Blumenthal and Clark 2001 - End-to-End vs. the Brave New World
From Inventiopedia
Blumenthal, Marjory S. and Clark, David D. (2001) "Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End-to-End Arguments vs. the Brave New World" in ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Vol. 1, No. 1, pp 70-109.
This article is a good introduction and overview of current debates about the future architecture of the Internet. According to the authors (one of which, David Clark, is among the pioneers of Internet architecture), the Internet is faced with a number of new requirements, stemming from commercial developments as well as a general rize in complexity - both technologically, legally and socially. Several or all of these trends may challenge the End-to-End principle in the internet's architecture, favouring in stead structures of control (in order to prevent crimes or terrorism, to protect copyright, to perform surveillance etc) or of differentiation (providing better services for those who pay more - securing bandwith for video streaming etc). As the authors point out, this could be a threat to many of the values inherent in the current architecture of the internet:
"The most important benefit of the end-to-end arguments is that they preserve the flexibility, generality, and openness of the Internet. They permit the introduction of new applications, thus fostering innovation, with the social and economic benefits that follow. Efforts to put more functions inside the network jeopardize that generality and flexibility as well as historic patterns of innovation. A new principle—already evident—is that elements that implement invisible or hostile functions to the end-to-end application, in general, have to be “in” the network, since the application cannot be expected to include that intermediate element voluntarily." (97)
At the same time, the authors seem to acknowledge the need for solutions to certain legitimate needs for control, such as preventing cybercrime, terrorism, child pornography etc. They discuss a number of solutions that would be as conforming to the end-to-end principle as possible - such as labelling schemes, non-technical solutions (i.e. law), etc.
See also:
--Anders Sundnes Løvlie 15:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
