Radia Perlman
The Mythology and Folklore of Network Protocols
On Tuesday, November 29 2005, ISOC-AU welcomed Dr Radia Perlman, Distinguished
Engineer, Sun Microsystems to speak on 'The Mythology and Folklore of Network
Protocols.' Around one hundred technologists listened avidly as Dr Perlman
scrutinised many of today's popular communications protocols and pointed out
some excellent ideas in protocols past, deficiencies of protocols present, and
need for protocols of the future. This was an historic event, joining four cognate societies in one meeting for the first time: ISOC-AU welcomed the Telecommunications Society of Australia (NSW Branch), the IEEE (NSW Section) and the Australian Unix Users Group, graciously hosted by SingTel Optus.
Here's what one attendee said:
"I just wanted to complain about last night's event. Radia challenged my
thinking and thoroughly disturbed my pre-conceptions. This is not a good
thing for a man of advanced years (or for any man as a matter of fact) !
Many thanks for the invitation and a thoroughly enjoyable presentation.
Please extend my thanks to Radia if you have the opportunity."
Slides from the talk (.pdf, 125 Kb)
Abstract of Talk
It's natural to assume that network protocol design is a well-known science, where the designers of today's standards take care to understand the tricks and pitfalls learned from previous protocols. This talk dispels this and other myths.It is intended to be provocative, making people question the things people assume are true; instructive, giving hints as to how to avoid some of the problems in future protocols; and inspirational, convincing students that there are ample opportunities to make contributions.
This talk discusses wrong turns that have been made, such as what necessitated the invention of bridges, and what caused IP multicast to be unimplementable. It also talks about how a protocol, even one "proven correct", can go horribly wrong, such as the unstable ARPANET protocol for distributing routing information. It talks about "obvious" tricks such as version numbers that even today protocol designers insist on misusing. And it covers some of the areas in which research is most needed.
About Radia Perlman
Radia Perlman is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Her work on bridging (spanning tree algorithm) and routing (robust and scalable link state routing) is fundamental to today's networks. She has also made significant contributions to security, including credentials download, key management, authentication and authorization models, and assured delete.She is the author of "Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols", and coauthor of "Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World". Holding about 80 patents, she was named SVIPLA (Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association) 2004 Inventor of the Year. She has a PhD from MIT in computer science, and an honorary doctorate from KTH, Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology.
Dr Perlman is visiting Australia for the IEEE Tencon Conference being held in Melbourne.
