There's no way to understand today's networks without knowing the history. Too often, network protocols are taught as 'memorize the details of what is currently deployed', which creates a lot of confusion, and certainly does not encourage critical thinking. Some decisions have made today's networks unnecessarily complex and less functional. But surprisingly, mechanisms that were created out of necessity, to compensate for previous decisions, sometimes turn out to be useful for purposes other than the original reason they were invented. If the world had adopted a different approach originally, some very interesting technology may not have been invented. Given limited space in this article, we will not worry about exact details, but rather convey the main conceptual points, and only cover a few examples.

中文翻译：

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网络协议民间传说

不了解历史，就无法理解当今的网络。网络协议经常被教导为“记住当前部署的细节”，这会造成很多混乱，当然也不鼓励批判性思维。一些决定使今天的网络变得不必要地复杂，功能更少。但令人惊讶的是，出于必要而创建的机制，以补偿先前的决定，有时会被证明对发明它们的最初原因之外的目的有用。如果世界最初采用不同的方法，可能不会发明一些非常有趣的技术。鉴于本文篇幅有限，我们将不关心具体细节，而是传达主要概念点，仅介绍几个示例。