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Category Archives for "Russ White"

Ossification and Fragmentation: The Once and Future ‘net

Mostafa Ammar, out of Georgia Tech (not my alma mater, but many of my engineering family are alumni there), recently posted an interesting paper titled The Service-Infrastructure Cycle, Ossification, and the Fragmentation of the Internet. I have argued elsewhere that we are seeing the fragmentation of the global Internet into multiple smaller pieces, primarily based on the centralization of content hosting combined with the rational economic decisions of the large-scale hosting services. The paper in hand takes a slightly different path to reach the same conclusion.

TL;DR
  • Networks are built based on a cycle of infrastructure modifications to support services
  • When new services are added, pressure builds to redesign the network to support these new services
  • Networks can ossify over time so they cannot be easily modified to support new services
  • This causes pressure, and eventually a more radical change, such as the fracturing of the network

 
The author begins by noting networks are designed to provide a set of services. Each design paradigm not only supports the services it was designed for, but also allows for some headroom, which allows users to deploy new, unanticipated services. Over time, as newer services are deployed, the requirements on the network Continue reading

Reaction: The Importance of Open APIs

Over at CIMI, Tom Nolle Considers whether the open API is a revolution, or a cynical trap. The line of argument primarily relates to accessing functions in a Virtual Network Function (VNF), which is then related to Network Function Virtualization (NFV). The broader point is made in this line:

One important truth about an API is that it effectively imposes a structure on the software on either side of it. If you design APIs to join two functional blocks in a diagram of an application, it’s likely that the API will impose those blocks on the designer.

This is true—if you design the API first, it will necessarily impose information flow between the different system components, and even determine, at least to some degree, the structure of the software modules on either side of the API. For instance, if you decide to deploy a single network appliance vendor, then your flow of building packet filters will be similar across all devices. However, if you add a second vendor into the mix, you might find the way packet filters are described and deployed are completely different, requiring a per-device module that moves from intent to implementation.

While this problem will always Continue reading

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