Cybertelecom Federal Internet Law & Policy An Educational Project

End to End E2E

Technological Design Becomes Policy Design

Reverberating Lessig's message from CODE, two branches of literature emerged arguing that network design principles necessitate network policy principles: End-to-end and the Layered Model. “What is” became “what ought to be.” [See David Hume]

End to End - A Network Principle

In 1981, Jerry Saltzer, David Reed, and David Clark published End-to-End Arguments in System Design, describing the end-to-end argument:

The function in question can completely and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of the application standing at the end points of the communication system. Therefore, providing that questioned function as a feature of the communication system itself is not possible.

The authors posited the following choice: in order to gain a successful file transfer, the system designer can build a robust and secure network that anticipates every risk scenario and successfully delivers the file, or the system designer can leave the determination of a successful file transfer to the ends.  With the latter, the file transfer programs at the ends engage in a verification of successful transmission through the use of a checksum; either the file was successfully transferred, or the file is transferred again.  Given the low occurrence of failed file transfer, and given the difficulty of anticipating every threat to a successful file transfer, it is therefore appropriate to leave verification of successful file transfer to the end applications. According to the end-to-end principle, the network should be as minimal as possible, simply transmitting the data, while processing occurs at the end. Further, given the wide variety of applications (either in existence or as of yet unanticipated), it is preferable that the network not design in features for specific applications, thereby optimizing the network for specific functions, but at the cost of reducing transmission speeds or reducing functionality for other applications. 

End to End - A Policy Principle

In 2001, Mark A. Lemley and Lawrence Lessig released The End of End-to-End: Preserving the Architecture of the Internet in the Broadband Era. They moved the focus of the end-to-end discussion from applications the network itself. In the context of the open access debate that was transpiring before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Lemley and Lessig argued that permitting network operators to use their networks to muck around with network transmissions threatened the characteristic of the network that was so vital to its success. Citing Saltzar, Reed, and Clark, the law professors argued,

By its design, the Internet has enabled an extraordinary creativity precisely because it has pushed creativity to the ends of the network. Rather than relying upon the creativity of a small group of innovators who work for the companies that control the network, the e2e design enables anyone with an Internet connection to design and implement a better way to use the Internet. By designing the network to be neutral among uses, the Internet has created a competitive environment where innovators know that their inventions will be used if useful. By keeping the cost of innovation low, it has encouraged an extraordinary amount of innovation in many different contexts. By keeping the network simple, and its interaction general, the Internet has facilitated the design of applications that could not have originally been envisioned.
. . .

[W]e think the history of the Internet to date compellingly demonstrates the wisdom of letting a myriad of possible improvers work free of the constraints of a central authority, public or private. Compromising e2e will tend to undermine innovation by putting one or a few companies “in charge” of controlling it.

[Lemley and Lessig, p. 9.]

End-to-End design as a policy objective will be adopted in the FCC's Open Internet Order.

Literature

• The Policy Implications of End-to-End, A Workshop Sponsored by the Stanford Program of Law, Science & Technology, (Dec. 1, 2000)
  • e2e Map, Yochai Benkler
  • The End of End-to-End: Preserving the Architecture of the Internet in the Broadband Era, Mark A. Lemley and Lawrence Lessig
  • End-to-End Arguments in System Design, J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reed, and D. D. Clark
  • Comments at E2E, Gerald Faulhaber  [doc | pdf]
  • Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End to End Arguments vs. the Brave New World, David Clark and Marjory Blumenthal
• The End of End to End?, Potaroo 4/24/2008
• RFC 3724, The Rise of the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet Architecture”, March 2004
• Marjory S. Blumenthal, David D. Clark, Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End-to-End Arguments vs. The Brave New World , ACM Transactions on Internet Technology Vol. 1, Iss. 1 (Aug. 2001) (“We discuss a set of principles that have guided the design of the Internet, called the end-to-end arguments, and we conclude that there is a risk that the range of new requirements now emerging could have the consequence of compromising the Internet’s original design principles. Were this to happen, the Internet might lose some of its key features, in particular its ability to support new and unanticipated applications.”)
• B Carpenter IETF Information RFC 2275, Internet Transparency (Feb 2000)
• Brian Carpenter, IETF RFC 1958, Architectural Principles of the Internet (June 1996)
  • 2.1 Many members of the Internet community would argue that there is no architecture, but only a tradition, which was not written down for the first 25 years (or at least not by the IAB). However, in very general terms, the community believes that the goal is connectivity, the tool is the Internet Protocol, and the intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network. The current exponential growth of the network seems to show that connectivity is its own reward, and is more valuable than any individual application such as mail or the World-Wide Web. This connectivity requires technical cooperation between service providers, and flourishes in the increasingly liberal and competitive commercial telecommunications environment. The key to global connectivity is the inter-networking layer. The key to exploiting this layer over diverse hardware providing global connectivity is the "end to end argument"."
  • "3.1 Heterogeneity is inevitable and must be supported by design. Multiple types of hardware must be allowed for, e.g. transmission speeds differing by at least 7 orders of magnitude, various computer word lengths, and hosts ranging from memory-starved microprocessors up to massively parallel supercomputers. Multiple types of application protocol must be allowed for, ranging from the simplest such as remote login up to the most complex such as distributed databases.
• Paul A. David -- The Beginnings and Prospective Ending of 'End-to-End'  2002
• David Isenberg, "The Rise of the Stupid Network," Computer Telephony (August 1997):16-26 ("In the Stupid Network, the data would tell the network where it needs to go. (In contrast, in a circuit network, the network tells the data where to go.) In a Stupid Network, the data on it would be the boss.")
• Mark A. Lemley & Lawrence Lessig, The End of End-to-End: Preserving the Architecture of the Internet in the Broadband Era, 48 UCLA L. Rev. 925 (Oct. 2000) UC Berkeley Law & Econ Research Paper No. 2000-19; Stanford Law & Economics Olin Working Paper No. 207; UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 37. Available at SSRN: "By its design, the Internet has enabled an extraordinary creativity precisely because it has pushed creativity to the ends of the network. Rather than relying upon the creativity of a small group of innovators who work for the companies that control the network, the e2e design enables anyone with an Internet connection to design and implement a better way to use the Internet. By designing the network to be neutral among uses, the Internet has created a competitive environment where innovators know that their inventions will be used if useful. By keeping the cost of innovation low, it has encouraged an extraordinary amount of innovation in many different contexts. By keeping the network simple, and its interaction general, the Internet has facilitated the design of applications that could not have originally been envisioned. . . . [W]e think the history of the Internet to date compellingly demonstrates the wisdom of letting a myriad of possible improvers work free of the constraints of a central authority, public or private. Compromising e2e will tend to undermine innovation by putting one or a few companies “in charge” of controlling it. "
• The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig
• Leonard Kleinrock, et. al., Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond, National Research Council 71 (1994) ("As noted above, much of the user-visible functionality of information networks such as the Internet is accomplished through software running on users' end-node equipment, such as a computer. The network itself only implements the basic bearer service, and this causes changes in the standards- setting process. When function moved outside the network, the traditional network standards bodies no longer controlled the process of setting standards for new services based on this functionality. The interests of a much larger group, representing the computer vendors and the applications developers, needed to be heard. This situation is rather different from that in the traditional telephone network, where most of the function was implemented in the interior of the network, and the user equipment, the telephone itself, had characteristics dictated largely by the telephone company. ")
• Active Networking and End-To-End Arguments, Comment, David P. Reed, Jerome H. Saltzer, and David D. Clark
• Reed, David P., Jerome H. Saltzer & David D. Clark. 1998. "Active Networking and End-to-End Arguments." IEEE Network , 12(3): 69-71.
• Larry Roberts & Barry Wessler 1970
  • There are many applications of computers for which current communications technology is not adequate. One such application is the specialized customer service computer systems in existence or envisioned for the future; these services provide the customer with information or computational capability. If no commercial computer network service is developed, the future may be as follows:
  • One can envision a corporate officer in the future having many different consoles in his office: one to the stock exchange to monitor his own company's and competitor's activities, one to the commodities market to monitor the demand for his product or raw materials, one to his own company's data management system to monitor inventory, sales, payroll, cash flow, etc., and one to a scientific computer used for modeling and simulation to help plan for the future. There are probably many people within that same organization who need some of the same services and potentially many other services. Also, though the data exists in digital form on other computers, it will probably have to be keypunched into the company's modeling and simulation system in order to perform analyses. The picture presented seems rather bleak, but is just a projection of the service systems which have been developed to date.

    The organization providing the service has a hard time, too. In addition to collecting and maintaining the data, the service must have field offices to maintain the consoles and the communications multiplexors adding significantly to their cost. A large fraction of that cost is for communications and consoles, rather than the service itself. Thus, the services which can be justified are very limited.

    Let us now paint another picture given a nationwide network for computer-to-computer communication. The service organization need only connect its computer into the net. It probably would not have any consoles other than for data input, maintenance, and system development. In fact, some of the service's data input may come from another service over the Net. Users could choose the service they desired based on reliability, cleanliness of data, and ease of use, rather than proximity or sole source.

    Large companies would connect their computers into the net and contract with service organizations for the use of those services they desired. The executive would then have one console, connected to his company's machine. He would have one standard way of requesting the service he desires with a far greater number of services available to him.

    For the small company, a master service organization might develop, similar to today's time-sharing service, to offer console service to people who cannot afford their own computer. The master service organization would be wholesalers of the services and might even be used by the large companies in order to avoid contracting with all the individual service organizations.

    The kinds of services that will be available and the cost and ultimate capacity required for such service is difficult to predict. It is clear, however, that if the network philosophy is adopted and if it is made widely available through a common carrier, that the communications system will not be the limiting factor in the development of these services as it is now.

• John Roberts, The Defense Data Network, (1987) ("The DDN has several security features that prevents compromise of user's data. The ISTs and host circuits on each end will eventually have link encryption devices. In the classified portion of the DDN, encryption devices will separate different security levels of classified data.")
• J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reed, and D. D. Clark, End-to-End Arguments in System Design, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (1984) PDF; in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 2(4): 277-288.
• J.H. Saltzer, David Clark, David Reed, End to End Arguments in System Design, Distributed Computing Systems (Apr. 8, 1981) "The function in question can completely and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of the application standing at the end points of the communication system. Therefore, providing that questioned function as a feature of the communication system itself is not possible."
• Christian Sandvig, Communications Infrastructure and Innovation:  The Internet as End 2 End Network that Isnt, Nov 2002
• Barbara van Schewick, Internet Architecture and Innovation (2010).
• van Schewick, Barbara. 2004. "Architecture and Innovation: The Role of the End-to-End Arguments in the Original Internet." PhD Dissertation. Technical University Berlin .
• Links
• Internet Research Task Force (IETF & ISOC) End-to-End