What DNS Is Not
DNS is many things to many people - perhaps too many things to too many people.
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.
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.
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.
