try to stretch myself here to be as open minded as I can in order to better understand the concerns from all of the community. My problem is that I don't know how best to engage the community in this kind of discussion, and relatedly, whether creating "a vision of a new waist" is possible at all, or at least whether it is possible to get any level of acceptance of such a vision within the community.
--Pekka Nikander _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf