[ih] principles of the internet

[craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)]

> This model of retaining interface behaviors while replacing the internals is 
> remarkably well-established.
> 
> Netbios and  Ethernet are salient examples for this grup.
> 
> d/

Agreed, and yet it took the technical community a long time to grasp the
concept.

Consider that the whole ATM debate in the 1990s, in retrospect was a question
of whether to force end systems to use an API designed to make it easy to
switch data -- after some fussing, we put the switches inside routers and
convert to-and-from IP packet formats inside the router at the edges of
the switch.

SONET, at its core, is a specification for moving groups of voice samples
at 125ms intervals.

Enjoy!

Craig