The paper presented an overview of the principles that influence the evolution of Internet. These were the collective observation of the Internet community that may serve as basic foundation and guide in designing and evaluating new protocols up to this day.
It also explained the principle of constant change. There are so many remarkable things that are happening in the Internet and because of these fast-paced advancements, some principles that were found sacred back then are being deprecated today indicating the need to postulate principles that are adaptive to change.
The next part relayed that there is no internet architecture but only a tradition that the community believes in. Maybe because from the early design, the architecture gradually changed as new requirements arise to pave way for new applications. This highlights the contribution of “end to end argument” where the remaining end to end functions can only be performed correctly by the end-systems themselves allowing new innovations without additional complexities in the network.
Some general design, name, address and security issues were also raised. It must be scalable, supports diverse types of hardware, cost-effective, simple and modular. Naming convention must follow a simple structure and address must be unique. And it is the end user’s responsibility to protect their privacy.
Even though the Internet architecture have changed greatly from its modest beginnings to what it is now, these principles observed from its evolution will always be useful in guiding the community to bringing the Internet beyond.
Reference:
B. Carpenter, RFC 1958: "Architectural Principles of the Internet", 1996
Concise and thorough summary of the paper! :) I agree with you that even if the Internet's architecture have changed over the years, its principles will always be useful in guiding future changes and yes, changes are inevitable (it's even the only constant thing), but having these set of principles will still give us and context and perspective. ��
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