In Patterns in Network Architecture, pioneer John Day takes a unique approach to solving the problem of network architecture. Piercing the fog of history, he bridges the gap between our experience from the original ARPANET and today’s Internet to a new perspective on networking. Along the way, he shows how socioeconomic forces derailed progress and led to the current crisis.

Beginning with the seven fundamental, and still unanswered, questions identified during the ARPANET’s development, Patterns in Network Architecture returns to bedrock and traces our experience both good and bad. Along the way, he uncovers overlooked patterns in protocols that simplify design and implementation and resolves the classic conflict between connection and connectionless while retaining the best of both. He finds deep new insights into the core challenges of naming and addressing, along with results from upper-layer architecture. All of this in Day’s deft hands comes together in a tour de force of elegance and simplicity with the annoying turn of events that the answer has been staring us in the face: Operating systems tell us even more about networking than we thought. The result is, in essence, the first “unified theory of networking,” and leads to a simpler, more powerful–and above all–more scalable network infrastructure.  The book then lays the groundwork for how to exploit the result in the design, development, and management as we move beyond the limitations of the Internet.

Using this new model, Day shows how many complex mechanisms in the Internet today (multihoming, mobility, and multicast) are, with this collapse in complexity, now simply a consequence of the structure. The problems of router table growth of such concern today disappear. The inescapable conclusion is that the Internet is an unfinished demo, more in the tradition of DOS than Unix, that has been living on Moore’s Law and 30 years of band-aids. It is long past time to get networking back on track.

•           Patterns in network protocols that synthesize “contradictory” approaches and simplify design and implementation

•           “Deriving” that networking is interprocess communication (IPC) yielding

•           A distributed IPC model that repeats with different scope and range of operation

•           Making network addresses topological makes routing purely a local matter

•           That in fact, private addresses are the norm–not the exception–with the consequence that the global public addresses required today are unnecessary

•           That mobility is dynamic multihoming and unicast is a subset of multicast, but multicast devolves into unicast and facilitates mobility

•           That the Internet today is more like DOS, but what we need should be more like Unix

•           For networking researchers, architects, designers, engineers

Provocative, elegant, and profound, Patterns in Network Architecture transforms the way you envision, architect, and implement networks.

John Dayhas been involved in research and development of computer networks since 1970, when they were 12th node on the “Net.” Mr. Day has developed and designed protocols for everything from the data link layer to the application layer.

Also making fundamental contributions to research on distributed databases, he developed one of two fundamental algorithms in the updating of multiple copies. He also did work on the early development of supercomputers and was a member of a development team on three operating systems. Mr. Day was an early advocate of the use of Formal Description Techniques (FDTs) for protocols and shepherded the development of the three international standard FDTs: Estelle, LOTOS, and extending SDL. Mr. Day managed the development of the OSI reference model, naming and addressing, and a major contributor to the upper-layer architecture; he also chaired the US ANSI committee for OSI Architecture and was a member of the Internet Research Task Force’s Name Space Research Group. He has been a major contributor to the development of network management architecture, working in the area since 1984 defining the fundamental architecture currently prevalent and designing high-performance implementations; and in the mid-1980s, he was involved in fielding a network management system, 10 years ahead of comparable systems. Recently, Mr. Day has turned his attention to the fundamentals of network architectures and their implications (as discussed in this book).

Mr. Day is also a recognized scholar in the history of cartography, on Neolithic Korea, and on Jesuits in 17th-century China. Most recently, Mr. Day has also contributed to exhibits at the Smithsonian and a forthcoming chapter in Matteo Ricci Cartographia.