Refactoring of the core networking code has been ongoing for quite some time. See https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/projects/4.
"Can you name anybody with a good background in networking? You can't point to a list of 100 odd names and assert that certain skills must be present"
sipa? He worked as an SRE at Google before starting work on bitcoin. [1]
rustyrussell? He has done extensive work on the linux kernels networking subsystems. [2]
cdecker? He did a phd at the Distributed Computing Group in Zurich which included work on scaling bitcoin. [3]
gwillen? Also a SRE at Google before bitcoin, and worked on Dapper[1].
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pieterwuille
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell
[3] https://disco.ethz.ch/alumni/cdecker
[4] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...