



Network Working Group                                      E. Fjeldstrom
Internet-Draft                                               Independent
Intended status: Informational                           15 January 2026
Expires: 19 July 2026


       A Systemic Meditation on Internet Connectivity Equilibrium
             draft-fjeldstrom-meditation-on-connectivity-01

Abstract

   This document presents a systemic meditation on how the Internet
   arrived at its present connectivity equilibrium.  The analysis
   proceeds by retrospective reconstruction: examining observable
   adaptations, constraints, and deferred decisions across multiple
   layers of the stack, rather than by benchmarking, simulation, or
   protocol comparison.

   The term "meditation" is used deliberately to indicate a method
   grounded in historical observation, accumulated operational
   experience, and the interpretation of persistent compensatory
   mechanisms as empirical evidence of structural conditions.  The
   document does not assign fault, advocate specific remedies, or
   propose new protocol mechanisms.  Instead, it seeks to explain how a
   sequence of locally rational responses to real pressures interacted
   over time to produce a stable, but heavily mediated, connectivity
   equilibrium at Internet scale.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 19 July 2026.







Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 1]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.

Table of Contents

   1.  Purpose and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Central and Subsidiary Theses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       1.1.1.  Central Thesis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       1.1.2.  Subsidiary Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       1.1.3.  Scope Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       1.1.4.  Clarifying Observation (Ambient Endpoints)  . . . . .   5
     1.2.  Ambient Endpoints and Their Progressive Withdrawal (By
           Layer)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.  Baseline Assumptions and Early Operating Conditions . . . . .   7
     2.1.  Early RFC Evidence, Grouped by Theme  . . . . . . . . . .   7
       2.1.1.  Mediation, Local Control, and Administrative
               Boundaries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       2.1.2.  Identity, Accountability, and the Meaning of
               "Free"  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       2.1.3.  Fragmentation, Heterogeneous Environments, and Why
               "Normal" Features Were Deferred . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       2.1.4.  Physical Reality, Delay, and Layer Blurring . . . . .   9
       2.1.5.  Cost, Noise, Control-Plane Externalities, and the Turn
               Toward Managed High-Bandwidth Networks  . . . . . . .   9
   3.  Emergence of Existential Stressors  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.1.  Fragmentation and Administrative Plurality  . . . . . . .  11
     3.2.  Physical Distance, Delay, and Interaction Breakdown . . .  11
     3.3.  Cost and Host Resource Exhaustion . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.4.  Background Traffic and Unattributed Load  . . . . . . . .  11
     3.5.  Unconditional Acceptance and Denial of Service  . . . . .  12
     3.6.  Routing Scale, Control-Plane Costs, and Exit-Gateway
            Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     3.7.  Security Normalization: Routing Withdrawal, Filtering, and
            Firewalls  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     3.8.  Evolving Internet Membership: From IP Reachability to
            Application-Level Participation  . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     3.9.  Inward Growth and Configuration Complexity  . . . . . . .  13
     3.10. Architectural Closure and the End of Universal
            Routability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     3.11. Historical Context: Architectural Closure (1972-1994) . .  13



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 2]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   4.  Observed Adaptive Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     4.1.  Relay-Centered Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     4.2.  Protocol Encapsulation and Substrate Reuse  . . . . . . .  15
     4.3.  Stateful Traversal and Long-Lived Associations  . . . . .  15
     4.4.  Identity Elevation and Application-Scoped Authority . . .  15
     4.5.  Silent Failure Tolerance and Retry Semantics  . . . . . .  16
     4.6.  Transport-Layer Repair Attempts: SCTP and QUIC  . . . . .  16
     4.7.  Application-Guided Path Selection and Cost Signaling  . .  17
   5.  Persistence and Normalization of Compensation . . . . . . . .  18
   6.  Indicators: Structural Load and Constraint  . . . . . . . . .  18
   7.  Analysis: Compensatory Mechanisms as Evidence . . . . . . . .  19
   8.  Post-Desire Path: Three Signals of an Unresolved Architectural
           Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     8.1.  RFC 7288: Firewalls as a Persistent Feature Without Formal
           Architectural Status  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     8.2.  RFC 5218: When Widely Deployed Is Not the Same as
           Structurally Sound  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     8.3.  RFC 7305: The Consequence: Control Migrates to Layer 7  .  21
     8.4.  Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   9.  Implications of the Present Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     9.1.  Present Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     9.2.  What This Reconstruction Establishes  . . . . . . . . . .  23
   10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
   11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
   12. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26

1.  Purpose and Scope

   This document reconstructs how the Internet arrived at its present
   connectivity equilibrium by examining observable adaptations,
   constraints, and deferred decisions over time.  It does not assign
   fault, advocate specific remedies, or propose new protocol
   mechanisms.  Instead, it seeks to explain why the system evolved as
   it did, given the pressures it faced and the locally rational
   responses available to its participants.

   The analysis adopts a retrospective, systems-oriented perspective.
   It treats historical adaptations as evidence of underlying structural
   conditions rather than as errors or oversights.  Decisions are
   evaluated in the context in which they were made, with attention to
   urgency, uncertainty, and available alternatives at the time.  This
   framing is intentionally descriptive rather than corrective.








Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 3]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   A central premise of this document is that systemic outcomes cannot
   be understood solely by examining individual design choices in
   isolation.  Instead, they emerge from the interaction of multiple
   pressures, operating at different timescales, that shape what kinds
   of decisions are feasible, visible, or deferrable.  The intent here
   is to surface those interactions.

   This document is analytical rather than prescriptive.  Its purpose is
   to make visible a pattern of systemic behavior that is otherwise easy
   to overlook precisely because the system has continued to function.

   A companion document revisits end-to-end reasoning under these
   contemporary conditions and examines possible architectural response
   space.  The present document confines itself to reconstruction and
   classification and does not propose remedies.

1.1.  Central and Subsidiary Theses

1.1.1.  Central Thesis

   The Internet's current connectivity equilibrium does not arise from
   the failure of a single architectural principle or protocol.  Rather,
   it reflects the convergence of multiple eroded assumptions about
   physics, topology, authority, cost, and trust that once made ambient
   end-to-end connectivity inexpensive.  As those assumptions eroded
   independently under new physical and policy constraints, the system
   responded by introducing mediation, buffering, and policy at multiple
   layers.  The resulting equilibrium is stable not because the original
   assumptions still hold, but because compensatory mechanisms
   successfully absorbed their loss.

1.1.2.  Subsidiary Thesis

   Debates that localized the end-to-end problem primarily at the
   transport layer were not incorrect in their observations, but were
   constrained in scope by the urgency and visibility of transport-layer
   failures.  They implicitly assumed that L4 was the first or only
   layer at which end-to-end semantics were withdrawn.  In reality,
   analogous withdrawals had already occurred at the physical, link, and
   network layers, each for the same underlying reason: preventing a
   single participant from imposing unbounded cost on others.
   Structural pressures above and below the transport layer both
   demanded immediate attention and obscured the gradual loss of
   semantic clarity at L4, delaying focused reconsideration.







Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 4]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


1.1.3.  Scope Clarification

   This observation is not intended to dismiss transport-layer research
   or to suggest that such work was conceptually misguided.  Rather, it
   reflects the practical reality that urgent, layer-local failures
   necessarily shaped the framing of contemporaneous debate.  Narrow
   focus under operational pressure should be understood as a constraint
   on visibility, not as an architectural error.

1.1.4.  Clarifying Observation (Ambient Endpoints)

   Throughout the stack, endpoints are ambient: each layer defines its
   own notion of an endpoint that is assumed to exist prior to higher-
   layer interaction.  Physical endpoints exist as attached
   transceivers; link-layer endpoints exist as members of a broadcast or
   multicast domain; network-layer endpoints exist as addressable nodes
   within a routing scope; transport-layer endpoints exist as sockets
   and flows; and application endpoints exist as semantic actors.

   End-to-end reasoning therefore depends on the continued ambient
   availability of endpoints at each layer.  As mediation and scoping
   were introduced to contain cost and enforce policy, the ambient
   nature of endpoints was progressively withdrawn or made conditional
   at multiple layers.  A recurring structural pressure underlying these
   changes was the need to prevent any single participant from imposing
   unbounded cost on others, whether through fault, misconfiguration, or
   asymmetric resource consumption.  As ambient participation was
   withdrawn to bound such costs, higher layers were forced to
   compensate, doing so as effectively as possible using the authority
   and visibility available to them.  This observation explains why end-
   to-end behavior degraded independently across layers without any
   single point of failure.

1.2.  Ambient Endpoints and Their Progressive Withdrawal (By Layer)

   *  Physical Layer (L1): Attachment as Participation

      -  Ambient assumption: If a device is physically attached, it can
         participate in communication on equal terms.
      -  Withdrawal: Red/blue separation, switched media, and link
         termination replaced shared energy with bounded fault domains.
      -  Pressure: A single faulty or malicious transmitter could impose
         unbounded disruption on all others.
      -  Result: Physical attachment no longer implies ambient
         participation; existence becomes conditional and mediated.

   *  Link Layer (L2): Membership as Reachability




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 5]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


      -  Ambient assumption: Membership in a broadcast domain implies
         mutual reachability.
      -  Withdrawal: VLANs, multicast filtering, and suppression
         replaced flat broadcast with administratively scoped domains.
      -  Pressure: Broadcast amplification and heterogeneous media made
         shared fate expensive.
      -  Result: Link-layer endpoints remain, but membership is policy-
         defined rather than ambient.

   *  Network Layer (L3): Addressability as Existence

      -  Ambient assumption: An address implies routability and
         potential reachability.
      -  Withdrawal: Policy routing, routing-domain separation, and
         later firewalls conditioned reachability.
      -  Pressure: Divergent trust domains and administrative scale.
      -  Result: Addressability no longer implies permission or path
         availability.

   *  Transport Layer (L4): Packet Arrival as Conversation

      -  Ambient assumption: If packets arrive, a conversation may
         proceed; failure is explicit.
      -  Withdrawal: Admission control, state limits, silent drops, and
         middlebox mediation.
      -  Pressure: State exhaustion, asymmetric resources, and ambiguity
         of silence.
      -  Result: Transport endpoints persist, but conversational
         availability becomes inferred.

   *  Application/Semantic Layer (L7): Success as Correctness

      -  Ambient assumption: Successful interaction implies semantic
         correctness.
      -  Withdrawal: Retries, gateways, relays, and masking introduced
         ambiguity.
      -  Pressure: Uptime expectations and partial failure tolerance.
      -  Result: Semantic endpoints remain, but correctness is
         increasingly inferred.

   This inventory provides the analytical baseline for the remainder of
   this document.  Later sections treat these progressive withdrawals as
   observed structural conditions, not as isolated design mistakes.








Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 6]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


2.  Baseline Assumptions and Early Operating Conditions

   Early Internet architecture assumed relatively stable hosts,
   cooperative administration, and ambient reachability.  Hosts were
   institutionally operated, and participation implied adherence to
   shared norms and oversight.

   Under these conditions, admission control and exposure were host-
   local concerns.  Semantic authority, policy authority, and
   operational responsibility were closely aligned.

   These assumptions reflected lived operational reality at the time and
   were sufficient for the Internet's formative scale and threat model.

2.1.  Early RFC Evidence, Grouped by Theme

   The following historical material is drawn from early RFCs and
   related meeting notes.  These sources are grouped thematically rather
   than chronologically in order to highlight recurring problem framings
   and system pressures that were recognized while the network was still
   forming.  None of these documents should be read as definitive
   blueprints for later architecture; instead, they record how designers
   and operators understood emerging constraints in real time.

2.1.1.  Mediation, Local Control, and Administrative Boundaries

   Several early documents frame network interaction as mediated
   negotiation between autonomous systems, rather than as transparent
   end-to-end exchange.

   *  RFC 8 (1969) [RFC8] presents interaction as a sequence of steps
      across local control components: a user program establishes local
      arrangements, reaches a remote system, and requests service from
      that system's own control program.  This actor/system framing
      emphasizes locality and administrative authority over abstraction
      layering.

   *  RFC 706 (1975) [RFC706] explicitly proposes selective refusal of
      traffic at the Host/IMP boundary, allowing a host to instruct the
      network to discard messages from misbehaving or unwanted sources
      as early as possible.  This reflects early recognition that
      unconditional acceptance is unsustainable and that refusal must
      occur at a control boundary.

   Together, these sources show that mediation and refusal were treated
   as foundational capabilities, not as later security add-ons.





Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 7]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


2.1.2.  Identity, Accountability, and the Meaning of "Free"

   Early discussions consistently treat network endpoints as accountable
   identities rather than anonymous communication primitives.

   *  RFC 147 (1971) [RFC147] defines sockets primarily as unique
      identifiers bound to processes and hosts, with explicit attention
      to logging and accounting.  Communication is from one identifiable
      socket to another, reinforcing the notion of accountable
      endpoints.

   *  RFC 491 (1973) [RFC491] challenges the assumption that "free"
      network services must be loginless.  Padlipsky argues that
      identity binding via login may still be required for
      authentication and access control, and proposes uniform free
      accounts as a portability compromise.  This highlights early
      tension between convenience and semantic integrity.

   These discussions anticipate later concerns about identity,
   attribution, and consent, and reject the idea that free services
   imply absence of control.

2.1.3.  Fragmentation, Heterogeneous Environments, and Why "Normal"
        Features Were Deferred

   Plurality and heterogeneity were recognized as intrinsic conditions
   from the outset, and early operational reality shaped which features
   were urgent.

   *  RFC 169 (1971) [RFC169] notes that the number of networks had
      already grown to the point where participants could not all be
      familiar with each other, and explicitly invites discussion of
      diverse systems, protocols, and user communities.  Fragmentation
      is treated as a given, not as a deviation.

   *  RFC 898 (1984) [RFC898] reflects mature experience with
      heterogeneous gateways, subnetworks, and autonomous systems,
      documenting how routing, translation, and management complexity
      scale with diversity.

   A related historical point is that many "normal" features associated
   with managed local networks, such as automatic configuration, routine
   endpoint discovery, and pervasive service location, were not treated
   as architectural necessities in the early Internet.  This was not
   because such features were unknown, but because the environment did
   not yet demand them: early internetworking connected a relatively
   small number of large, institutionally operated hosts across
   administrative boundaries, rather than dense intranets of frequently



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 8]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   rebooting, mobile endpoints.  In that setting, explicit local
   arrangements, operator knowledge, and manually coordinated
   configuration were sufficient, and the architectural forcing function
   was inter-networking between distinct domains rather than internal
   plug-and-play convenience.

   As the Internet later grew inward into campuses and enterprises,
   accumulating large multi-LAN environments, higher endpoint churn, and
   widespread non-expert operation, automatic configuration and
   discovery became economically and operationally necessary, and the
   absence of first-class primitives increasingly had to be compensated
   elsewhere.  RFC 1029 (1988) provides a concrete example of this
   inward growth pressure, addressing ARP scaling, bridge intelligence,
   reboot detection, and cache coherence in large multi-LAN Ethernet
   environments where frequent host churn and internal topology
   complexity had become dominant concerns.

2.1.4.  Physical Reality, Delay, and Layer Blurring

   Several early documents show that physical constraints immediately
   stress interaction models and blur later conceptual layer boundaries.

   *  RFC 263 (1971) [RFC263] describes a "very distant" Host/IMP
      interface in which the host participates directly in framing, CRC
      generation, and retransmission.  Reliability and framing are
      treated as boundary-of-control concerns rather than as cleanly
      separated layers.

   *  RFC 346 (1972) [RFC346] observes that satellite delay renders
      character-at-a-time remote echo marginal or unusable, even when
      throughput is unchanged.  Postel emphasizes buffering strategy and
      suggests relocating input/echo semantics closer to the user
      system.

   These documents illustrate that delay and physical distance expose
   semantic assumptions early, forcing pragmatic integration across what
   would later be labeled layers.

2.1.5.  Cost, Noise, Control-Plane Externalities, and the Turn Toward
        Managed High-Bandwidth Networks

   Economic cost, background traffic, and control-plane scaling
   pressures appear early and intensify as bandwidth increases.








Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                  [Page 9]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   *  RFC 392 (1972) [RFC392] measures host CPU and paging costs for
      network transmission, showing that the cost of moving data can
      exceed the cost of remote computation.  Networking is treated
      explicitly as a distributed-systems cost problem rather than a
      free transport service.

   *  RFC 425 (1972) [RFC425] identifies "random prodding and poking"
      (e.g., host surveys) as a significant and unattributed source of
      overhead, and proposes consolidation and consent as remedies-an
      early recognition of background noise as a systemic externality.

   *  RFC 898 (1984) [RFC898] documents routing update storms, neighbor-
      probe scaling (e.g., N-squared behavior), and buffer exhaustion in
      gateways, illustrating how control-plane traffic can dominate
      useful forwarding work.

   *  RFC 1077 (1988) [RFC1077] synthesizes these concerns in the
      context of gigabit networking, explicitly reframing the future
      Internet as a management architecture.  Importantly, this was not
      a speculative or marginal position: RFC 1077 reports the outcome
      of a DARPA-convened working group composed of principal
      architects, operators, and major stakeholders from the military,
      government, and research communities.  It reflects the operational
      priorities of organizations that were already among the largest
      and most demanding users of packet networks, particularly in
      command-and-control, scientific computing, and secure
      communications contexts.

   *  RFC 1093 (1989) [RFC1093] makes the architectural consequences of
      these pressures operational.  In defining the NSFNET routing
      architecture, it explicitly enforces policy-based filtering
      between the NSFNET backbone, regional networks, and peer networks
      such as ARPANET/MILNET.  Certain routes are deliberately
      suppressed, metrics are reconstituted centrally, and trust is
      assigned by Autonomous System rather than by reachability alone.
      This document is notable as one of the earliest points where the
      evolving model of the Internet is acknowledged implicitly through
      implementation: the architects were aware that pure reachability
      was no longer sufficient, and encoded governance, policy, and
      functional separation directly into the routing fabric because
      they had to make the system operate at scale.

   Taken together, these sources show a clear progression: increasing
   bandwidth does not eliminate cost or noise, but instead shifts the
   limiting factors toward control, coordination, security, governance,
   and explicit policy enforcement.





Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 10]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


3.  Emergence of Existential Stressors

   The progressive withdrawal of ambient endpoints described earlier did
   not occur in a vacuum.  It was driven by a set of existential
   stressors that demanded immediate response and shaped which
   adaptations were feasible, visible, or deferrable.  These stressors
   were recognized early and recur throughout the historical record.

3.1.  Fragmentation and Administrative Plurality

   As documented as early as RFC 169 [RFC169], the network rapidly
   evolved into an environment of multiple, independently administered
   systems.  Designers no longer assumed global familiarity, uniform
   policy, or shared objectives.  This plurality forced early attention
   to gateway design, routing boundaries, and management coordination,
   and made purely uniform solutions impractical.

3.2.  Physical Distance, Delay, and Interaction Breakdown

   Physical realities such as propagation delay exposed fragile
   interaction semantics almost immediately.  RFC 346 [RFC346] shows
   that even modest increases in delay (e.g., via satellite links) could
   render character-at-a-time interaction unusable, prompting discussion
   of buffering strategies and relocation of input/echo processing.
   These effects occurred well before Internet-scale deployment.

3.3.  Cost and Host Resource Exhaustion

   Economic viability emerged as a dominant constraint.  RFC 392
   [RFC392] demonstrates that host CPU time, paging behavior, and
   operating-system abstractions could make network transmission more
   expensive than remote execution itself.  This reframed networking as
   a distributed-systems cost problem rather than a mere communications
   issue.

3.4.  Background Traffic and Unattributed Load

   Control-plane and exploratory traffic quickly became a measurable
   burden.  RFC 425 [RFC425] documents how host surveys and other
   unsolicited probes generated significant overhead without clear
   attribution, motivating proposals for consolidation and explicit
   consent.  These concerns foreshadow later issues with background
   chatter and steady-state coordination traffic.








Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 11]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


3.5.  Unconditional Acceptance and Denial of Service

   The assumption that hosts must accept all traffic proved untenable.
   RFC 706 explicitly identifies denial-of-service risks from
   misbehaving peers and proposes selective refusal at the Host/IMP
   boundary.  This represents early recognition that availability
   requires the ability to decline traffic before host resources are
   consumed.

3.6.  Routing Scale, Control-Plane Costs, and Exit-Gateway Geometry

   By the early 1980s, routing itself had become a stressor.  RFC 898
   [RFC898] documents how routing update floods, neighbor probing, and
   limited buffers strained gateways, and how thinking in terms of
   entrance and exit gateways reshaped autonomous systems into transit
   fabrics.  These dynamics parallel later experiences with relay-
   centric architectures at higher layers.

3.7.  Security Normalization: Routing Withdrawal, Filtering, and
      Firewalls

   By the early 1990s, operational security controls such as routing
   withdrawal, packet filtering, and firewall choke points were no
   longer exceptional mechanisms but standard operational practice.  RFC
   1244 (Site Security Handbook) [RFC1244] treats these mechanisms as
   routine tools available to site operators, including selective route
   suppression, gateway filtering, and controlled connectivity.

   A key inflection point for this normalization was the 1988 Internet
   worm.  RFC 1135 (1989) [RFC1135], a retrospective on the incident,
   contains a blunt assessment in its Security Considerations: "If
   security considerations had not been so widely ignored in the
   Internet, this memo would not have been possible."  In the aftermath,
   many sites tightened access, some disconnected entirely, and the
   community accelerated incident response coordination and perimeter
   controls.

3.8.  Evolving Internet Membership: From IP Reachability to Application-
      Level Participation

   RFC 1287 (1991) [RFC1287] makes explicit that the original IP-
   connectivity definition of the Internet had already broken down.
   Systems could be considered part of the Internet despite partial
   connectivity, policy filtering, or lack of IP reachability, so long
   as they participated at higher layers (e.g., RFC 822 mail).  The
   architects proposed shifting the organizing principle of the Internet
   from IP addressability to application-level naming and directories.




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 12]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


3.9.  Inward Growth and Configuration Complexity

   RFC 1029 (1988) [RFC1029] documents the operational pressures that
   arise as the Internet grows inward into large multi-LAN environments:
   address resolution scaling, bridge intelligence, reboot detection,
   and cache coherence.  This reinforces that partial visibility and
   constrained reachability can be expected outcomes of internal
   complexity and churn.

3.10.  Architectural Closure and the End of Universal Routability

   By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Internet's core architectural
   tensions were no longer latent.  They were explicitly identified,
   debated, and-in key places-encoded into operational practice.

   RFC 1093 (1989) [RFC1093] provides a concrete example of functional
   separation and policy-mediated reachability at backbone scale:
   military-only routes (ARPANET/MILNET) were deliberately suppressed
   from civilian regional backbones, with Autonomous Systems serving as
   trust and policy boundaries.

   RFC 1627 (1994) "Network 10 Considered Harmful" [RFC1627], marks a
   clear self-awareness moment: the community recognized that the fully
   routable, globally unique IPv4 Internet was becoming operationally
   fragile under address exhaustion and policy constraints.  While the
   specific compensations adopted later differed from what many hoped
   (e.g., NAT and application-layer identity became structural), the
   underlying pressures were already visible and the direction of travel
   was clear.

   Taken together, these stressors explain why compensatory mechanisms
   emerged and hardened.  They also show that many pressures commonly
   attributed to later Internet growth were visible-and actively
   discussed-by no later than the early 1990s.

3.11.  Historical Context: Architectural Closure (1972-1994)

   This history should not be read as a failure narrative.  The record
   indicates that by the early 1990s the Internet's core architectural
   tensions were already clearly identified and, in key operational
   networks, treated as constraints that could not be wished away.

   Across the sources reviewed here, a consistent arc is visible:

   *  1972-1975: Delay, background traffic, and selective refusal were
      already recognized as systemic issues (e.g., satellite delay
      effects, survey "noise", and early refusal/filtering proposals).




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 13]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   *  1984: Routing and gateway complexity, update scaling, and the
      inevitability of policy and control-plane costs were discussed as
      operational realities.

   *  1988-1989: High-bandwidth planning reframed the Internet as a
      management architecture, while backbone routing explicitly
      enforced administrative separation and policy filtering.

   *  1991: Security controls (withdrawal, filtering, firewalls) were
      normalized as routine operations, and the definition of "on the
      Internet" began shifting upward from IP reachability toward
      application-level naming, directories, and relay-mediated
      participation.

   *  1994: The end of universal routability under IPv4 was recognized
      as a practical inflection point; subsequent decades largely
      operationalized compensations rather than discovering new
      categories of constraint.

   This framing is essential context for revisiting end-to-end reasoning
   in a world where reachability is conditional, identities are
   increasingly application-scoped, and intermediaries are structural.

4.  Observed Adaptive Responses

   The adaptive responses that emerged as ambient reachability was
   progressively withdrawn can be grouped into several recurring
   patterns.

   This section marks the transition from historical reconstruction to
   structural observation: these patterns are treated as convergent
   adaptations to shared constraints, not as a protocol-by-protocol
   survey.

   These patterns appeared independently across applications, vendors,
   and administrative domains, yet converged on similar structural
   solutions.

4.1.  Relay-Centered Connectivity

   One of the earliest and most persistent adaptations was the
   introduction of relays.  Rather than assuming that two endpoints
   could establish direct communication, systems increasingly routed
   interaction through one or more intermediary nodes that were known to
   be reachable from both sides.






Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 14]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   Mail transfer agents, application-layer gateways, TURN-like relays,
   rendezvous servers, and later cloud-hosted service front ends all
   exemplify this pattern.  Relays provided a point of policy
   enforcement, buffering, identity translation, and fault isolation.
   While they increased latency and centralized load, they dramatically
   reduced the requirement for mutual ambient reachability.

4.2.  Protocol Encapsulation and Substrate Reuse

   Another major adaptation was the reuse of widely permitted substrates
   to carry new application semantics.  HTTP emerged as the dominant
   example of this pattern.

   As early as RFC 3205 (2002) [BCP56], the IETF recognized that
   protocol designers were deliberately layering new services over HTTP
   in order to traverse firewalls, proxies, and network address
   translators.  This practice was sufficiently widespread to require
   formal guidance, resulting in BCP 56.  Two decades later, the same
   BCP was revised and reissued as RFC 9205 (2022) [BCP56], reflecting
   accumulated operational experience rather than a change in direction.

   The persistence of BCP 56 over twenty years demonstrates that HTTP
   substrate reuse was not a transient workaround but a durable response
   to structural connectivity constraints.

4.3.  Stateful Traversal and Long-Lived Associations

   Where direct inbound reachability was unavailable, systems shifted
   toward models that established outbound-initiated, long-lived
   associations.  These associations inverted the direction of
   connectivity: endpoints that could not accept unsolicited inbound
   traffic instead maintained persistent outbound sessions to rendezvous
   points.

   Examples include message polling, push-notification channels, long-
   polling, WebSockets, and later QUIC-based connections.  These
   techniques transformed connectivity from a stateless addressing
   problem into a stateful session management problem, trading
   simplicity for reliability under constrained reachability.

4.4.  Identity Elevation and Application-Scoped Authority

   As network-layer identity became unreliable or ambiguous,
   applications increasingly bound identity and authority at higher
   semantic layers.  Authentication tokens, application-level
   identifiers, and service-specific namespaces replaced implicit trust
   in source addresses.




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 15]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   This shift aligned authority with mechanisms that applications could
   control, but further decoupled application semantics from network
   topology.  Endpoints were no longer defined primarily by where they
   were located, but by what credentials or context they presented.

4.5.  Silent Failure Tolerance and Retry Semantics

   As ambient reachability became unreliable, applications adapted by
   treating silence as an expected condition rather than as an
   exceptional failure.  Packet loss, filtering, middlebox interference,
   and policy-based drops are often indistinguishable from delay or
   congestion at the application layer.

   Rather than assuming explicit failure signaling, applications adopted
   retry loops, timeouts, exponential backoff, and idempotent
   operations.  These techniques allow progress in the presence of
   partial failure but shift complexity upward: correctness becomes
   probabilistic and inferred rather than explicit.

   This adaptation increases robustness under constrained reachability
   but also obscures failure causes and complicates diagnosis.  Silent
   tolerance trades semantic clarity for survivability, reinforcing the
   broader trend of compensating at higher layers for withdrawn ambient
   guarantees below.

4.6.  Transport-Layer Repair Attempts: SCTP and QUIC

   The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) [RFC4960] represents
   an early attempt to preserve transport-layer semantic clarity in the
   face of eroding endpoint assumptions.  Standardized around 2000, SCTP
   introduced multi-homing, association-based identity, path-aware
   failure detection, message framing, and multistreaming.  Together,
   these features explicitly rejected the assumption that a single IP
   address uniquely and stably identifies a transport endpoint.

   SCTP distinguished between path failure and peer failure, attempted
   to maintain semantic precision under partial failure, and treated
   transport associations, not addresses, as the primary unit of
   identity.  In doing so, SCTP anticipated many later concerns about
   mobility, multihoming, and ambiguous silence.

   However, SCTP assumed that new transport semantics could deploy
   transparently through the network.  By the time of its
   standardization, that assumption had already been withdrawn:
   middleboxes, firewalls, and NATs were pervasive, and unfamiliar
   transport protocols were routinely blocked.  As a result, SCTP's
   technically sound repairs were largely displaced by compensations
   implemented above the transport layer.



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 16]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   QUIC [RFC9000], by contrast, represents a later and more successful
   adaptation.  Rather than repairing L4 in place, QUIC relocates
   transport semantics into user space and runs over UDP, a substrate
   already widely permitted.  QUIC encrypts most transport headers,
   preventing ossification by intermediaries, and treats connection
   identity, path migration, and congestion control as application-
   visible concerns.

   The contrast between SCTP and QUIC is illustrative.  SCTP attempted
   to restore ambient transport semantics that the network no longer
   supported.  QUIC accepts mediation as structural and adapts by
   shifting authority upward, aligning deployment reality with semantic
   control.  This contrast reinforces the broader pattern observed
   throughout this document: when ambient assumptions are withdrawn at a
   given layer, durable solutions tend to emerge by relocating
   responsibility rather than by attempting restoration in place.

4.7.  Application-Guided Path Selection and Cost Signaling

   A later and more explicit form of semantic elevation appears in the
   Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) protocol (RFC 7285)
   [RFC7285].  ALTO exposed network cost, locality, and preference
   information as an application-consumable service, allowing endpoints
   to make informed choices among multiple reachable peers or resources.

   This represented a qualitative shift in responsibility.  Traditional
   routing determines how packets flow once a destination is chosen;
   ALTO assisted applications in deciding which destinations should be
   chosen in the first place.  In effect, ALTO performed a form of
   quasi-source routing at L7: the network supplied advisory cost
   information, but the application selected targets and thereby shaped
   traffic patterns.

   Cost, congestion, policy, and locality, once implicit properties of
   the network fabric, were surfaced explicitly to applications.  This
   shift acknowledged that reachability alone no longer provided
   sufficient semantic guidance for efficient or stable behavior at
   scale.

   ALTO did not replace routing, nor did it alter forwarding behavior.
   Instead, it compensated for the loss of ambient semantic information
   by elevating selected network knowledge to a controlled, advisory
   interface.

   In practice, however, ALTO saw limited deployment outside a small
   number of research and operator-driven environments.  Much like SCTP
   at the transport layer, it represented a semantically well-founded
   architectural repair that failed to align with prevailing deployment



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 17]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   incentives.  Application developers largely bypassed ALTO in favor of
   self-managed heuristics, static configuration, or embedding cost and
   locality inference directly into application logic, often using
   widely permitted substrates and measurement-based adaptation.

   As a result, ALTO functions primarily as evidence of architectural
   recognition rather than as a dominant operational mechanism: it
   demonstrates that the need for explicit cost and locality signaling
   was understood, even as most implementations chose compensatory
   approaches that avoided new dependencies on network-provided control
   planes.

5.  Persistence and Normalization of Compensation

   Over time, compensatory mechanisms ceased to be exceptional.  What
   began as fallback behavior hardened into steady-state infrastructure.
   Relay paths became primary paths, and indirect connectivity became
   the default assumption rather than the contingency plan.

   This persistence had several reinforcing effects.  First, widespread
   deployment increased the return on further investment in compensatory
   mechanisms, making them more capable and more attractive.  Second,
   their effectiveness reduced the frequency of visible failures that
   might have triggered architectural reconsideration.

   In the presence of more urgent, existential concerns, other issues
   were routinely deferred until they themselves became urgent.  Because
   compensatory mechanisms continued to work, the cost of revisiting
   underlying assumptions appeared higher than the cost of continued
   adaptation.

   As a result, the system accumulated technical and conceptual debt
   without a clear moment at which repayment appeared necessary or even
   desirable.

   When a system model depicts a viable path that is consistently
   avoided, the discrepancy should be attributed to the model or the
   path, not to the actors responding rationally to observed
   constraints.

6.  Indicators: Structural Load and Constraint

   Despite continued operation, the system began to exhibit recurrent
   indicators of underlying load and constraint.  These indicators were
   not catastrophic failures, but patterns that suggested increasing
   reliance on compensation and diminishing alignment between
   architectural assumptions and operational reality.




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 18]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   Such indicators included loss of locality, concentration of load onto
   shared infrastructure, opaque or delayed failure modes, and growing
   difficulty in determining where authority and responsibility for
   communication decisions actually resided.

   These signals were often diffuse and probabilistic rather than
   binary.  They manifested as degraded efficiency, increased
   complexity, or brittleness under stress rather than as immediate
   outages.  Because the system continued to function, they were
   tolerated rather than treated as forcing events.

   The absence of a single, unambiguous failure made it difficult to
   justify a coordinated architectural response.

7.  Analysis: Compensatory Mechanisms as Evidence

   When a system model depicts a viable path that is consistently
   avoided, the discrepancy should be attributed to the model or the
   path, not to the actors responding rationally to observed
   constraints.

   A familiar example is the formation of pedestrian "desire paths."
   Such paths arise when users repeatedly choose routes that better
   reflect actual needs than those anticipated by the original design.
   Over time, repeated use alters the environment itself, and what began
   as an exception becomes a structural feature.

   ALTO illustrates an attempt to formalize application-visible cost
   signaling after routing and admission authority had already moved.
   Its limited impact is therefore informative: it demonstrates both the
   recognition of the problem and the difficulty of addressing it once
   compensatory mechanisms have become structural.

   In the Internet's case, compensatory connectivity mechanisms
   functioned as desire paths.  They revealed a mismatch between
   architectural assumptions about reachability and the operational
   conditions under which the system was actually used.  Their
   persistence and success transformed them from temporary adaptations
   into defining characteristics of the system.

   Seen in this light, compensatory mechanisms are not merely technical
   artifacts; they are empirical signals about where system models no
   longer align with reality.

   A similar interpretive stance appears in human-system design.  When
   users repeatedly avoid an architected path, analysis treats the
   avoidance as evidence of misaligned assumptions rather than as user
   error.  Norman's discussion of "desire paths" frames such behavior as



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 19]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   empirical data about real constraints and incentives, not as
   deviation from intent [Design].  The persistence and convergence of
   compensatory mechanisms in Internet connectivity can be understood in
   the same way: not as architectural failure, but as evidence that
   certain assumptions no longer held under operational conditions.

8.  Post-Desire Path: Three Signals of an Unresolved Architectural Shift

   The desire-path argument establishes that persistent operator
   behaviour is evidence of a mismatch between the model and the
   environment.  The following RFCs are useful precisely because they
   show the Internet recognizing the mismatch while stopping short of
   formally resolving it.

   The observations in this section are descriptive rather than
   prescriptive: they examine how the mismatch has been acknowledged and
   framed, not how it ought to be resolved.

8.1.  RFC 7288: Firewalls as a Persistent Feature Without Formal
      Architectural Status

   RFC 7288 [RFC7288] is notable less for any specific proposal than for
   the careful position it occupies within the existing architectural
   narrative.

   The document acknowledges the widespread and long-standing presence
   of firewalls, and does so in a pragmatic and operationally grounded
   way.  At the same time, it deliberately avoids treating firewalls as
   a permanent structural element of the Internet architecture.
   Instead, they are discussed as policy-enforcing devices that exist
   alongside the architecture rather than within its formal core.

   From a desire-path perspective, this restraint is understandable.
   RFC 7288 operates within an architectural framework that continues to
   value the end-to-end principle as a guiding ideal, even as practice
   has moved away from ambient inbound reachability.  Rather than
   declaring that shift complete, the document treats firewalls as an
   external constraint that must be accommodated.

   The consequence of this position is not denial, but deferral.
   Firewalls are assumed to be present in practice, yet their ubiquity
   is not elevated to a baseline architectural condition.  Subsequent
   designs are therefore encouraged to cope with their existence rather
   than to integrate them as a first-class premise, leading to repeated
   work on traversal, discovery, and rendezvous mechanisms instead of an
   explicit acknowledgement that ambient inbound reachability is no
   longer the norm.




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 20]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   In this sense, the desire path is clearly visible, but the
   architectural map remains intentionally conservative about redrawing
   its boundaries.

8.2.  RFC 5218: When Widely Deployed Is Not the Same as Structurally
      Sound

   RFC 5218 [RFC5218] provides a useful corrective by explicitly
   cautioning against equating deployment success with architectural
   merit.

   The Internet has repeatedly adopted mechanisms that were
   operationally expedient under pressure, such as address sharing,
   middleboxes, and application-layer workarounds, without those
   mechanisms being clean fits for the original architectural model.
   RFC 5218 recognizes that popularity can arise from necessity,
   inertia, or lack of alternatives, rather than from correctness.

   This distinction matters here because the current connectivity
   equilibrium is often defended on the grounds that it works or is
   widely used.  RFC 5218 reminds us that such arguments describe
   outcomes, not structure.

   The desire-path framework explains why this happens.  When the
   environment changes faster than the model, actors will choose
   survivable routes even if they deform the original plan.  Over time,
   these routes harden, not because they are ideal, but because they are
   viable.

   RFC 5218 gives us permission to say plainly that the Internet's
   current shape may be stable without being architecturally resolved.

8.3.  RFC 7305: The Consequence: Control Migrates to Layer 7

   RFC 7305 [RFC7305] is best read as an observation about where
   meaningful decisions now occur.

   As lower-layer assumptions about reachability, symmetry, and
   transparency eroded, applications were forced to compensate.
   Authentication, discovery, mobility, policy, and even routing intent
   increasingly moved upward, until application protocols became the
   only layer with sufficient context to function reliably.

   The practical outcome is that many decisions traditionally associated
   with the network or transport layers are now made at layer 7, because
   only the application can see across NATs, firewalls, relays, and
   policy boundaries.




Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 21]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   This is not a design choice so much as a consequence of earlier non-
   decisions.  By declining to formally acknowledge the withdrawal of
   ambient end-to-end reachability, the architecture implicitly
   delegated responsibility upward.

   The Internet still speaks in layers, but it now decides almost
   exclusively at the top.

8.4.  Synthesis

   Taken together, these RFCs describe a system that has adapted
   successfully while avoiding a full architectural reckoning.

   *  RFC 7288 shows a feature treated as temporary long after it became
      permanent.
   *  RFC 5218 warns against mistaking survival for correctness.
   *  RFC 7305 documents the resulting migration of control into
      application space.

   The desire paths are visible, continuous, and rational.  What remains
   unresolved is not whether the Internet has adapted, but whether its
   architecture has yet caught up with its own behaviour.

9.  Implications of the Present Equilibrium

   The reconstruction above yields both an observable system state and a
   set of limits on what can be inferred from that state.  The following
   sections address these together: first by characterizing the present
   connectivity equilibrium as it exists, and then by clarifying what
   the reconstruction establishes about that equilibrium.

9.1.  Present Equilibrium

   The Internet has settled into an equilibrium defined by these
   accumulated adaptations.  This equilibrium is stable under current
   constraints and has enabled continued growth, innovation, and
   deployment.  It is not characterized by collapse or obvious
   dysfunction.

   At the same time, this stability depends on the continued
   effectiveness of compensatory mechanisms.  The system operates by
   routing around certain assumptions rather than revisiting them
   directly.  As a result, architectural questions concerning endpoints,
   authority, and reachability are deferred rather than resolved.







Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 22]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   From a systems perspective, this equilibrium resembles a metastable
   regime: locally stable and resilient to small perturbations, yet
   dependent on sustained compensation and lacking strong restoring
   forces should underlying conditions change.

9.2.  What This Reconstruction Establishes

   This reconstruction suggests that the present connectivity model is
   not the result of a single decision or omission, but of sustained
   rational deferral under pressure.  Major existential concerns
   demanded immediate action; secondary misalignments were tolerated
   because they admitted local and effective compensation.

   The historical record examined here is consistent with this pattern.
   The adaptations that preserved functionality also reshaped the
   system, making certain architectural questions harder to see
   precisely because they were successfully avoided.

   The presence of a stable equilibrium should not be read as an
   endorsement of that equilibrium.  Stability here denotes persistence
   under prevailing constraints, not architectural optimality or
   normative correctness.

   This document does not establish that the present equilibrium is
   unstable, undesirable, or incorrect.  It establishes only that the
   conditions which once justified deferring certain architectural
   questions have changed, making those questions newly visible.

   This document does not propose remedies, evaluate counterfactual
   architectures, or predict future outcomes.  Its contribution is to
   clarify how the Internet arrived at its current state, and why
   questions about the suitability of that equilibrium have only
   recently become visible again.

10.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

11.  Security Considerations

   This document is purely descriptive and retrospective.  It does not
   propose new protocols, mechanisms, procedures, or operational
   practices, nor does it recommend changes to existing ones.

   As such, it introduces no new security considerations beyond those
   already present in the systems and practices discussed.  Any
   security-relevant mechanisms referenced are included solely as
   historical and architectural context.



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 23]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


12.  Informative References

   [Design]   Norman, D. A., "The Design of Everyday Things", New York,
              Basic Books; rev. ed., ISBN 978-0465050659, 2013.

   [RFC8]     Deloche, G., "ARPA Network Functional Specifications",
              RFC 8, DOI 10.17487/RFC0008, May 1969,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8>.

   [RFC147]   Winett, J., "Definition of a socket", RFC 147,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0147, May 1971,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc147>.

   [RFC169]   Crocker, S., "COMPUTER NETWORKS", RFC 169,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0169, May 1971,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc169>.

   [RFC263]   McKenzie, A., ""Very Distant" Host interface", RFC 263,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0263, December 1971,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc263>.

   [RFC346]   Postel, J., "Satellite Considerations", RFC 346,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0346, May 1972,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc346>.

   [RFC392]   Hicks, G. and B. Wessler, "Measurement of host costs for
              transmitting network data", RFC 392, DOI 10.17487/RFC0392,
              September 1972, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc392>.

   [RFC425]   Bressler, R., ""But my NCP costs $500 a day"", RFC 425,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0425, December 1972,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc425>.

   [RFC491]   Padlipsky, M., "What is "Free"?", RFC 491,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0491, April 1973,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc491>.

   [RFC706]   Postel, J., "On the junk mail problem", RFC 706,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0706, November 1975,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc706>.

   [RFC898]   Hinden, R., Postel, J., Muuss, M., and J. Reynolds,
              "Gateway special interest group meeting notes", RFC 898,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0898, April 1984,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc898>.






Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 24]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   [RFC1029]  Parr, G., "More fault tolerant approach to address
              resolution for a Multi-LAN system of Ethernets", RFC 1029,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1029, May 1988,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1029>.

   [RFC1077]  Leiner, B., "Critical issues in high bandwidth
              networking", RFC 1077, DOI 10.17487/RFC1077, November
              1988, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1077>.

   [RFC1093]  Braun, H., "NSFNET routing architecture", RFC 1093,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1093, February 1989,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1093>.

   [RFC1135]  Reynolds, J., "Helminthiasis of the Internet", RFC 1135,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1135, December 1989,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1135>.

   [RFC1244]  Holbrook, J. and J. Reynolds, "Site Security Handbook",
              RFC 1244, DOI 10.17487/RFC1244, July 1991,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1244>.

   [RFC1287]  Clark, D., Chapin, L., Cerf, V., Braden, R., and R. Hobby,
              "Towards the Future Internet Architecture", RFC 1287,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1287, December 1991,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1287>.

   [RFC1627]  Lear, E., Fair, E., Crocker, D., and T. Kessler, "Network
              10 Considered Harmful (Some Practices Shouldn't be
              Codified)", RFC 1627, DOI 10.17487/RFC1627, July 1994,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1627>.

   [RFC4960]  Stewart, R., Ed., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
              RFC 4960, DOI 10.17487/RFC4960, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4960>.

   [RFC5218]  Thaler, D. and B. Aboba, "What Makes for a Successful
              Protocol?", RFC 5218, DOI 10.17487/RFC5218, July 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5218>.

   [RFC7285]  Alimi, R., Ed., Penno, R., Ed., Yang, Y., Ed., Kiesel, S.,
              Previdi, S., Roome, W., Shalunov, S., and R. Woundy,
              "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol",
              RFC 7285, DOI 10.17487/RFC7285, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7285>.

   [RFC7288]  Thaler, D., "Reflections on Host Firewalls", RFC 7288,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7288, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7288>.



Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 25]

Internet-Draft         Meditation on Connectivity           January 2026


   [RFC7305]  Lear, E., Ed., "Report from the IAB Workshop on Internet
              Technology Adoption and Transition (ITAT)", RFC 7305,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7305, July 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7305>.

   [RFC9000]  Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
              Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9000>.

   [BCP56]    Best Current Practice 56,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp56>.
              At the time of writing, this BCP comprises the following:

              Nottingham, M., "Building Protocols with HTTP", BCP 56,
              RFC 9205, DOI 10.17487/RFC9205, June 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9205>.

Author's Address

   Erik Fjeldstrom
   Independent
   Email: erik_fjeldstrom@yahoo.ca




























Fjeldstrom                Expires 19 July 2026                 [Page 26]
