I am constantly delighted with the elegance of TCP/IP. It is a communication protocol that has stood the test of time including proposals early this decade to replace TCP/IP with “NewIP” (thankfully, it failed).

We have collectively and continuously been benefiting from how TCP/IP has evolved from the days when it was not obvious if TCP/IP would survive the push by vendors who were leaning to the Open Systems Interconnect model put forward by the International Standards Organization – ISO/IEC 7498 and ISO/IEC 8280 among others. Those two ISO/IEC standards are freely downloadable today.

There has been much written about the challenges faced by those promoting TCP/IP and those promoting the OSI stack. The “History of Computer Communications” has a good recount of the various players and discussions around the future of computer to computer communications. Yes, there is the element of defense communications in play, but that’s always present. Ultimately, what won out was how TCP/IP, in it’s simplicity and elegance, subsequently pushed forward the world we are experiencing today. Could what we have today be delivered by an OSI stack? Perhaps and we can’t tell today. For all you know, it could have been a better system. We have TCP/IP and I am deeply thankful for that.

I am reminded of what Richard Feynman said about the beauty of flowers. Go ahead and listen to this (text below video):

"I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

Like Feynman, I am intrigued and awed by the beauty of layers of the Internet as we peel it and seeing how the various parts work together – and remembering that it is all designed and implemented by humans.

The vast majority of people only see the outcome – a picture, an email, a text, a video, a data point. And that is fine for there is beauty that they are experiencing as well.

As you begin to appreciate the Internet as it is, you will see how remarkable and fragile it is. The promise of interconnection and to grow understanding and care for others continues to drive most of us, despite challenges when dealing with human societies.

Thank you for reading this post. All I want to note is that despite best efforts to throttle/thwart Internet access by governments and groups who can’t handle reality that is not in their scheme of things, the Internet shines through. Punching holes through firewalls and blocks we continue to succeed.

I am glad that networking was what I sought to do as my Master’s thesis “An Implementation of the Department of Defense’s Transmission Control protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) for the Microsoft OS/2 Operating System” work back in the late 1980s at Oregon State University. I learned a lot and the nascent Internet (in the form of ARPAnet and usenet newsgroups) was instrumental in helping me complete the work.

Over 36 years later, I am glad to be able to read posts like this: https://cefboud.com/posts/tcp-deep-dive-internals/ “The Internet is Cool. Thank you, TCP”.

And in keeping with the power of open collaboration, here’s a project to help those stuggling in Palestine: https://updates.techforpalestine.org/bitchat-for-gaza-messaging-without-internet/