North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Statements against new.net?

  • From: Geoff Huston
  • Date: Wed Mar 14 01:26:51 2001

At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:


That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary
or desireable :)  Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind,
but the case from the sociological point of view is far from
clear-cut.  In fact, way too many woes of human societies can
be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts
to enforce consistency.
This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote:

------
1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set

Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions:

- The existence of a common symbol set, and

- The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols.
Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost.

In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes lost.
------