End-to-end principle: Difference between revisions

:''Keep the [[network]] as simple as possible. Put all the complications/intelligence/{{risk|complexity}} at the ''edges'' of the [[network]]. Allow people to build whatever structures they like on their own turf, but keep the common spaces clear and simple.''  

===Network layers===

You can see any [[network]] as a series of layers, with only the most basic layer connecting every client on the network. Each successive layer is more complicated, specialised, but will only be suitable for a more limited number of “clients” with specific use-cases. That bottom layer is universal — literally, since every client of the network operates on it — and must be as simple and uncomplicated as possible. Any complication in a lower-level network has costs for all clients interacting with the network through that layer, if they do not need the feature that complication provides. So the basic idea is to put complicating features in the highest possible layers such that only clients operating at that layer (or higher) needs that feature.

===Conceptual example: transport network===

Say we are organising transport around an area of uncultivated, flat land.<ref>You can do other things with this network, too — build on it, grow things on it, but let’s keep it transport, to keep it simple.</ref>

The classic example is of course the [[internet]] itself. At its most basic layer, it is a series of connected notes using the [[TCI/IP protocol]] and packet switching to which takes any type of data (text, video, audio etc) breaks it into tiny homogenous “packets” and sends them off across the network with an address, and the client at the receiving end reassembles them. There are all kinds of additional layers in it, be they walled gardens (Facebook etc) streaming services (Netflix), cloud servers and what not. Even as the fortunes of these services and gardens wax and wane (where are they now, AOL and MySpace) the un-owned internet grows ever stronger.

This design principle has a number of advantages, especially in the digital commons where issues of physical property and the tragedy of real commons don’t apply:

*'''It’s open source''': no-one needs to sanction the creation of a new layer. You can innovate on the network — create your own new bus company — without bothering the network “owner” 9if there even is one — there isn’t, on the internet. This also avoids “strategic” behaviour by the network owner ([[rent-seeking]], monopoly behaviour).

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