Challenge End to End Arguments

686 Words2 Pages

During the initial years of its development, internet had a set of design principles that made it what it is. One such crucial design principle that defined the distinctive nature of how the internet shaped out is the end to end arguments. These principles claim that application level functions preferably should be implemented at the application level itself (i.e., at the end points of a transaction) and not at the lower levels (i.e., the core of the network). And, the only functionality that is assumed from the network layer is that it is capable of delivering data with reasonable but not perfect reliability. This approach has served internet pretty well over the years. But, with the changing set of requirements, few of the applications started to drift apart from this basic principle and started adding new mechanisms to the core of the network.

Consider the case of a World Wide Web which was initially designed using the principles of end to end arguments. As per the original design principles, when end hosts in nearby networks request a same web page multiple times, the page would be fetched from the server every single time. This meant that the requested page was transferred across the network multiple times. To counter this redundancy, a technique known as content caching was proposed. According to this proposal, a local copy of every page that is fetched from the server is made and stored at a point close to the end hosts. When a subsequent request to an already accessed page is made from a nearby network, a cached copy is returned to the end host instead of a copy from the server.

Does this break the principles of end to end arguments ? Yes, since for an already accessed page a request is made to the cache instead...

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...ing new requirements and challenges caused internet to move away from these principles to build a faster and robust system that might decrease the flexibility and openness to certain extent. This trade-off will continuously be challenged as new requirements keep popping in.

[1] End-To-End Arguments In System Design by J.H. Saltzer, D.P. Reed and D.D. Clark [M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science] ewline [2] Rethinking the design of the Internet: The end to end arguments vs. the brave new world by Marjory S. Blumenthal [Computer Science & Telecommunications Bd. ] and David D. Clark [M.I.T. Lab for Computer Science]

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[3] The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols by David D. Clark [M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science]

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[4] The end-to-end argument and application design : the role of trust by David D.Clark and Marjory S. Blumenthal

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