[9088] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Peerage versus Peering
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Young)
Sun May 4 21:06:27 1997
To: "William Allen Simpson" <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 03 May 1997 13:37:09 GMT."
<5784.wsimpson@greendragon.com>
Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 20:40:40 -0400
From: "Jeff Young" <young@mci.net>
you're certainly right about one thing, this is silliness.
webster certainly never contemplated this form of 'peer' so
it is useless to quote him. i agree with peter, in this
form 'peer' means a network of equal or similar size. in
the current state of technology, peer to me means capable
of asymmetry.
i'm sure the rest of nanog will play a large role in defining
this term 'peer' in the coming months, native english speakers
and not.
Jeff Young
young@mci.net
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> Date: Sat, 3 May 97 13:37:09 GMT
> From: "William Allen Simpson" <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
> Message-ID: <5784.wsimpson@greendragon.com>
> To: nanog@merit.edu
> Subject: Peerage versus Peering
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> > From: Peter Lothberg <roll@Stupi.SE>
> > Look up ''peer'' in a dictionary, in this context it means something
> > like ''networks of equal size''.
> >
> This silliness comes up every so often, not always from non-native
> English speakers.
>
> Peer actually means several unrelated things. One of which (the first
> definition in my Webster's) is a member of a body called "the House of
> Lords" -- noblemen.... This comes from the Latin for "equal", yet is
> distinctly not equality.
>
> Although it seems that there are some who desire to apply that usage,
> that certainly is not what the rest of us are talking about here!
>
> The 5th definition is the one which I understand to apply: any associate.
>
>
> > The internet is moving towards a scenario with a handfull global
> > players that will be ''peers'' everyone else will become a customer.
> >
> As a matter of network engineering, this Internet has not historically
> established a peerage, a heirarchy of "first among equals".
>
> TCP/IP (and PPP and every other protocol I've worked on in this
> environment) establishes "peer-to-peer" connectivity. A peer is merely
> any entity with which you have established communication. More
> prosaically, someone with whom you "look closely".
>
> Where this term comes from, to quote the dictionary, is "entymology
> uncertain".
>
> WSimpson@UMich.edu
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