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Different computer network concepts, paradigms, and projects were developed before
computer internetworking came into being. The most prominent of these projects was
the ARPANET. Network configuration protocol was a packet switched store and forward network
whose primary mission was to provide distributed data communication network that can
withstand almost any degree of destruction to individual components without losing
end-to-end communications [1]. The success of the ARPANET to connect isolated
computers and the rise of other national networks motivated the idea of inter-connecting
networks. It was then realized that a general internetworking protocol is required. This
was the motivation for designing the TCP protocol [2]. The adoption of TCP/IP as the
"transport protocol" for internetworking could be considered the initiation of the
Internet as we know it today. TCP/IP suite abstracts the interconnection functionalities
into five layers. The astounding success of the TCP/IP protocol suite in interconnecting
desperate networks motivated the adoption of a layered architecture as a reference
model for network protocol engineering and development even for protocols running
within intranets. The primary motivation of our work is highlighting this misconception;
the layered architecture that had long guided network design and protocol engineering
was an "interconnection architecture" defining a framework for interconnecting
networks rather than a model for network structuring and engineering. We claim that the
prevalent approach of abstracting the network in terms of an internetwork hinders the
thorough understanding of the network salient characteristics and interactions resulting
in impeding design decisions. Hence we embark by clarifying our vision of the network
and its relationship to an internetwork. We admit that the presented definitions are
already recognized in literature but our contribution is the reasoning that follows the
definitions. We define a network as a communication substrate that allows the exchange
of data among two or more computers despite the possible heterogeneity in hardware,
middleware and software of the attached computers.
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