Carsten:
Thank you, fully agree. The first time i saw "backward compatibity" pop up in
these discussions was in questions from ISOCI people in discussions
about future evolution of IP/Internet - of course without any clear
specification or reference as to what they actually meant with it.
Would be good to come up with more precise terminology around
characerizations of relationships between stages of an evolutionary
path in networking though.
Then again, IETF isn't particularily fond of creating
output that can not be hacked into C (oops: these days javascript).
But noting how NMRG is doing a fine jobs on trying to write down
what Intent is (terminology/taxonomy), maybe there is a job
for an IRTF group to do a similar job creating a better terminology
to describe such evolutionary characteristics as they relate to
networking. Otherwise it will continue to be hard to even talk about
such networking evolution without being, as you said just be sidelined.
Cheers
Toerless
On Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 08:46:09AM +0100, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> On 2021-03-03, at 03:42, Liguangpeng (Roc, Network Technology Laboratory)
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > backwards compatible
>
> I would suggest not to center the discussion on terms that are so overloaded
> that they are essentially meaningless.
>
> Some believe ???backwards compatible??? means ???does not break existing
> applications???. That is a low bar (but not trivial either). It does not
> imply any form of deployability in the sense of actually making the scheme
> work.
>
> Some believe ???backwards compatible??? means ???seamlessly integrates
> existing infrastructure??? (maybe with the exception that certain benefits do
> not accrue until that is upgraded). That has essentially been the basis for
> all major innovation that has happened in the Internet, with the exception of
> IPv6 (and you know how long that took and still is taking in some parts of
> the world).
>
> Terms like ???backwards compatible??? are, however, useful for derailing the
> discussion if that is one???s intention, because quickly the discussion will
> be about the terms and no longer about the subject.
>
> Grüße, Carsten
>
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