This seminal paper by Cerf and Kahn explores the interconnection of
packet switching networks by describing a strong and flexible protocol.
The structure of TCP/IP and its implementation are both covered, along
with potential and inevitable problems and suggestions to their
solutions.
There are many great things about this paper. The authors do a wonderful
job breaking down processes, networks, and gateways into separate
entities with separate responsibilities, which aids the reader when
sorting out all of the technical details presented. Cerf and Kahn
clearly explain where individual networks can differ and address each of
those differences in the following pages. The key point of the protocol
being simple to account for flexibility is conveyed beautifully by
separating what must be consistent across networks (i.e. addressing) and
what tuning can be handled by the gateways while routing (i.e. packet
size changes). The paper also addresses potential problems quite
honestly and logically, such as retransmission in times of failure,
packet size inconsistencies, sequence problems, and duplicate detection.
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