Comment by otterley
5 hours ago
No, but if you didn’t, the internet wouldn’t really work all that well. It was the fact that participants, despite being independent, all agreed (either explicitly or implicitly) to adhere to the standards that it became a global network. If they hadn’t, the result would have been more of the same: independent networks that only had narrow interoperability at best. It’s a textbook example of how global cooperation can yield incredible results.
Advocating to do things against agreed-upon standards without a compelling reason and without giving due consideration to the adverse consequences is one of the hallmarks of a bad engineer. Even Microsoft played nice with Internet standards for the most part (although with some notable exceptions at the application layer that got them well-deserved criticism).
It was the fact that adhering to the standard was in the best interest of each participant. When it isn't, they don't.
It's impossible to know how often participants chose to stick to the standards anyway despite it not being in their best interest. Do you have any specific examples?
Linux routers responding ICMP from 192.0.0.8 when not having an IP address (currently being standardized). Clouds using class E address space (240.0.0.0-255.255.255.254). Routers that drop IP packets with options. The entire concept of NAT until the existing behavior was eventually standardized. Unnumbered interfaces.