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SMART Letter #1 -- February 5, 1998
For Friends and Enemies of the Stupid Network
Copyright 1998 by David S. Isenberg
This document may be redistributed provided that
the 11 lines containing this notice accompany it.
isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
It takes SMART people to design a Stupid Network
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KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID
To Buckminster Fuller, being smart meant "doing more with
less." For example, back at the dawn of the industrial age,
engines weighed many hundreds of pounds per horsepower.
Now, jet engines have many horsepower per pound.
Knowledge instead of metal.
Here's another example: Used to be that cars got 10 or 15
miles per gallon. Now cars get 45 mpg easily. You go
three times further on the same amount of gasoline. Doing
more with less.
In a material world, where using stuff has a finite cost,
smart is good. But smart usually means complicated. And
"complicated" has costs, too. I'm thinking about the
computer controlled, multi-sensored, electronically ignited,
45 mpg system in my driveway. Gone are the days when I
could do a tune-up with some sandpaper, a wrench and a
screwdriver.
"Keep It Simple, Stupid" becomes important when the costs
of complexity are high. And the biggest cost of complexity
is opportunity cost -- missed (or prevented) opportunities.
When we lose individual control of our machines, we pay.
I'm not just talking about paying the mechanic/systems
analyst for auto repair. I am talking about a world where
nobody is a shade-tree mechanic anymore, where the
populace has lost an entire body of knowledge. And I am
talking about the inability to innovate -- in fact, the
illegality of street-level automotive innovation. The
improvements that were NOT invented because the automobile
became too complex. The lost opportunities.
You can still innovate on today's Internet. Two guys in a
garage can still invent the next Netscape, the next Real
Video, the next Placeware. I think that this is an accident of
INTERnetworking, of the Internet's trans-protocol design
that makes the details of underlying network mechanisms
irrelevant, so you don't have to go to some organization to
get permission to innovate.
Danger! As Internet Protocol marketplace lock-in
consolidates, there will be clever engineers who will design
optimizations for "all-IP" networks. Intelligence will creep
in. User-control, that accidental property of
internetworking, will diminish. I'm kinda suspicious of
Internet Quality of Service "improvements" that seem to
complicate it and move in the direction of centralized
control. And I wish that addressing was less centralized
than the Domain Name System, where the entire Internet
universe hangs on 12 servers. Aren't there stupider ways to
solve these problems? Will we weigh the innovation-
inhibition costs of future "improvements" and
"optimizations"?
Cleverness is compelling. Smart people don't often get
rewarded for using obvious, stone-stupid ideas. See Bob
Lucky's great essay on this, "When is Dumb Smart?" on
http://www.isen.com/press/lucky.html . . .
PRINCIPLES OF STUPIDNETWORKOLOGY
The Stupid Network
( http://www.manymedia.com/david/stupid.html ) turned out
to be a surprisingly popular idea. I continue to be amazed by
the magnitude of people's response to it. To date, the
SMART list has 231 members, and it is still growing by 5 or
10 a week. I'm still not used to meeting people who
have read my paper, and seem to have formed an impression
-- "Oh, *you're* the author of *The*Stupid*Network*" -- I
met a surprising number of them at a recent London
Internet conference.
In the spirit of "Keep It Simple, Stupid," I have tried to
reduce the Stupid Network idea to its essence. These 4
principles work for me:
1. Keep it simple, stupid
2. Underspecification
3. Overprovisioning
4. User Control
KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID, means that wherever possible,
"features" and "optimizations" should be extrinsic to the
network. Such "improvements" belong in intelligent endpoints.
If we must have a unified, centrally administered "feature,"
let's use a special-purpose device at the edge of the network.
But the network's main job is to "Just Deliver the Bits,"
and that's enough work all by itself!
UNDERSPECIFICATION means "don't assume." Adopt
the broadest possible guidelines, and let 'er rip! The system
of roads is underspecified. It is used by motorcycles, cars,
trucks, . . . Users determine their own vehicles' contents.
No controlling authority predetermines the route
each vehicle will travel. And sometimes there is congestion
and sometimes there are crashes. But on the whole, the
ability of each vehicle to self-configure and self-route is
massively useful. The utility of underspecification more
than makes up for the occasional traffic jam.
OVERPROVISIONING is a cousin of "Keep It Simple,
Stupid." It means "don't optimize." Instead, throw more
bandwidth, or more compute power, or more memory at
your supposed problems. All that stuff is cheap enough today,
and if not, wait a couple of Moore-doublings. And, as noted above,
you can still have a very useful network even if it has some
congestion.
USER CONTROL means the ability for individuals to
innovate without institutional mediation. See above.
I'd be interested in your take on these proposed principles,
gentle readers. Send your comments to
smart-discussion@isen.com
See the discussion unfold on
http://www.isen.com/SMARTlist
In summary, Albert Einstein is reputed to have said, "A
theory should be as simple as possible, but not more so."
Networks too! We're still a long way from "too simple"
and in danger of going the wrong way.
David I
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908-654-0772 (home)
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Date last modified: 5 Feb 98