Networking is an industry where compatibility and pervasiveness are critical for a technology to succeed.?Quite often?"best performance" on its own isn't enough to win, while "good enough" performance in combination with other factors is often what prevails.?Due to this dynamic, Five networking technologies/protocols currently dominate the world - each following the mantra that: simple, cheap, good enough, and adaptable/extensible?almost always wins.?While there are always corner cases - unless your alternative solves an essential customer requirement that these cannot currently address (for example the ultra-low power of LoRa) compete with these technologies at your own peril.?
- Ethernet - its been decades since the simple CSMA/CD version of the original Ethernet, but from its early days,?Ethernet has been relatively simple and thus also cheap,?especially vs. more complex alternatives that had other advantages.?Ethernet wasn't always the best,?but it was almost always "good enough" and adaptable, and even as it's evolved to switched architecture with multi-gig speeds,?it's still relatively simple and cheap.?Thus when a wired connection is needed,?unless it has unique characteristics,??Ethernet will be the 1st choice.?
- Wi-Fi. Simple, cheap, and ubiquitous wireless.??Wi-Fi has always had limitations,?(being unlicensed?and without central coordination),?but it mostly worked at least "good enough"?and has kept improving.?For short-range wireless connectivity, even though it's unlicensed,?given its ability to use wide swaths of spectrum,?WIFI is almost always the best and cheapest solution.??
- Cellular -??Hard to ignore 15B cellular devices in the world. This is a bit more of a whole technology stack,?but the main point here is?if you need wireless coverage that WIFI can't provide (mostly wider area)?unless you have very unique requirements (like ultra-low power),?cellular will be the technology of choice.?Yes, it's true that satellite earth solutions?ala StarLink are making some inroads,?but we are not there yet, in terms of ubiquity and cost performance.
- TCP/IP -?The lingua franca of networking and protocol of choice for transport and networking layers?bar none. TCP/IP is so ubiquitous,?most people probably don't even know there used to be other choices.?Sure TCP/IP has its quirks and challenges,?but you would be nuts to use a different L4/L3 protocol?unless your requirements were completely unique.
- HTTP(S)-?The application layer of choice and foundation of data communication on the web. The "HyperText Transfer Protocol" is the client-server protocol used by every web browser to communicate with any website worldwide.?Because of its universality and simplicity,?HTTP is also heavily used for other client<>server communications -such as enabling your typical mobile app to communicate with its server backend.
While networking is somewhat unique due to the importance of compatibility,?many of the key attributes listed here:?simplicity, low cost, good enough performance, and especially adaptability & extensibility are also keys for the long-term?success and adoption of other technologies and products.
In looking to differentiate, many developers make the mistake of focusing on complex and expensive absolute-performance?products with limited adaptability. While these products can be impressive, they rarely achieve the same adoption and market longevity as their "good enough", simple, and adaptable counterparts.
P.S Given how opinionated networking folks are …I am sure I am opening a hornet's nest here.. (what about OSPF, BGP, FTP, SMTP, NTP, WDM, SDH, etc) -?it's okay folks-- don’t' hold back - this is what the comment section is for.?
Consultant exclusively to Daedaelus Corporation
2 年A thought, and a shameless plug: "Standard is better than better" certainly applies to networking, as does "take whatever out there is best this year/decade and call it 'Ethernet'." I love Kirk's quote on "better" and Chapter 11. Seriously: the market standardizing on "good enough" means that there are unmet customer needs, sometimes even needs the customers don't realize they have as they tunnel-vision on the standard networking we have while running around shoving fingers in the dike of how they use that networking. The shameless plug: A bit after my untimely 2016 retirement, I ran across Paul Borrill (those who've been around either Ethernet or Storage long enough will know him), who was so impacted, not just as a vendor but as a scientist, by the failure of certain application disaster recovery technology when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11, that he has spent the last 20+ years understanding, in staggering depth, why it's so damn hard for two computers connected by the networking we all take for granted to agree, perfectly, on a set of facts, under all failures and error conditions. https://daedaelus.com/about/ (I did the first draft of Paul's slide deck from Chiplets conference last week at the bottom of that page)
Hewlett Packard Labs Chief Architect / HPE Fellow/VP at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
2 年To paraphrase a Robert X Cringely quote I'm probably misattributing and/or mis-remembering: "'But we were better than Ethernet' they cried all the way to their chapter 11 filing ..."
Co-Founder, President and Director
2 年I thought for fun I would ask the same question to chatGPT: What do the 5 horsemen of Networking teach us? The 5 horsemen of Networking refer to 5 influential companies in the computer networking industry: Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson. These companies teach us the following lessons: Importance of networking in modern technology and communication. - The role of innovation in shaping the networking industry. The significance of partnerships and collaborations in the tech industry. The impact of globalization on the networking industry. The power of established players in a highly competitive market.
Don’t forget SNMP :-) No one has caught up with it still