
Distributed Algorithm for Constructing Minimal Spanning Trees in Networks (1976) [pdf] - kick
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/76/111/CSL-TR-76-111.pdf
======
kick
Hacker News's character limit is too short for the full, unminced title, which
is:

 _A Distributed Algorithm for Constructing Minimal Spanning Trees in Computer-
Communication Networks_

I think it's worth sharing because (aside from the technical merits of the
paper) it highlights how, despite the field not being that old, it has the
memory of a rodent: a lot of the vocabulary found within is opaque without
further inspection, even though a lot of problems described within are still
relevant today.

~~~
zzzcpan
What exactly did you find interesting in the paper? It's a pretty bad paper.
The kind of paper you would expect from pre Lamport "distributed algorithms".

------
yagibear
It seems that that work didn't make much impact because it sat as a tech
report and wasn't published until 1987, by which time Perlman had published
her algorithm that received more exposure in SIGCOMM in 1985.

~~~
commandersaki
Interesting I was wondering why.

------
totorovirus
why is spanning tree gaining so much interest recently?

~~~
GhettoMaestro
No idea. It is old as shit and equally annoying. There are many reasons why we
(architects) minimize L2 domains - namely because we can achieve re-route /
convergence quicker with other protocols, with STP being the long pole. Hell,
containers are just L3-L3 forwarding in a lot of cases - no L2 domain,
conceptually.

TLDR: Spanning-Tree is the previous war. E-VPN + Modern L3 segmentation is the
new way.

