Keep It Stupid, Simple!

Kevin Marks has blogged links to people who have written about why it’s important to “separate network transport from application protocols.” (Apparently, “The Paradox of the Best Network,” a brief piece I wrote with David Isenberg, helped to stimulate Kevin’s research.) These are useful links.

The general point Kevin makes is tremendously important: The Internet succeeded because it was deliberately built to encode only the minimal information required to move bits from point A to B. There is nothing in the Internet protocols themselves that encodes what type of bits they are. The Internet doesn’t know or care whether you’re sending email or video, a bill or pornography, copyrighted material or instructions on building nuclear weapons. It also doesn’t include bits that say what person owns, sent or cares about the bits. It is nothing but a bit pump. It’s a stupid network, in David Isenberg’s phrase.

Because it’s so good at moving bits, and because the Net makes no assumptions about the nature of those bits, applications can be written on top of it to do whatever you want with bits. Thus, one and the same Internet is used for email, telephone calls and video on demand. Attempts to make the Internet smarter — for example, by including in the transportation protocol itself information about the copyright status of the bits — will bit by bit erode the Internet as a medium for innovation.

The Internet is an idiot-savant. Let’s keep it that way.

Categories: Uncategorized dw