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[what do others think?]<br>
<h2 class="entry-title">We need a new formulation of end-to-end
analysis</h2>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>End-to-end analysis is the major theoretization of the Internet
that was <a
href="http://www.reed.com/dpr/locus/Papers/EndtoEnd.html">proposed
by Jerome Saltzer, David Reed and David Clark</a> from 1981.
In their seminal paper and later ones, they formulated what
became known as the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_principle">end-to-end
principle</a>, interpreted often as “application-specific
functions ought to reside in the end hosts of a network rather
than in intermediary nodes – provided they can be implemented
‘completely and correctly’ in the end hosts”. Ths principle is
much quoted by proponents of strong network neutrality
requirements, including myself. In reality, Saltzer, Reed and
Clark derive this “networks better be dumb or at least not too
smart” approach from an underlying analysis of what happens when
bits travel from an end (a computer connected to a network) to
another end in a network. </p>
<p>However both network neutrality and the end-to-end principle
capture only part of what we try to make them say. What we have
in mind is that the analysis of what happens in a network should
be conducted by considering what happens between the human using
one device and another human using another device or between one
such human and a remote device, such as a distant storage
device, server or peer computer. We need an end-to-end analysis
which is understood as <em>human-to-human</em> or <em>human-to-remote
computer</em>. What will it change? One must first acknowledge
that with this extended approach, one can’t hope to extend the
probabilistic model which makes the original formulation of
Saltzer, Clark & Reed so compelling. The new formulation
can’t replace the old one, it can only provide a qualitative
extension to it.<sup><a
href="http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6418&lang=en#footnote_0_6418"
id="identifier_0_6418" class="footnote-link
footnote-identifier-link" title="The two sentences added for
clarification on 24 January 2013.">1</a></sup> In the early
1980s, the reference model of a computer connected to the
Internet was that it was a general-purpose computer (small
mainframe, workstation or personal computer) controlled by the
user, a trusted person acting on his behalf or a user
organization (such as the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science).
This is unfortunately not a realistic assumption today, at least
until we succeed in recreating this situation. Smartphone or
tablet manufacturers or OS providers severely restrict what
users can run as software or control as parameters on their
devices. Multifunction ADSL or optical fiber boxes are
considered by many ISPs as part of their infrastructure and not
the user’s property under her control. EBook readers consider
not only the device, but the entire collection of eBooks on it
to be their own. Many of the real-life impediments to having a
non-discriminatory human-controlled decentralized Internet arise
from the non-openness/non-freedom (to run the software of one’s
choice) of either terminal devices or “spaces”, “slices” or
“machines” used in “cloud” storage and other forms of
centralized servers.</p>
<p>If we want a much greater share of citizens to understand what
is at stake when we speak of network neutrality we must make it
clear that it is human-to-human and human-to-personal data
activities that we want to be under decentralized human control.
</p>
<ol class="footnotes">
<li id="footnote_0_6418" class="footnote">The two sentences
added for clarification on 24 January 2013. [<a
href="http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6418&lang=en#identifier_0_6418"
class="footnote-link footnote-back-link">↩</a>]</li>
</ol>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6418&lang=en">http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6418&lang=en</a><br>
</p>
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