Canonical · Foundational Tech · Protocol
TCP/IP & the End-to-End Principle
Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn · 1974
"Cerf and Kahn designed the internet to be dumb at the core and smart at the edges — reliability and intelligence live in endpoints, not in the network — which is why the same packet fabric could absorb every application since without redesign."
In 1974 Cerf and Kahn made a contrarian bet: don't make the network reliable — make it simple and let the ends retry. That dumb core is why the same internet carries email in 1982 and video calls in 2024.
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