In my previous post, I discussed the actuality of Charles Duell’s 1899 statement “Everything that can be invented has been invented” on the basis of reluctances to innovate at the very core of the Internet and the role of overlay networks.

In this post, I try to answer the question: what are the implications for standards by these overlay networks?

Today, the Internet supports very heterogeneous requirements and will continue to do so increasingly in the future. Overlays offer a way to introduce new functionality and over time, that functionality may be incorporated into the core of the Internet. In addition, functionality that may not be supported by some stakeholders may be implemented as an overlay by others thus providing a means to foster new innovation.

Thus, increasingly overlays are seen as a mechanism of choice for introducing new functionality in the Internet. Overlay networks are a means to evolve the Internet and there are many different types of Overlay networks such as Peer-to-Peer, Content delivery, Routing, Security enhanced and experimental.

One could view these overlay networks as evolving to solve a specific problem on top of the basic infrastructure OR they could be viewed as a violation of the end-to-end principle.

I take the former view.

By addressing a specific problem as an overlay network, we enable innovation to flourish and only later can address the question of how that innovation becomes standardized (assuming that it takes off). At the same time, we reduce the changes to the core of the Internet. Of course, not all changes to the core of the Internet can be addressed in this way but many new innovations can start at as overlay layer and subsequently be incorporated into the core of the network. This strategy balances innovation and standardization because we can be sure that everything that can be invented, has definitely not been invented!