End-to-end Principle - Limitations of The Principle

Limitations of The Principle

The most important limitation of the end-to-end principle is that its basic conclusion – put functions in the application end points rather than the intermediary nodes – is not trivial to operationalize. Specifically:

  • it assumes a notion of distinct application end points as opposed to intermediary nodes that makes little sense when considering the structure of distributed applications;
  • it assumes a dichotomy between non-application-specific and application-specific functions (the former to be part of the operations between application end points and the latter to be implemented by the application end points themselves) while arguably no function to be performed in a network is fully orthogonal to all possible application needs;
  • it remains silent on functions that may not be implemented "completely and correctly" in the application end points and places no upper bound on the amount of application specific functions that may be placed with intermediary nodes on grounds of performancy considerations, economic trade-offs, etc.

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