[HN Gopher] Understanding computer networks by analogy (2000)
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       Understanding computer networks by analogy (2000)
        
       Author : asicsp
       Score  : 61 points
       Date   : 2023-03-10 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (memo.mx)
 (TXT) w3m dump (memo.mx)
        
       | orsenthil wrote:
       | Good analogy. I had started to think ip-addresses as phone
       | numbers, and it had started to make sense for me. Using Building,
       | Floors, and providing analogies for interfaces, switches and
       | routers were good.
        
       | zamadatix wrote:
       | I use a very similar analogy except it's either a meeting room
       | with many people or an open floor that is the subnet. It helps
       | explain BUM (Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, and Multicast) traffic
       | in a more natural way e.g. ARP is you walking into a cube farm
       | and shouting "is Jeff here?" and then he raises his hand so you
       | can deliver the latest printouts directly to him without
       | disturbing the others. In that case the individual is the IP, the
       | cube floor is the subnet, and the higher level analogies are the
       | same.
       | 
       | The BAS relation for SDN is interesting. I've always avoided any
       | analogies with SDN since different people have different ideas on
       | what qualifies as SDN or what SDN is going to do but that's a
       | really good choice given the rest of the analogies.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | To me the thing that is difficult to wrap my head around is how
       | congestion control, back pressure, and buffering at various
       | levels work. It feels almost magical that somehow I can download
       | stuff from various places and the bandwidth of different streams
       | work out efficiently without much explicit coordination. And then
       | there are things like bufferbloat.
        
         | sophacles wrote:
         | > To me the thing that is difficult to wrap my head around is
         | how congestion control, back pressure, and buffering at various
         | levels work.
         | 
         | Snarky answer: that's because they don't.
         | 
         | Attempts at humor aside: It really helps to understand a bit
         | about queuing theory to wrap your head around these things.
         | Each packet being an independent event has some unintuitive
         | consequences. Each switch or router or etc (middlebox) in the
         | path from one endpoint to the other adds the packet to a queue
         | (which is what the buffers are), and that queue may be filled
         | by other flows coming into the middlebox from different ports.
        
       | suprjami wrote:
       | All analogies eventually break down and end up doing more harm
       | than good. Just teach the topics well. Part of knowing something
       | is being able to communicate it effectively to others.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-10 23:01 UTC)