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From: John Day
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Subject: Re: [e2e] Time for a new Internet Protocol
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If I were to characterize how we arrived at what we have I would have to say it was not done by looking for a solution that benefited particular vested interests and we certainly weren't trying "to truly enable end user innovation (driven by the true belief that this would benefit everybody)." It was the furthest thing from our minds. (That view is revisionist history written much later.) In fact, if the truth be told, the only time there was any inclination in that direction, ARPA nipped it in the bud very quickly. (If they hadn't, it might be a very different Internet today. I believe that that event halted innovation in the Internet.)
It always seemed that we were doing what we understood the problem was telling us was the right solution and let the chips fall where they may. I believe this is what is called "science." This is what we must return to.
I have always thought that the weakness of telephone company strategies over the past 35 years was that they first looked out for their vested interest and tried to contort the answer to fit them. Some would call this engineering. I don't but some do. When this approach is taken, the problem generally has a way of asserting itself at great cost unless external regulation (appeal to governments for protection) is used to keep it at bay. In this situation, I have always recommended to forego the vested interest and back the problem. It is far cheaper in the long run and leaves you in a better position.
I would disagree with the statement here that the fundamentals of the Internet have changed. They have not. The technology definitely has. But the fundamentals that governed networking in 1970 are still the same. Hopefully our understanding of them has improved. Our problem as I alluded to above is that the fundamentals we built on were basically what we understood at the time of the ICCC demo in 1972. We have been band-aiding ever since and relying on Moore's Law to make us look good.
We have to go back to fundamentals and be prepared to question everything we know. We have to be willing to do it and throw out whatever is in the way. We may be pleasantly surprised by how much we got right, but we have to do it. We can't do, as I have heard so often recently, "call for a revolution as long as it doesn't touch what was already done." That isn't much of a revolution. At least not in science. We have to be willing to destroy the Internet we know to save the Internet we need.
Noel has remarked that when a theory or architectures solves problems you hadn't designed into it, it is a good indication that it is right or close to it. The more often it does it, the more right it is. The converse is also true. Every time you want to do some thing different or accommodate a new requirement a new work-around is necessary, a new kludge; then you know what you have isn't right. This discussion about using source-routing for mobility has been a wonderful case in point, as is the current discussion in on the RAM list.
Noel also remarked that we need to learn the lesson of v6 to ensure that there is an economic reason to change. I am afraid there is an even harder lesson from history that we have to learn from: The lesson of OSI which was don't invite the legacy architecture to participate in the revolution. They will destroy it. Don't be accommodating. Go it alone. They have too much vested interest in maintaining the status quo. We are going to have to learn to let go or be supplanted by people who look upon us with as much disdain as we looked on the phone company guys in 1975. ;-) It was clear that they just didn't get it. ;-) (Some of you will think the lesson of OSI is something else. Believe me, those lessons are all a consequence of this one. Remember OSI was started by the computer industry to create network standards that weren't done by ITU.)
It really saddens me, but the behavior of the Internet community today has more in common with the phone companies of 1975 than the ARPANet/Internet/NPLnet/CYCLADES of 1975. They were out to foment revolution, we seem to be more out to preserve someone else's revolution. We seem to be making more rules about what you can't do than what you can do. We seem to want to protect desires that serve our interests whether capitalist or utopian, rather than do science and let the chips fall where they may.
I apologize for the screed, it wasn't suppose to be this long. ;-)
Take care,
John
At 10:25 +0100 2007/05/16,
< >
wrote:
[RESENT - this time without signature - my apologies, still had to find
the off-by-default setting]
David,
I wonder if such almost revolutionary tone is both helpful and effective
in reaching the goal (or anything for that matter) you're promoting.
Not only do I believe (more hope) that the intention back then, when
constructing IP, TCP, UDP, ..., was not 'to beat Mother Bell's control
ambitions' but to truly enable end user innovation (driven by the true
belief that this would benefit everybody), I would also argue that times
do have changed since then. Change of fundamentals in the Internet is
today more of an educational process than ever. It might be driven by
technology, certainly not only though, but it certainly includes more
than ever proper education beyond the pure technology community and the
consideration for the concerns of everybody involved. It isn't a
technology exercise anymore within a governmentally funded research
community that, over the course of some twenty years, will then turn
into a fundamental piece of societial life. It IS part of the societal
life. So advocating changes needs to take into account the different
concerns, also the ones of the 'routerheads' and the 'control freaks',
if you will, in order to be successful.
So it is not the goal that I'm questioning (you know how much I
subscribe to end user driven innovation), it is your, to me, ineffective
and confrontational method that I fear will turn out to be wasteful
rather than fruitful. What the technology community CAN provide is the
ammunition for this educational process, the proof that end user
innovation is indeed enabled, for the good of everybody involved (and
point our alternatives for the ones that seemingly will need to change).
BTW, as you know I recently have joined a company you might characterize
as being on the 'controlling end' of the spectrum, coming from an end
user type of company. But believe me that I would have not joined if I
didn't believe such education is possible. It isn't all black and white
(us - whoever that is - against them).
Dirk
-----Original Message-----> (term invented by Licklider and Taylor in their prescient
From:
[mailto:
On Behalf Of
David P. Reed
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 3:57 PM
To: end2end-interest list
Subject: [e2e] Time for a new Internet Protocol
A motivation for TCP and then IP, TCP/IP, UDP/IP, RTP/IP,
etc. was that network vendors had too much control over what
could happen inside their networks.
Thus, IP was the first "overlay network" designed from
scratch to bring heterogeneous networks into a common,
world-wide "network of networks"
> paper, The Computer as a Communications Device). By creating
universal connectivity, with such properties as allowing>
multitudinous connections simultaneously between a node and
its peers, an extensible user-layer naming system called DNS,
and an ability to invent new end-to-end protocols, gradually
a new ecology of computer mediated communications evolved,
including the WWW (dependent on the ability to make 100 "calls"
within a few milliseconds to a variety of hosts), email
(dependent on the ability to deploy end-system server
applications without having to ask the "operator" for
permission for a special 800 number that facilitates public
addressability).
Through a series of tragic events (including the dominance of
routerheads* in the network community) the Internet is
gradually being taken back into the control of providers who
view their goal as limiting what end users can do, based on
the theory that any application not invented by the pipe and
switch owners is a waste of resources. They argue that
"optimality" of the network is required, and that any new
application implemented at the edges threatens the security
and performance they pretend to provide to users.
Therefore, it is time to do what is possible: construct a new> backbone
overlay network that exploits the IP network just as the IP
network exploited its predecessors the ARPANET and ATT's
longhaul dedicated links and new technologies such as LANs.
I call for others to join me in constructing the next
Internet, not as an extension of the current Internet,
because that Internet is corrupted by people who do not value
innovation, connectivity, and the ability to absorb new ideas
from the user community.
The current IP layer Internet can then be left to be
"optimized" by those who think that 100G connections should
drive the end user functionality. We can exploit the
Internet of today as an "autonomous system" just as we built
a layer on top of Ethernet and a layer on top of the ARPANET
to interconnect those.
To save argument, I am not arguing that the IP layer could
not evolve.
I am arguing that the current research community and industry
community that support the IP layer *will not* allow it to evolve.
But that need not matter. If necessary, we can do this
inefficiently,
creating a new class of routers that sit at the edge of the
IP network
and sit in end user sites. We can encrypt the traffic, so
that the IP
monopoly (analogous to the ATT monopoly) cannot tell what our
layer is doing, and we can use protocols that are more
aggressively defensive since the IP layer has indeed gotten
very aggressive in blocking traffic and attempting to prevent
user-to-user connectivity.
Aggressive defense is costly - you need to send more packets when the
layer below you is trying to block your packets. But DARPA
would be a
useful funder, because the technology we develop will support
DARPA's efforts to develop networking technologies that work
in a net-centric world, where US forces partner with
temporary partners who may provide connectivity today, but
should not be trusted too much.
One model is TOR, another is Joost. Both of these services overlay
rich functions on top of the Internet, while integrating
servers and clients into a full Internet on top of today's Internets.
* routerheads are the modern equivalent of the old "bellheads". The
problem with bellheads was that they believed that the right
way to build a communications system was to put all functions
into the network layer, and have that layer controlled by a
single monopoly, in order to "optimize" the system. Such an
approach reminds one of the argument for
the corporate state a la Mussolini: the trains run on time. Today's
routerheads believe that the Internet is created by the
fibers and pipes, rather than being an end-to-end set of
agreements that can layer
on top of any underlying mechanism. Typically they work for
ISPs or Router manufacturers as engineers, or in academic> circles they focus on running hotrod competitions for the
fastest file transfer between two points on the earth
(carefully lining up fiber and switches between specially
tuned endpoints), or worse, running NS2 simulations that
demonstrate that it is possible to stand on one's head while
singing the National Anthem to get another publication in
some Springer-Verlag journal.
--
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