End-to-end arguments in system design
The work
| Title | End-to-end arguments in system design |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jerome H. Saltzer; David P. Reed; David D. Clark |
| Type | article |
| Year | 1984 |
| Citekey | saltzer1984endtoend |
Where it appeared
| Published in | ACM Transactions on Computer Systems |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 277--288 |
Identifiers
| DOI | 10.1145/357401.357402 |
|---|---|
| OpenAlex | W238861864 |
Access
| Landing page | https://doi.org/10.1145/357401.357402 |
|---|
Abstract
This paper presents a design principle that helps guide placement of functions among the modules of a distributed computer system. The principle, called the end-to-end argument, suggests that functions placed at low levels of a system may be redundant or of little value when compared with the cost of providing them at that low level. Examples discussed in the paper include bit-error recovery, security using encryption, duplicate message suppression, recovery from system crashes, and delivery acknowl-edgment. Low-level mechanisms to support these functions are justified only as performance enhance-ments.
Copy held
| Kind | PDF, 896.2 kB |
|---|---|
| Retrieved | 2026-08-05 |
| Held | local, for personal reference |
| Where it came from | https://doi.org/10.1145/357401.357402 |
Where this came from
| How it got here | the agent went looking · found via openalex |
|---|---|
| First seen | 2026-08-05 |
| Standing | endorsed |
| Approved | 2026-08-05 |
Cite it as
@article{saltzer1984endtoend,
title = {End-to-end arguments in system design},
author = {Jerome H. Saltzer and David P. Reed and David D. Clark},
year = {1984},
journal = {ACM Transactions on Computer Systems},
volume = {2},
number = {4},
pages = {277--288},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
doi = {10.1145/357401.357402},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/357401.357402},
}
This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/saltzer1984endtoend/ and will keep doing so.