Post #2222649

@danmcd@hostux.social @SystemsAppr@discuss.systems That piece struck me as way over-simplified in some dimensions. The piece felt focused more on "the box" rather than the protocols it is performing inside. (And it seemed to ignore things related to traffic engineering - MPLS, SDN, even ATM's old VCI/VPI stuff.) Nor did it mention basic repeaters - or as we called 'em "Ethernet Hubs". For a while we had the term "brouter" for a box that did both Ethernet switching/bridging and IP routing. And there has been a many-decades long, but unspoken war, between IETF and IEEE over whether to build nets using IP packet switching or ever larger Ethernet/802 meshes. Being essentially a repair-person, this lack of clarity of understanding scares me. I have concern that we are building networks that are increasingly difficult to monitor, diagnose, and repair - and our security concerns are making those jobs even harder. Our modern thinking that protocol layers are independent and isolated can mask many potential sources of problems and failures.