Your are correct. In fact, from the beginning the ARPANET and
CYCLADES groups saw this as a distributed computing problem. We have
often said that much of the reason that early effort was a success is
that we were operating systems guys not telecom guys.
The early applications were all aimed at replicating OS functionality
in the network. My favorite "proof" of this is that contrary to what
many textbooks say, Telnet is not a remote login protocol; but a
terminal device driver protocol. But there was much work prior to
1975 on the network as distributed computation. The problem was our
ideas were ahead of what the hardware could do "cheaply." Even so,
by 1975 we had fielded an application that implemented a land use
planning system that used databases on both coasts invisibly to the
user sitting at a plasma screen with touch. The keyboard was only for
data entry. (There were other equally ambitious efforts) Somehow this
direction was lost and we took a step backwards to a focus on
"endpoints" as it has been characterized.)
You are also correct that strictly speaking the words "protocol" and
"algorithm" are probably the same. Other fields, such as biology,
use protocol to mean the list of steps to produce something.
There has always been a debate about the abstract definition of
"process." (To punt the definition I have thought of it as "a locus
of execution" or "the instantiation of a program" but of course those
beg other questions.) ;-) Which is why OSI gave up and adopted
"entity" as about the only word they could find that didn't have
implications about how it was implemented.
Take care,
John
At 9:03 +0100 2012/01/08, t.petch wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave CROCKER" <dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net>
To: "Joel M. Halpern" <jmh(_at_)joelhalpern(_dot_)com>
Cc: "IETF-Discussion" <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 4:17 AM
On 1/5/2012 7:10 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> I suspect that the "correct" choices depends upon how you look at the
analogy.
> What seemed to me the closest analog to "process" would be the actual
messages
> on the wires.
Nah. A message on the wire is a single unit in an activity. And
taken on its
own, in the host or on the wire, it's actually static.
It isn't the activity. A process is an activity. The challenge
is a term for
the /flow/ of messages.
It would be nice if it were a single word.
I agree that a message is not the right word, but I think that protocol is:-)
'Protocol' started as the draft treaty that formed part of
diplomatic exchanges,
ie it was the physical manifestation, not the abstract concept, so I would use
it in that sense for networking.
For the abstract side of networking, I would use the same
terminology as I would
use for a 'program'. After all, a network is just a single, multi-tasking
system in which the 'links' that tie together the multiple tasks have been
stretched a little and made manifest so I use the same constructs, the same
tools - eg state machines - for both. In a multi-tasking operating
system, you
will have post and wait and some such, in a network you have send and receive
and some such, same difference.
Tom Petch
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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