Re: Time to kill layer 2

Of course!

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Dimitri Staessens <
dimitri(_dot_)staessens(_at_)intec(_dot_)ugent(_dot_)be> wrote:

> anyone thought of killing everything on top of layer 2?
>
>
> On 04/14/16 14:59, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
> > This morning I spent an hour debugging the network to print out two
> > class projects that were due. Some points:
> >
> > 1) My ability to debug the network is better than 99% of the population
> > 2) The interaction of Bonjour, DHCP and auto power saving is unfortunate
> > 3) Things should still work after I have been away for a week
> > 4) If vendors want to be selling all that IoT gear, they have to solve
> > these issues.
> >
> > 5) I want someone to blame. Right now when the network doesn't work, I
> > don't know who is the cause. I want one point of contact. Whoever is
> > that point of contact will get most of my networking money.
> >
> >
> > One of the biggest headaches in debugging is that 'smart hubs' are
> > not. They are actually very stupid. They make assumptions of network
> > topology that are not true. Another is the unfortunate implementation
> > of DHCP.
> >
> > I don't use SNMP for a simple reason - it is not available to most
> > ordinary people. I want to understand networking for the 99%, not the
> > IETF 1%-ers.
> >
> > All this networking gear is presented to me as black boxes over which
> > I have absolutely no control (which is fine-ish) and no visibility.
> >
> > What we have today is the product of a historical process. I remember
> > the days when Ethernet ran on 10BaseT. But I installed my first switch
> > 30 years ago and it has been a switched protocol for 20 years now.
> >
> >
> > It seems to me that there is a business opportunity for any vendor who
> > takes the rather obvious step of simplifying the system.
> >
> > People talk about 'IP everywhere' and 'IP end-to-end' which is rather
> > odd when you think about the fact that virtually every local network
> > uses MAC addresses for routing.
> >
> > One of the reasons that IP won against OSI was that it was simpler.
> > Applications ran on top of the IP layer with only TCP inbetween. Of
> > course these days we do have a Presentation layer, Web Services run on
> > HTTP. But unlike the OSI presentation layer, ours does not introduce
> > extra moving parts.
> >
> > It seems to me that if we really believed in IP everywhere and IP
> > end-to-end we would insist that network switches be IP routers that
> > can be managed using BGP/OSPF or at least routing tables rather than
> > heuristic devices that try to guess where packets should go based on
> > goat entrails, phases of the moon or whatever they use.
> >
> >
> > What should have happened many moons ago was that DHCP should have
> > become a bidirectional protocol or a bootstrap to a bidirectional
> > protocol. So when a printer joins the network, it authenticates and
> > tells the network what it is. And this is all defined in one set of
> > specifications from one organization, none of which assumes that
> > security is an 'advanced', 'optional' or 'enterprise' feature.
> >
> > Instead we have an ad-hoc layer trying to achieve the same result in
> > peer-to-peer fashion. A similar approach works for frogs as a
> > reproductive mechanism but only at the species level. It certainly
> > does not work for the individual ova which may or may not connect to
> > the printer it is trying to use to print the kids damned homework.
> >
> >
> > Seriously, the fact that things have scaled thus far and the 1% can
> > get them to work does not mean that we can get to the next level
> > without a serious rethink of the local network architecture.
> >
> > The type of device I think we need would be first and foremost an IP
> > router. It would have ethernet plugs on the box and use ethernet layer
> > 1 specs. But when a another 'True-IP' device was plugged in, it would
> > quickly negotiate a direct IP connection, oh and with proper 64KB
> > packets. It would also, authenticate, announce and turn on link layer
> > encryption.
> >
> > Such a device would also be a legacy router. It would fake all the
> > signals necessary for a legacy ethernet device to function. It would
> > also be responsible for maintaining the local information for the
> > network service database and intercommunicating with other hubs to
> > achieve a global network view.
> >
> >
> > The net result of all this would be that I would never ever need to
> > install another printer (no, it is not actually necessary for every
> > stupid printer to have its own stupid printer driver). Opening the
> > 'printers' folder would automatically show every printer that is on
> > the network or can be woken from slumber by the hub it connects to.