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created 17 January 2003

On behalf of anyone who has anything to do with the technical side of networking, I'd like to say this to the people who are just trying to get stuff done on a network:

(I know I should be writing about MacWorld Expo, but this is more important.)

I'm sorry that just using a network isn't as easy as turning on your computer, and making sure you have a wireless card, or a cable plugged in to the right place. Because let's be honest, TCP/IP networking, for all it does, is really painful to use. Manual addressing is a joke from a human perspective. I mean that. Think about the subnet mask from a non-geek perspective. It's ridiculous that humans need to deal with that. DHCP isn't much better, you still have to deal with DNS unless you have a DHCP server that handles that.

Even if it does, that still requires at least two servers. Why? Why do we need this idiocy just to make IP easy to use? Especially when we've seen that there's no reason for it. AppleTalk showed us over a decade ago how this should work. If you just wanted to connect stuff together on a smallish scale, there was no configuration, no nonsense about subnets, etc. You just had to make sure that the computers were all hooked together. You need to print, you could find printers easy. You needed to share files, QED as well.

What do we have with IP? Nothing in the same realm. Not even close. Why? Because the keepers of the keys of IP don't 'get' people. They can't understand why we want to 'pollute' their purity with such drek as easy service discovery, and name resolution, and zero configuration. They get very worried that a clustering app will break, (which it may), or that large networks will have problems, (they will anyway.)

But somehow, the idea of forcing people to buy DHCP servers for a little home network consisting of a printer and a laptop is okay. But it isn't. It's not even in the 'okay' realm. There is no reason to require this. But it is required. Which is a real shame. Because it limits the inherent usefulness of networks. It forces people to have half a dozen cables for everything. With Gigabit Ethernet, you have fast enough transfer speeds that you really only need other interfaces for vertical market reasons.

Think about this...what if TCP/IP was as easy to use as FireWire? What if you could just use IP for all your connectivity. I mean external hard drives, cameras, MP3 players, all of it. No futzing about with DHCP, or other server - based configuration options, just plug and play. Connectivity would be dead simple, everything's a network node. It would really help drive high speed access in places that don't have it. You could have an 802.11g MP3 player in your car, and sync that with iTunes in your house, so you wouldn't need your iPod in the car.

Don't misunderstand, I wouldn't personally use most of it. I'm a bit of a luddite at home, I need that break occasionally. But I can see there's potential there. Unfortunately, right now, it's all stalled because there's no standard way to do brain - dead networking without servers, etc. It's stalling a lot of progress, that could make things a lot better for a lot of people.

Not just at home either. Having a standard way to have medical gear talk to each other without configurations, or configuration servers would be a great way to make that equipment cheaper. All it needs is a network connection to communicate. The same for law enforcement.

It should be easier, but it isn't, and in 2003, that's just inexcusable.

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