[HN Gopher] The Decommoditization of Protocols (1998) ___________________________________________________________________ The Decommoditization of Protocols (1998) Author : marttt Score : 66 points Date : 2022-08-14 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.levien.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.levien.com) | raphlinus wrote: | I have no idea why this popped up now. Overall I think it holds | up reasonably well, though it's in a brasher and younger voice | than I would use today. I went back and fixed the link rot. | | (Incidentally, the process of updating web pages on levien.com is | to log in to my Linode instance and use vim to edit the static | directory. I probably should upgrade to some more modern way, at | least use version control, but I do get a warm sense of nostalgia | doing it this way.) | sackerhews wrote: | In the spirit of the Halloween documents, Microsoft implemented | and extended the Kerberos protocol. | | Extended it just a tiny bit enough to be incompatible with | everyone else. After getting bad PR in the media, they | reluctantly agreed to publish their changes. And guess what? | | _... in order to get it, you have to run a Windows .exe file | which forces you agree to a click-through license agreement where | you agree to treat it as a trade secret, before it will give you | the .pdf file_ | | See https://slashdot.org/story/00/05/02/158204/kerberos-pacs- | and... | duckhelmet wrote: | 'One of the most interesting things about Microsoft's Halloween | Memo is the concept of "de-commoditizing" protocols' | | Don't they mean monopolizing the protocols /s | gryn wrote: | that's the end goal, de-comoditization is the means to that | goal. | ciroduran wrote: | I appreciate the praise that TCP/IP gets in this post: | | " TCP/IP is the foundation of the Internet. The protocol dates | back to the early days of the ARPANet, and has existed in its | present form since September 1981 (the date of RFC 791 and RFC | 793). This protocol violates all of the first five principles of | de-commoditization. It is simple. Together, the | two RFCs span 130 simply formatted pages, appendices and all. | This is nothing short of astonishing, considering how difficult a | problem internetworking is considered to be. It is | completely specified. IETF protocols in general are well known | for specifying "bits on the wire", and these protocols exemplify | IETF practice. There are no complicated options or variants. As a | consequence, TCP/IP implementations tend to work together very | well. (actually, you need to add a link layer to get a complete | TCP/IP implementation. However, RFC 1055 describes such a link | layer (SLIP) in six pages. It is well documented. The | RFCs are a model of clarity, thanks in large part to Jon Postel. | It is stable and mature. The protocol has been in use since 1981, | and has scaled by many orders of magnitude. Old implementations | still work on the modern Internet. It is unencumbered. No | patents, copyrights, nor trademarks are infringed by a working | TCP/IP implementation. | | To say that TCP/IP has been enormously successful would be an | understatement." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-14 23:00 UTC)