* Re: [9fans] datakit @ 2004-08-20 5:05 dmr 2004-08-20 5:35 ` George Michaelson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: dmr @ 2004-08-20 5:05 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Geoff's brief recapitulation of Datakit is pretty much on the mark. I'd emphasize these aspects: It definitely was a logically circuit-switched network. This meant (e.g) there were natural ways for requesting bandwith allocation (instead of inferring flows), though I don't think this was really taken advantage of. The design was meant to cater to host-to-host communication and this was the way we really used it in our own group and to some extent throughout Bell Labs. However, most of the sales were as serial asynchronous concentrators over modems. Direct host interfaces were always relatively expensive; at the start, probably not too much more than Ethernet interfaces, but the rapid growth of Ethernet and consequent cost reductions wiped out the more proprietary scheme. (There was indeed better local security because DK was not a broadcast, shared-medium network like EN, but that's not where most people's problems are today). In the aftermath, perhaps the most valuable effect of dealing with Datakit was to enourage the generalized and flexible approach to networking begun in 8th edition Unix that is carried forward into Plan 9. Dennis ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 5:05 [9fans] datakit dmr @ 2004-08-20 5:35 ` George Michaelson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 5:35 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs early ethernets were disgusting. I used one which was a standalone S100-bus box the size of a microwave oven, with DR11-W cabling to a Vax, The only network we had on it was cu/tip. it would not have been hard for Datakit to be remarkably better than this. as a single-vendor solution, from the days when the equipment seller was also the network provider, I think Datakit would have been nice to use. But in a multiple-provider world, the same pressures we have now on vendor neutrality, inter-provider addressing, end-to-end-ness would be driving it into a plethora of (non compatible) variants, and problems. -George ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* [9fans] datakit @ 2004-08-19 15:11 Steve Simon 2004-08-20 1:35 ` geoff 0 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Steve Simon @ 2004-08-19 15:11 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Purely out of noseyness, is there any datakit left or has it all been scrapped? If so when did it finally bite the dust? I always thought it a very elegant system - though I only read about the hardware level. -Steve ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-19 15:11 Steve Simon @ 2004-08-20 1:35 ` geoff 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 13:48 ` boyd, rounin 0 siblings, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: geoff @ 2004-08-20 1:35 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans The Math and CS Research Datakit nodes were taken out of service while I was at the Labs. I was told that Datakit technology is used in the field, though I don't recall details. It was expensive and the 1127 folks seemed glad to be rid of it, though it certainly did seem to me to have some very desirable properties for a network. Instead we now have IP running over dumb networks that guarantee us very little and for which the solution to every problem seems to be another protocol/RFC. At least it's a full-employment act for programmers (or would be in a working economy). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 1:35 ` geoff @ 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff 2004-08-20 3:30 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 13:48 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 1:52 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs; +Cc: geoff On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:35:18 -0700 geoff@collyer.net wrote: >The Math and CS Research Datakit nodes were taken out of service while >I was at the Labs. I was told that Datakit technology is used in the >field, though I don't recall details. It was expensive and the 1127 >folks seemed glad to be rid of it, though it certainly did seem to me >to have some very desirable properties for a network. which ones? (no really, I'm interested whats your initial bullet list on this, because I suspect people don't converge as much as they think they do on them) > >Instead we now have IP running over dumb networks that guarantee us >very little and for which the solution to every problem seems to be >another protocol/RFC. At least it's a full-employment act for >programmers (or would be in a working economy). Is this code for 'I do not support the current embodyment of the end-to-end principle' (which is a very over-used concept, but I still think has some merit) because dumb networks seem to 'work better' for many measures, beyond the ones about maintaining the cabal of alchemists who run them. Datakit never made it offshore that I know. US telco technology which works often does make it off shore (the Lucent 802.11 cards swept the pool here) -So its hard for me to say if it had 'merit' as a platform. Faced with the non-Internet technologies on offer at the time, I am heartily glad we're not running LAT, or DECnet or a host of other 'smart' nets. Most of the network technologies I've used wind up lying: they mask the data timing constraints which they depend on to work (LAT) or they over-state their ability to provide global addressing (DECNET) or they over-engineer the wrong bits (OSI) To argue against myself (for once) its notable that a lot of people are now putting back into the Internet the kinds of things (kludges?) it left out, to try and get session-layer, presentation layer behaviours. -George ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth 2004-08-20 3:30 ` ron minnich 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: geoff @ 2004-08-20 2:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans My experience with datakit was limited, but from what I understand (and can remember) the advantages were: • it provided some protection against snooping and meddling with data in transit by running connections directly from the network controller (kept in a locked closet) to the hosts and by not being a broadcast medium, and by securing the connections between network controllers. • partly as a consequence, when a call arrived and the datakit controller said that it was from a particular destination, you could believe it. • when you placed a call, you handed a dial string like `nj/astro/helix!uucp' to the datakit controller and it returned with either an error message or a live connection. You could also tell that controller if you expected to need a lot of bandwidth (e.g. for file transfer) or not, and it would try to reserve bandwidth along the route. So no need for DHCP, ARP, RARP, BOOTP, sockets, sockaddrs, inaddrs, etc., etc. • IP, UDP and TCP were subsumed by a supposedly-simple protocol, URP. I believe datakit was a reliable network, so you didn't need an extra layer of protocol such as TCP. • datakit was available in a variety of speeds and could be run great distances, including cross-country. I'm less familiar with the drawbacks, though I have heard some of the moaning over the years, so I'll give a try: • datakit hardware, particularly the controllers, was expensive. • it was a centrally-managed network, arguably less open to ad-hocery than ethernets built from switches and routers. Some may see this as a disadvantage, though it enabled many of the advantages named above. • some of the host interfaces (e.g., Vax ones) were reputedly painfully slower than the network itself. My dislike for one-problem-one-protocol-one-RFC is largely one of taste and conserving energy for more important things. Do we really need over 3,700 RFCs to make our networks work? I don't have a strong opinion about the end-to-end principle or various other IETF dogma. We could certainly have done worse, OSI being the scariest of the possible disasters (and it's not quite dead yet, it keeps popping up in places like LDAP!). Are you sure you don't have Datakit in your central offices or long-distance equipment? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff @ 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 5:46 ` geoff 2004-08-20 14:13 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 3:09 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs; +Cc: geoff On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:43:48 -0700 geoff@collyer.net wrote: >My experience with datakit was limited, but from what I understand >(and can remember) the advantages were: > >? it provided some protection against snooping and meddling with data >in transit by running connections directly from the network controller >(kept in a locked closet) to the hosts and by not being a broadcast >medium, and by securing the connections between network controllers. this is the kind of network outcome which fails deployment tests in a post-deregulated world. those cupboards are now multi-keyed, with competing vendors patching at random the mix of slow and highspeed network services in the same KRONE. you get bupkes from 'locked cupboard' wiring and head-end. Telstra deliver our 10meg metro-ethernet to a commodity switch which is as dumb as the come, and could be sniffed for free once in the room. (their optical demuxes at least have remote alarm on the doors, so you get some prot there) > >? partly as a consequence, when a call arrived and the datakit >controller said that it was from a particular destination, you could >believe it. I could say the same about X.25 I guess. I am very glad we don't use that much any more. > >? when you placed a call, you handed a dial string like >`nj/astro/helix!uucp' to the datakit controller and it returned with >either an error message or a live connection. I think having namespace embedded into the model low down was a very good idea and if things like the newcastle connection had been ported well to it, and released into the wild early on, we might well all have been playing this game. > You could also tell >that controller if you expected to need a lot of bandwidth (e.g. for >file transfer) or not, and it would try to reserve bandwidth along the >route. So no need for DHCP, ARP, RARP, BOOTP, sockets, sockaddrs, >inaddrs, etc., etc. again, end-to-end bw reservation has spectacularly failed in the marketplace because greshams law winds up ruling. the military still do what they want, but banks now regard IP nets with non-reserved b/w as 'adequate' and won't pay for the national and inter-national costs which go with this model. if banks won't then you've lost the marketplace of ideas (Cisco sell more to banks and associated bodies than to unis and ISPs. what banks want, Cisco sell) > >? IP, UDP and TCP were subsumed by a supposedly-simple protocol, URP. >I believe datakit was a reliable network, so you didn't need an extra >layer of protocol such as TCP. supposedly.. I bet it cost a huge amount of hidden overhead! the costs here are things like RTT delay. you can't take the checksums out of the IP/above layers because one sub-net claims to be reliable, so you wind up doing checksums in all layers (this wouldn't have only been true for IP btw. links are not homogenous, so absent AT&T owning everywhere, if you want to talk everywhere you wind up having to do your own anyway) > >? datakit was available in a variety of speeds and could be run great >distances, including cross-country. In Australia, centrex models meant that things like this ran 2x or more the apparent distance for rural subscribers. All telecoms north of Gladstone in Queensland (Boyd will doubtless chime in with detail on how sick this is) run via a concrete bunker next to the Wolloongabba cricket ground here in Brisbane, and with Queensland 2000km long, that means to go from the Cairns GPO to the Cairns bank incurs the same RTT as a trans-pacific dialogue, when its 2km across town. Believe me, that is a royal PITA. It winds up breaking eg NOVELL netware LAT etc, dump protocols. Datakit may have masked it, but there would have been costs. > >I'm less familiar with the drawbacks, though I have heard some of the >moaning over the years, so I'll give a try: > >? datakit hardware, particularly the controllers, was expensive. FDDI died here for the same reason. IBM networks ran like greased steam-engines and looked as lovely (to a sick trainspotter mind like mine) but were so massively over-engineered you were paying for hand-lacing of the cables in 20ft racks of gear, when other vendors sold you wire-wrap botch-boxes for a 10th of the cost. > >? it was a centrally-managed network, arguably less open to ad-hocery >than ethernets built from switches and routers. Some may see this as >a disadvantage, though it enabled many of the advantages named above. essentially, scaling failure in a non-monopolistic world. Personally I mourn the retreat from a social contract which ended the public telco model, but there is a paucity of fellow travellers around me. I'd have loved to see the core national networks worldwide retained in a small set of public hands, and have a million upper layers. I bet Datakit could have thrived in that world. > >? some of the host interfaces (e.g., Vax ones) were reputedly >painfully slower than the network itself. actually, still a problem for many people. Now Ethernet is a ubiquitous connect, many high-speed hosts clock their clicks to do dumb buffering with their ether cards instead of handing off, when a $100 unit from Frys can do on-card errorcheck and the like, and work sanely with a kernel. Its very odd how many places have high speed nets and dumb-as-shit connect to it! > >My dislike for one-problem-one-protocol-one-RFC is largely one of >taste and conserving energy for more important things. Do we really >need over 3,700 RFCs to make our networks work? No. the RFC model is bust. I know, I'm chairing a WG in IETF. its utterly broken. > I don't have a strong >opinion about the end-to-end principle or various other IETF dogma. mostly its kept alive by a dwindling number of people. Anybody who gives in to NATs (eg SIP, other three-way rendesvous through NAT boxes) has ditched it long ago. I think it still has merit as a debating point and comparator, much as an OSI model does for defining an ontology. As a concrete implementation guide, I think it has some utility: I very much prefer not to be told by my provider what I can do in packets, and dumb networks seem to be closer to a utility of packets irrespective of what you do in them. packet soup? >We could certainly have done worse, OSI being the scariest of the >possible disasters (and it's not quite dead yet, it keeps popping up >in places like LDAP!). ASN lives on. I blame many people, especially Marshall Rose (SNMP) XML is no better, but is now the RPC of choice for many. XML uber alles has probably replaced IP uber alles as the mantra. > >Are you sure you don't have Datakit in your central offices or >long-distance equipment? Yes. I'm very sure. Australia bought a mix of Nortel and Ericsson gear more than AT&T gear. I dont think datakit was their provisioning model, Nokia b/w management was much more like it. Telstra and Optus got out of that space in the 90s. Edge customer nets which people buy as 2mbit E1 (T1 to you I guess) which used to home in those things, now are provided over an ADSL/HDSL bearer, switch into a core optical network which is weird digital muxing, and the old 2meg stuff is gathering dust. They made their ROI on the old core-copper stuff and ditched it in mad rushes to ATM, and other dead meat technology. I'm sure it lingers on, but I am also sure the places we're in now don't use it and that it didn't make it down here. -George ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 5:46 ` geoff 2004-08-21 0:33 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 14:13 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: geoff @ 2004-08-20 5:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans George commented: > you can't take the checksums out of the IP/above layers because one > sub-net claims to be reliable, so you wind up doing checksums in all > layers (this wouldn't have only been true for IP btw. links are not > homogenous, so absent AT&T owning everywhere, if you want to talk > everywhere you wind up having to do your own anyway) Just to clarify, I'm unaware of any datakit/ip gateways (other than multi-homed hosts, such as a Plan 9 cpu server (or two?) used to be). So traffic within the world of datakit presumably could have lived without upper-level checksums. Looking at the second edition port/stasync.c, it appears that CRCs were used in some cases. To address the larger issue of trusting the network, that Ron raised, I don't know how much intelligence was in a Datakit host interface, but one could imagine end-to-end checksums or CRCs being handled by the host interfaces (and probably between intermediate nodes too). The better gigabit Ethernet cards offer to compute UDP and TCP checksums incoming and outgoing for you, thus effectively pushing the checksums and their verification very nearly into `the network' (your network interface driver still has to check a bit that says `yup, the checksums are okay'), at least within a single gigabit Ethernet. Can you trust these cards and your PCI buses to deliver your data reliably? Would you compute and verify the checksums in the IP stack instead? What about at 10Gb/s? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 5:46 ` geoff @ 2004-08-21 0:33 ` ron minnich 2004-08-21 4:51 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile 0 siblings, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2004-08-21 0:33 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs just for fun, I recently fixed a simple problem on my 256-node cluster by turning the checksum offload OFF. Of course, the problem was some weird driver wart that is as yet unfixed .... I guess offload is a great idea, I just keep seeing all the failure modes :-) ron ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-21 0:33 ` ron minnich @ 2004-08-21 4:51 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-21 4:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs iirc, in '82, in sydney greg chesson was there. the quote going 'round was: [datakit] not known to work reliably at any speed, but the code is huge the security of who's at the other end etc were big pluses. the sort of thing we need for a new tcp. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-21 0:33 ` ron minnich 2004-08-21 4:51 ` boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile 2004-08-22 9:50 ` Tim Newsham 2004-08-23 2:50 ` ron minnich 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Brantley Coile @ 2004-08-21 14:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 455 bytes --] This isn't the first time offloading things for tcp has been trie. I remember when TCP first made its appearance it was criticised for using to many cpu cycles. So, thought hardworking entrepreneurs, we can put TCP into a separate processor and off load the work. Summer USENIX of '85 saw a lot of these TCP Offload Engines. That didn't last long. Nice thing about being around for so long; you get to avoid stepping in the same pile twice. [-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 3061 bytes --] From: ron minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] datakit Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:33:47 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0408201832440.22188-100000@maxroach.lanl.gov> just for fun, I recently fixed a simple problem on my 256-node cluster by turning the checksum offload OFF. Of course, the problem was some weird driver wart that is as yet unfixed .... I guess offload is a great idea, I just keep seeing all the failure modes :-) ron ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile @ 2004-08-22 9:50 ` Tim Newsham 2004-08-23 2:50 ` ron minnich 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Tim Newsham @ 2004-08-22 9:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > Nice thing about being around for so long; you get to avoid stepping > in the same pile twice. slightly off topic, but -- This sounds like short sightedness. Sometimes a bad idea 20 years ago turns out to be a great idea today. If your experience tells you to avoid things just because you saw it come and go before perhaps you should fight against your experience. Tim N. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile 2004-08-22 9:50 ` Tim Newsham @ 2004-08-23 2:50 ` ron minnich 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2004-08-23 2:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs On Sat, 21 Aug 2004, Brantley Coile wrote: > This isn't the first time offloading things for tcp has been trie. I > remember when TCP first made its appearance it was criticised for > using to many cpu cycles. So, thought hardworking entrepreneurs, we > can put TCP into a separate processor and off load the work. Summer > USENIX of '85 saw a lot of these TCP Offload Engines. That didn't > last long. > > Nice thing about being around for so long; you get to avoid stepping > in the same pile twice. TOE was proposed (and hardware was built) for: 10 mbit, 100 mbit 1000 mbit, 10000 mbit ethernet and other networks. Each time it seems to make sense -- for about one iteration of the silicon design rules. So I agree with you: it's not as convincing the 4th time around. ron ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 5:46 ` geoff @ 2004-08-20 14:13 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-20 14:13 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > In Australia, centrex models meant that things like this ran 2x or more > the apparent distance for rural subscribers. All telecoms north of > Gladstone in Queensland (Boyd will doubtless chime in with detail on how > sick this is) run via a concrete bunker next to the Wolloongabba cricket > ground here in Brisbane, and with Queensland 2000km long, that means to go > from the Cairns GPO to the Cairns bank incurs the same RTT as a > trans-pacific dialogue, when its 2km across town. totally possible. oz is ~the size of the US but the population density it nowhere near it. rough figures? 20M people in oz and 300M people in the US. in oz this is made worse 'cos the 90% of the population lives on the coast. [moving to wireless, as an example] last i heard, GSM was going to be dropped in favour of CDMA. GSM is just not suitable in oz 'cos you need this 'hexaboard' of BTS's that are within 35km radii. 35km is nothing in oz. i know people who will drive that far (or further) to get to work. in the bush, there's just no point sticking up GSM BTS's 'cos there might not be one GSM mobile within its 35km radius. btw: the 35km figure (iirc) comes from the timing correction constraints so that the 600us mirco-burst winds up at the mobile and BTS at the right time; GSM is TDMA. bbtw: i've tested it to 35km [normandie to jersey] and at 300km/h [TGV] clocked with a GPS. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth 2004-08-20 13:06 ` Wes Kussmaul 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: C H Forsyth @ 2004-08-20 9:45 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans >>We could certainly have done worse, OSI being the scariest of the >>possible disasters (and it's not quite dead yet, it keeps popping up >>in places like LDAP!). until recently i felt one hasn't actually needed all that many RFCs implemented to get on with the world. the complexity creature from the OSI swamp seems to have reappeared not just in L(!)DAP but more cunningly in XML disguise in WS-* land. like many successors WS begins to make some of the worst cursed predecessors start to look good: a vast and growing collection of incomplete complexity, perhaps it's revenge for disdaining PL/1 and JCL. Gods! A hideous beast, baying is pursuing us! more seriously, i observed the other day to someone that the curious thing about the rise of complexity this time is that as far as i can tell, there seems to be no significant counter-culture to it, as there has been in times past. ``where you gonna go? where you gonna run? ...'' i say that in the hopes that someone will say: it's just building up momentum over here ... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth @ 2004-08-20 13:06 ` Wes Kussmaul 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Wes Kussmaul @ 2004-08-20 13:06 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > like many successors WS begins to make > some of the worst cursed predecessors start to look good: > a vast and growing collection of incomplete complexity, Quote from VARBusiness cited in a recent book ;): "Seek out security solutions that are complex and require additional software and hardware." Widget-driven economics and a military view of security encourage complexity. Journalists often assume that the complexity is unintended. It's not. It's a means to keep the customer down on the plantation and utterly dependent. > the curious thing about the rise of complexity this time is > that as far as i can tell, there seems to be no significant > counter-culture to it, as there has been in times past. Professional obfuscators and FUD-complexifiers get better at their craft, as we all do. They learn how to diminish the influence of their adversaries. > ``where you gonna go? where you gonna run? ...'' I know that ID-PKI appears to be a contributor to complexity. Done properly, it is just the opposite. Please take another look. > i say that in the hopes that someone will say: > it's just building up momentum over here ... It's building up momentum over here. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth 2004-08-20 13:06 ` Wes Kussmaul @ 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian 2004-08-20 17:07 ` rog 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Skip Tavakkolian @ 2004-08-20 16:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans > more seriously, i observed the other day to someone that > the curious thing about the rise of complexity this time is > that as far as i can tell, there seems to be no significant > counter-culture to it, as there has been in times past. I think the rise will be short-lived; it has to. Nature doesn't like waste, and wont allow it indefinitely. Natural selection would dictate that those companies that use complex software will spend more time and resources managing the software rather than using it, and will be less profitable; they will eventually lose out to the more efficient organizations -- perhaps because they use less complex/more efficient software. The growth of hardware technology has obscured the issue of efficiency. It is cheaper to get the next generation of hardware, than it is to spend the time to prototype and perfect software up-front. Just throw more hardware at it. I doubt that can continue over the next twenty years. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian @ 2004-08-20 17:07 ` rog 2004-08-22 19:06 ` Jack Johnson 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: rog @ 2004-08-20 17:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans > Nature doesn't like waste actually, nature doesn't particularly care about waste. a quote from somewhere i read recently nature is _effective_, not necessarily _efficient_. it's only when the complexity of the software starts getting in the way of the companies' effectiveness that the pressure will start to come on. personally i think it'll come when the maintenance cycle starts to kick in seriously on all the new dross that's being written. but that's probably just wishful thinking. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 17:07 ` rog @ 2004-08-22 19:06 ` Jack Johnson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Jack Johnson @ 2004-08-22 19:06 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:07:46 +0100, rog@vitanuova.com <rog@vitanuova.com> wrote: > > Nature doesn't like waste > > actually, nature doesn't particularly care about waste. > a quote from somewhere i read recently > > nature is _effective_, not necessarily _efficient_. Actually, to be slightly more accurate, it doesn't particularly care about anything, being both indifferent and effective. It does effectively maximize efficiency *if* doing so either helps the DNA/host/community/species (pick your theorist) replicate better than its peers, or if the waste in some way hinders its replication. There is actually nothing preventing a natural process from increasing "waste" so long as it effectively promotes the replication of at least one subset of the ecosphere. There might be rebound effects or population crashes, sure, but if it works, it works. The flip side of waste is that life is adept at filling every available ecological niche, so one organism's garbage is another's treasure, be it fecal matter, banana peel or shed shell. Early human middens made great gardens, for this very reason, and possibly became the first efforts at farming -- throw all your garbage here and just wait until harvest. If corn is more fruitful in a midden, and middens are more plentiful when humans are more fruitful, and humans are more fruitful when corn is plentiful, then what incentive is there for the humans to curb their waste? (Effectively, disease, either from a midden too large to sustain the balance of its hosts or from a human or corn population too dense -- or homogenous -- to effectively fight the disease, but even the disease is a population). -Jack The beauty of self-replicating systems is that their competition doesn't. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian 2004-08-20 17:07 ` rog @ 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 16:37 ` Boris Maryshev 2004-08-21 17:19 ` Boris Maryshev 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-20 18:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > I think the rise will be short-lived; it has to. Nature doesn't like > waste, and wont allow it indefinitely. Natural selection would > dictate that those companies that use complex software will spend more > time and resources managing the software rather than using it, and > will be less profitable; well you would think that. in france someone who designs and writes code is payed less than a sysadmin who nurses the broken junk. now, if it was the other way around, as it should be, the broken junk would not be written and the pay situation would reverse. on the one hand i fear, but on the other hand i hope, that it will reach critical mass and collapse. the skill of good design has been [almost] lost. > I doubt that can continue over the next twenty years. iirc, we are at photolythographic limits, but as Feynman said: there's plenty of room at the bottom i have 2nd hand knowledge that the next generation of chips will be built from tracks of atoms. my source [reliable] was doing research in this field. it was done at York uni. i think plessey were funding it. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-21 16:37 ` Boris Maryshev 2004-08-21 17:19 ` Boris Maryshev 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Boris Maryshev @ 2004-08-21 16:37 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs В сообщении от Пятница 20 Август 2004 21:41 boyd, rounin написал(a): > i have 2nd hand knowledge that the next generation of chips > will be built from tracks of atoms. my source [reliable] was > doing research in this field. > > it was done at York uni. i think plessey were funding it. Squeezing WWII technology deeper and deeper into the matter is no better than adding more complexity in software, isn't it? Quantitative leap - yes, qualitative - no. What if next generation of processors will be built of a single atom? Boris -- You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 16:37 ` Boris Maryshev @ 2004-08-21 17:19 ` Boris Maryshev 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Boris Maryshev @ 2004-08-21 17:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs В сообщении от Пятница 20 Август 2004 21:41 boyd, rounin написал(a): > i have 2nd hand knowledge that the next generation of chips > will be built from tracks of atoms. my source [reliable] was > doing research in this field. > > it was done at York uni. i think plessey were funding it. Squeezing WWII technology deeper and deeper into the matter is no better than adding more complexity in software, isn't it? Quantitative leap - yes, qualitative - no. What if next generation of processors will be built of a single atom? Boris -- You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff @ 2004-08-20 3:30 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 14:24 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2004-08-20 3:30 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs; +Cc: geoff I don't know, Geoff, having seen all the failed attempts at putting 'reliable transport' into the network itself (including ATM, HIPPI, HIPPI-800, GSN, Quadrics, Myrinet, SCI, Infiniband, ...) I've become a big fan of dumb networks like Ethernet. All that fancy stuff works great in the small, fails in the large, and boy oh boy ... do you really want someone to come to you 3 months from now and say "what's this huge block of zeros in my data file?". I don't. We had a network here (HIPPI-800) that was super-reliable ... on 2 machines. With X thousand interfaces all going at once, you got a bad packet once every 15 mins. Oops. Took three months to find out that was happening. Software now covers for that problem. Every new network does this: - we're reliable! count on it! Just push the bits and we'll take care of it! - what errors? We're not seeing them (oh, wait, we're not LOOKING for them, oops -- yes, this really happens!) - well, ok, you're using the network wrong - well, ok, it has bugs, but you're not seeing them -- it's your application - oops, you're seeing bugs? we never simulated this scenario. Gosh, maybe there is a problem. - there's a problem. Fixed in next hardware release - there's a problem in the new hardware release - (final phase) Our latest code release detects and corrects any errors in the network! See: NFS, from '86 to '91 (everyone remember patching SunOS kernels to turn on udpcksum?) See: ATM, any time If I assume the network is not 100% reliable, I will write software that thinks that way, and I won't get bitten when my "reliable" network with a 1e-14 BER wrecks some data. The number you need? The sandia guys like their ASCI Red network with its 1e-21 BER. What did datakit do? I know nothing I've ever used can do that 1e-21. The Red Storm network might, however. ron p.s. the Quadrics and Infiniband guys, who are all Very Smart People, will beg to disagree with me about listing their networks above, but I will in turn continue to disagree with them. But maybe the Infiniband guys are right -- I'll believe it when I see it. So it goes. The Myrinet and HIPPI-800 and SCI and ATM (and, actually, Ethernet) guys used to believe they could solve all the problems in the network, but last time I looked they don't believe that any more. Software continues to guarantee hardware reliability. TCP r00lz. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 3:30 ` ron minnich @ 2004-08-20 14:24 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-23 15:04 ` andrey mirtchovski 0 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-20 14:24 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > - what errors? We're not seeing them > (oh, wait, we're not LOOKING for them, oops -- yes, this really > happens!) sure does. took me a year to find a flakey switch to switch cable. this was ethernet and this cable was special so you could stack them. every few months one chunk of [thin] coax would go bad to one office (the other 7 were fine). once found, the standard protocol, when dealing with broken h/w, was employed: if it's broken, break it this avoids some other poor sap from re-using it. satisfying too! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 14:24 ` boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-23 15:04 ` andrey mirtchovski 2004-08-23 15:27 ` ron minnich 0 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: andrey mirtchovski @ 2004-08-23 15:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, boyd, rounin wrote: > every few months one chunk of [thin] coax would go > bad to one office (the other 7 were fine). > > once found, the standard protocol, when dealing with > broken h/w, was employed: > > if it's broken, break it > > this avoids some other poor sap from re-using it. funny how some things rarely change -- today we had a bloke from a hardware vendor do a software upgrade of one of our optical switches which was misbehaving. at some point after the update we saw that two of the machines were transferring at a much lower speed than the others. some mucking around later the guy took an optical cable out and asked 'got a pair of scissors?' with scissors supplied he proceeded cutting the cable in half: 'keeps it from being accidentaly reused' he said. 'we've had that happen before' or, as shirley bassey put it best: "that it's all just a little bit of history repeating" andrey ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-23 15:04 ` andrey mirtchovski @ 2004-08-23 15:27 ` ron minnich 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: ron minnich @ 2004-08-23 15:27 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs On Mon, 23 Aug 2004, andrey mirtchovski wrote: > some mucking around later the guy took an optical cable out and asked > > 'got a pair of scissors?' > > with scissors supplied he proceeded cutting the cable in half: > > 'keeps it from being accidentaly reused' he said. 'we've had that happen > before' > cool. We have 2048 fibres under Pink. You don't remove a cable when it's bad -- you cut the heads off each end. Works fine :-) ron ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] datakit 2004-08-20 1:35 ` geoff 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson @ 2004-08-20 13:48 ` boyd, rounin 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: boyd, rounin @ 2004-08-20 13:48 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs > Instead we now have IP running over dumb networks that guarantee us > very little and for which the solution to every problem seems to be > another protocol/RFC. At least it's a full-employment act for > programmers (or would be in a working economy). you said it. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-08-23 15:27 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 27+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2004-08-20 5:05 [9fans] datakit dmr 2004-08-20 5:35 ` George Michaelson -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 2004-08-19 15:11 Steve Simon 2004-08-20 1:35 ` geoff 2004-08-20 1:52 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 2:43 ` geoff 2004-08-20 3:09 ` George Michaelson 2004-08-20 5:46 ` geoff 2004-08-21 0:33 ` ron minnich 2004-08-21 4:51 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 14:22 ` Brantley Coile 2004-08-22 9:50 ` Tim Newsham 2004-08-23 2:50 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 14:13 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-20 9:45 ` C H Forsyth 2004-08-20 13:06 ` Wes Kussmaul 2004-08-20 16:51 ` Skip Tavakkolian 2004-08-20 17:07 ` rog 2004-08-22 19:06 ` Jack Johnson 2004-08-20 18:41 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-21 16:37 ` Boris Maryshev 2004-08-21 17:19 ` Boris Maryshev 2004-08-20 3:30 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 14:24 ` boyd, rounin 2004-08-23 15:04 ` andrey mirtchovski 2004-08-23 15:27 ` ron minnich 2004-08-20 13:48 ` boyd, rounin
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