RFC 1925 — the Twelve Networking Truths

Abstract

This memo doc­u­ments the fun­da­mental truths of net­work­ing for the<Internet com­munity. This memo does not spe­cify a stand­ard, except in the sense that all stand­ards must impli­citly fol­low the fun­da­mental truths.

Acknowledgements

The truths described in this memo res­ult from extens­ive study over an exten­ded period of time by many people, some of whom did not intend to con­trib­ute to this work. The editor merely has col­lec­ted these truths, and would like to thank the net­work­ing com­munity for ori­gin­ally illu­min­at­ing these truths.

1. Introduction

This Request for Comments (RFC) provides inform­a­tion about the fun­da­mental truths under­ly­ing all net­work­ing. These truths apply to net­work­ing in gen­eral, and are not lim­ited to TCP/​IP, the Internet, or any other sub­set of the net­work­ing community.

2. The Fundamental Truths

(1) It Has To Work.

(2) No mat­ter how hard you push and no mat­ter what the pri­or­ity, you can’t increase the speed of light.

(2a) (corol­lary). No mat­ter how hard you try, you can’t make a baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up *might* make it slower, but it won’t make it hap­pen any quicker.

(3) With suf­fi­cient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not neces­sar­ily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dan­ger­ous sit­ting under them as they fly overhead.

(4) Some things in life can never be fully appre­ci­ated nor under­stood unless exper­i­enced firsthand. Some things in net­work­ing can never be fully under­stood by someone who neither builds com­mer­cial net­work­ing equip­ment nor runs an oper­a­tional network.

(5) It is always pos­sible to aglu­ten­ate mul­tiple sep­ar­ate prob­lems into a single com­plex inter­de­pend­ent solu­tion. In most cases this is a bad idea.

(6) It is easier to move a prob­lem around (for example, by mov­ing the prob­lem to a dif­fer­ent part of the over­all net­work archi­tec­ture) than it is to solve it.

(6a) (corol­lary). It is always pos­sible to add another level of indirection.

(7) It is always something

(7a) (corol­lary). Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can’t have all three).

(8) It is more com­plic­ated than you think.

(9) For all resources, whatever it is, you need more.

(9a) (corol­lary) Every net­work­ing prob­lem always takes longer to solve than it seems like it should.

(10) One size never fits all.

(11) Every old idea will be pro­posed again with a dif­fer­ent name and a dif­fer­ent present­a­tion, regard­less of whether it works.

(11a) (corol­lary). See rule 6a.

(12) In pro­tocol design, per­fec­tion has been reached not when there is noth­ing left to add, but when there is noth­ing left to take away.

Security Considerations

This RFC raises no secur­ity issues. However, secur­ity pro­to­cols are­sub­ject to the fun­da­mental net­work­ing truths.

References

The ref­er­ences have been deleted in order to pro­tect the guilty and avoid enrich­ing the lawyers.Author’s AddressRoss CallonInternet Order of Old Fartsc/​o Bay Networks3 Federal StreetBillerica, MA 01821Phone: 508 – 436-​​3936EMail: rcallon@​baynetworks.​com

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