Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

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Networking Humor

Todd's Humor Archive Cyberwocky

Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: mhhammon@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Mike ``Hammer'' Hammond)
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 97 19:30:02 EST

********************************* * * * Cyberwocky * * * ********************************* (With Apologies to Lewis Carroll)

'Twas e-mail, and the ftp Did route and telnet to the node. All rlogin to Xterms free To let gopher download.

``Beware the Internet, my son! The posts that spam, the speech that's free! Beware the Netscape cache, and shun The AOL mail id!''

He took his HP mouse in hand. Long time a higher bandwidth sought -- And wished had he for his old PC A faster modem bought.

And, as that wistful thought he gripped, The Internet, with bait of flame, Ran applets through the Javascript, And mailbombed as it came!

The war he waged! As on each page The HP mouse he double-clicked! And 'twas absurd, the hype he'd heard 'Bout sites that he had picked.

``And, hast thou surfed the Internet? Come link my page, my newbie bud! O Lycos night! Yahoo! Excite!'' He messaged on his MUD.

'Twas e-mail, and the ftp Did route and telnet to the node. All rlogin to Xterms free To let gopher download.

by Mike ``Hammerwocky'' Hammond

(First appeared in Volume 71, Issue 4 of mathNEWS, the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics student newsletter/humour publication. Check us out at http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mathnews Submitted with permission of authour --- me!)

RFC 1925 The Twelve Networking Truths  by R. Callon

1. It Has To Work.
2. No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light. (2a) (corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can't make a baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up *might* make it slower, but it won't make it happen any quicker.
3. With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
4. Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.
5. It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea.
6. It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it. (6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of indirection.
7.  It is always something (7a) (corollary). Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).
8. It is more complicated than you think.
9. For all resources, whatever it is, you need more. (9a) (corollary) Every networking problem always takes longer to solve than it seems like it should.
10. One size never fits all.
11. Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works. (11a) (corollary). See rule 6a.
12. In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

rfc3252 Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport. This document defines a reformulation of IP and two transport layer protocols (TCP and UDP) as XML applications.

RFC3251Electricity over IP

Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching (MPLampS) is an architecture for carrying electricity over IP (with an MPLS control plane). According to our marketing department, MPLampS has the potential to dramatically lower the price, ease the distribution and usage, and improve the manageability of delivering electricity. This document is motivated by such work as SONET/SDH over IP/MPLS (with apologies to the authors). Readers of the previous work have been observed scratching their heads and muttering, "What next?". This document answers that question.

Last modified: February 28, 2008