(2003-09-03) Karl Auerbach Death Of End To End

Karl Auerbach on the future death of the End To End Network. Between viruses and spammers and just plain old bad code, the net is now subject to a heavy, and increasing, level of background packet radiation. Sure, most of this stuff never makes it past the filters in my demarcation routers, much less past my inner firewalls. But it does burn a lot of resources. Not only do those useless packets burn bits on my access links, but they also waste bits, routing cycles, and buffers on every hop that those useless packets traverse. It will not take long before the cumulative weight of this garbage traffic starts to poison the net.