Toward Higher Precision
An introduction to PTP and its significance to NTP practitioners
by Rick Ratzel, Rodney Greenstreet | August 27, 2012
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 55 Issue 10—
OpenFlow: A Radical New Idea in Networking
An open standard that enables software-defined networking
Controlling Queue Delay
A modern AQM is just one piece of the solution to bufferbloat.
by Kathleen Nichols, Van Jacobson | May 6, 2012
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 55 Issue 7—
A Guided Tour through Data-center Networking
A good user experience depends on predictable performance within the data-center network.
Home Bufferbloat Demonstration Videos
Under common loads, your real Internet "speed" can easily drop by a factor of ten due to bufferbloat.
Revisiting Network I/O APIs: The netmap Framework
It is possible to achieve huge performance improvements in the way packet processing is done on modern operating systems.
The Network Protocol Battle:
A tale of hubris and zealotry
A tale of hubris and zealotry
BufferBloat: What's Wrong with the Internet?
A discussion with Vint Cerf, Van Jacobson, Nick Weaver, and Jim Gettys
Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet
Networks without effective AQM may again be vulnerable to congestion collapse.
Arrogance in Business Planning
Technology business plans that assume no competition (ever)
by Paul Vixie | July 20, 2011
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 54 Issue 9—
The Robustness Principle Reconsidered
Seeking a middle ground
by Eric Allman | June 22, 2011
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 54 Issue 8—
Successful Strategies for IPv6 Rollouts. Really.
Knowing where to begin is half the battle.
by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Vinton G. Cerf | March 10, 2011
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 54 Issue 4—
Bound by the Speed of Light
There's only so much you can do to optimize NFS over a WAN.
Principles of Robust Timing over the Internet
The key to synchronizing clocks over networks is taming delay variability.
by Julien Ridoux, Darryl Veitch | April 21, 2010
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 53 Issue 5—
What DNS Is Not
DNS is many things to many people - perhaps too many things to too many people.
by Paul Vixie | November 5, 2009
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 52 Issue 12—
Whither Sockets?
High bandwidth, low latency, and multihoming challenge the sockets API.
by George V. Neville-Neil | May 11, 2009
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 52 Issue 6—
All-Optical Computing and All-Optical Networks are Dead
Anxiously awaiting the arrival of all-optical computing? Don't hold your breath.
Network Front-end Processors, Yet Again
The history of NFE processors sheds light on the tradeoffs involved in designing network stack software.
by Mike O'Dell | April 17, 2009
This article appears in print in Communications of the ACM, Volume 52 Issue 6—
Fighting Physics: A Tough Battle
Thinking of doing IPC over the long haul? Think again. The laws of physics say you're hosed.
A Conversation with Van Jacobson
The TCP/IP pioneer discusses the promise of content-centric networking with BBN chief scientist Craig Partridge.
Automatic for the People
Probably the single biggest challenge with large scale systems and networks is not building them but rather managing them on an ongoing basis. Fortunately, new classes of systems and network management tools that have the potential to save on labor costs because they automate much of the management process are starting to appear.
Embracing Wired Networks
Most people I know run wireless networks in their homes. Not me. I hardwired my home and leave the Wi-Fi turned off. My feeling is to do it once, do it right, and then forget about it. I want a low-cost network infrastructure with guaranteed availability, bandwidth, and security. If these attributes are important to you, Wi-Fi alone is probably not going to cut it.
DNS Complexity
DNS (domain name system) is a distributed, coherent, reliable, autonomous, hierarchical database, the first and only one of its kind. Created in the 1980s when the Internet was still young but overrunning its original system for translating host names into IP addresses, DNS is one of the foundation technologies that made the worldwide Internet (and the World Wide Web) possible. Yet this did not all happen smoothly, and DNS technology has been periodically refreshed and refined. Though it’s still possible to describe DNS in simple terms, the underlying details are by now quite sublime.
Better, Faster, More Secure
Since I started a stint as chair of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) in March 2005, I have frequently been asked, “What’s coming next?” but I have usually declined to answer. Nobody is in charge of the Internet, which is a good thing, but it makes predictions difficult (and explains why this article starts with a disclaimer: It represents my views alone and not those of my colleagues at either IBM or the IETF).
The Network's New Role
Companies have always been challenged with integrating systems across organizational boundaries. With the advent of Internet-native systems, this integration has become essential for modern organizations, but it has also become more and more complex, especially as next-generation business systems depend on agile, flexible, interoperable, reliable, and secure cross-enterprise systems.
You Don't Know Jack about Network Performance
Why does an application that works just fine over a LAN come to a grinding halt across the wide-area network? You may have experienced this firsthand when trying to open a document from a remote file share or remotely logging in over a VPN to an application running in headquarters. Why is it that an application that works fine in your office can become virtually useless over the WAN? If you think it's simply because there's not enough bandwidth in the WAN, then you don't know jack about network performance.
TCP Offload to the Rescue
In recent years, TCP/IP offload engines, known as TOEs, have attracted a good deal of industry attention and a sizable share of venture capital dollars. A TOE is a specialized network device that implements a significant portion of the TCP/IP protocol in hardware, thereby offloading TCP/IP processing from software running on a general-purpose CPU. This article examines the reasons behind the interest in TOEs and looks at challenges involved in their implementation and deployment.
A Conversation with Mario Mazzola
To peek into the future of networking, you don't need a crystal ball. You just need a bit of time with Mario Mazzola, chief development officer at Cisco. Mazzola lives on the bleeding edge of networking technology, so his present is very likely to be our future. He agreed to sit down with Queue to share some of his visions of the future and the implications he anticipates for software developers working with such rapidly evolving technologies as wireless networking, network security, and network scalability.
Self-Healing Networks
The obvious advantage to wireless communication over wired is, as they say in the real estate business, location, location, location. Individuals and industries choose wireless because it allows flexibility of location--whether that means mobility, portability, or just ease of installation at a fixed point. The challenge of wireless communication is that, unlike the mostly error-free transmission environments provided by cables, the environment that wireless communications travel through is unpredictable. Environmental radio-frequency (RF) "noise" produced by powerful motors, other wireless devices, microwaves--and even the moisture content in the air--can make wireless communication unreliable.
The Future of WLAN
Since James Clerk Maxwell first mathematically described electromagnetic waves almost a century and a half ago, the world has seen steady progress toward using them in better and more varied ways. Voice has been the killer application for wireless for the past century. As performance in all areas of engineering has improved, wireless voice has migrated from a mass broadcast medium to a peer-to-peer medium. The ability to talk to anyone on the planet from anywhere on the planet has fundamentally altered the way society works and the speed with which it changes.
