“Design depends largely on constraints.” — Charles Eames
Thursday, 15 April 2004
Lots of papers come and go over the years; take a look at any tech conference, online bibliographies (even subject-specific ones; Webbib is a favourite), and you’ll be inundated.
However, a few rise above the rest (no pun intended) and have real staying power; invariably, they’re about good, principled design, usually with the benefit of hard experience.
I admit a bias towards those about the Web and HTTP, but considering its success, I think it’s something other protocols could emulate. Without any more elaboration, my favourites;
A Note on Distributed Computing [pdf] — A classic that many still haven’t fully taken in
On the Design of Application Protocols — Marshall Rose’s tour de force explanation of good protocol design, with a heavy IETF bent (they tend to get things right)
Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture [pdf] — Roy Fielding on REST (a.k.a, what HTTP got right)
Clarifying the Fundamentals of HTTP [pdf] — This oft-overlooked paper by Jeff Mogul (another HTTP author) on what HTTP got wrong
The WebDAV Property Design [pdf] — A detailed explanation of the decisions you’ll face when dealing with protocol metadata.
Any others out there?
Filed under: Protocol Design
I've been keeping all the links on protocols and protocol design I've seen on delicious: http://del.icio.us/itamarst/protocols (Note that page doesn't show all of them, you'll need to click on older dates to see them).
Sunday, April 25 2004 at 9:59 AM +10:00
One paper that I keep coming back to is - "end-to-end arguments in system design": http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf
Some interesting student comments on this paper are at: http://cgi.cs.duke.edu/~priya/HyperNews/get.cgi/eval2.html
My view, FWIW, is that a protocol is a serial API. It includes the sequence as well as the functions.
Wednesday, July 28 2004 at 1:24 AM +10:00
I want the solution mannual for the Book "Principles of Network Protocol Design" authored by "Mohammad G.Gouda". Can anyone help me in this regard.
Thursday, May 4 2006 at 2:35 AM +10:00
I'm looking for the same thing. You can find a few solutions to problems in the book on Goudas webpage
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~gouda/Go to Classes and then go through the homework solutions
Sunday, May 21 2006 at 10:56 PM +10:00