People often talk about the "protocol stack" of the internet, moving from transport (lowest) to applications/content (highest

I don’t really get this. The OSI model starts at Physical and goes up to Application. The transport layer is number 4. The reason why it’s important to separate things below transport is due to the fact that so called ‘dark fibre’ has a market that is separate from markets in higher level service, the dark fibre being ‘lit’ by ISPs. Does the FCC conflate Level 4 and below into ‘transport’?

Routing is not supposed to be centrally determined, and the idea of mesh networks pushes this even more to the edge

But is the internet ‘supposed’ to be end-to-end? I’ve finally found the paper I was looking for on the myth of end-to-end: Sandvig, C. (forthcoming). Shaping Infrastructure and Innovation on the Internet: The End-to-End Network that isn't (link to draft version). In D. Guston & D. Sarewitz (eds.), Shaping Science and Technology Policy: The Next Generation of Research. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/users/csandvig/research/Communication_Infrastructure_and_Innovation.pdf Christian’s other fascinating work can be found here: http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/users/csandvig/research/