Wired vs Wireless Discussion

Wired vs Wireless The distinction between these networks is definitely becoming less and less marked, and to an extent, network protocols and architectures may also have to move in that direction. Anything that will call itself "general networking" must necessarily include wireless networking There is still a big difference between wired and wireless networks in network/transport performance beyond raw link data rates

Wired vs Wireless Wireless offers a different value proposition from wired networks: more about mobility and freedom and less about performance. Wireless enables new unique applications, so that users are willing to pay more per bps. The forthcoming explosion of wireless/mobile devices should drive the design of the global Internet in terms of core features such as naming, addressing, routing, content/location awareness, and security. There is an opportunity to merge, but this can only happen if there is cross-fertilization between communities.

Wired vs Wireless Wireless is a very good access technology and last-resort long-haul technology, while wireline is a great long-haul technology and a good access technology and there's no reason to believe the broad respective merits of the two classes of technology will change in the near future. Wireless networks must be considered to be part of “the network” because that is the user, management, security, enterprise, economic, and perhaps regulatory model that exists, unless one believes in completely “unwired” global networks. Most new requirements of future networking will come out of the mobile and wireless area and goes beyond what is need only for wired networks

Areas of Dichotomy Errors, Power and Topology We don't think power is as much a dichotomy as has been suggested. The main differences are in the technologies and protocols for aggregation in the core vs. efficient delivery in the access network, but other requirements are more alike than commonly believed.  

Areas of Dichotomy Both technologies use some part of the spectrum,in some media, to transmit and receive data. But the nature of the respective spectrums is wildly different. Wired networks are more established, and thus the parts within the cloud are harder to modify incrementally.

Areas of Dichotomy The research challenges lie in the fact that wireless networks are very niche and to an extent may prevent the adoption of more generalized concepts. Two examples are traffic loss, and management of some kinds of resources very different, e.g. power. A qualitatively different dichotomy is reflected in the the underlying broadcast nature of wireless that could be used to provide very different communications paradigms much more naturally than wired

Areas of Dichotomy Security, Naming and Mobility, routing and quality assurance, Management Administration-free, "self-managing" paradigm for ad hoc naming and management of personal devices regardless of whether they are attached via wireless or wired networking technologies. This is largely the wrong list for wireless -- most of the wireless research I'm at least peripherally involved with fits in none of these bins comfortably

Areas of Dichotomy Security: In wired networks, fingerprinting can be foiled by topology/firewalls, but these aren't available to first/last hop wireless Each new protocol opens avenues for attack that can magnify attacker effort Session continuity Media delivery and adaptation 

Dichotomies into the future Routing: IPv4 and IPv6 While layering has permitted great strides in the past, it has also caused networking research to be performed in an application agnostic manner. Perhaps this is hampering the next big revolution in networking Integrating wireless networks and mobile users efficiently will require greater awareness of network conditions and disconnected/opportunistic modes that currently don't appear in the CDN model

Dichotomies into the future Handling errors in wireless remains an open issue, especially when performance-enhancing proxies aren't an option Different layers of the network are used to using different approaches, and this can cause contention. Since the user has a single, perhaps long-distance experience built on a composition of underlying resources, both wired and wireless infrastructures, to truly effectively manage this, information and/or analysis will need to flow across that wired/wireless boundary

Dichotomies into the future A consolidated QoS/Security/Mobility framework/solution (all through the stack, possibly except for the application level) Dynamic and adjustable content delivery