Subject: RE: [mobile-ip] NAI/need ... RANT

From: Phil Roberts <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 14:25:28 -0400

Hi,
 
    thanks for helping inge understand some issues.  I don't really want to
see another RANT thread started on this mailing list.  Perhaps it would be
appropriate to discuss it on the wireless interest mailing list Phil N. set
up.  I think he said it was in part intended for such purposes.
 
Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Ross [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 12:47 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [mobile-ip] NAI/need for identifiers

At 1:35 -0700 05/16/2001, [email-masked] wrote: 

>This is a cry of confusion from an employee of a "large" Norwegian
operator. 

>Could you please explain to me how the NAI, other identifiers and the IP 

>address are used to meet the following requirements (which I jotted down 

>very quickly): 

>The required separate identifiers for service provisioning are as follows: 

>·      Subscription 

>·      User 

>·      Terminal 

>·      Session 

>All four are required, and it is yet unclear to me how this is solved.
These 

>identifiers are needed to accommodate e.g. security and the following three

>levels of mobility: 

[snip] 

Once again, this thread is nibbling around the edges of a much larger, very
important discussion. 

My apologies to those of you who have already seen this from my prior
posting to the SEAMOBY list, but it is germane to this thread too. 

<RANT> 

We talk at great length about hosts, mobile nodes, etc., but the notion of
"host" or "node" is getting fuzzy. Originally [ARPANET] "hosts" were big 

computers that filled rooms, had squads of people caring for & feeding them,
and the protocols were designed with that implicit mindset. But nowadays,
when the 

embodiments of the "hosts" may cost just pennies, may be flyspeck-sized, and
may 

be found in all sorts of non-traditional, often low-tech kinds of
places/things, 

the concepts need revision. 

My strong feeling is that the questions to be addressed should be things
like: 

* What are the entities that are the endpoints of the communication? When 

the address space is large enough [IPv6] to give every cell of every human 

being and every grain of sand on earth its own IP address, perhaps the 

model and uses of it need to be re-thought. 

* What is MEANT by "mobility"? Or alternatively what is it that is moving? 

I can envision many possible answers/opinions. 

* How are those endpoints identified for various purposes? A major example: 

paging - IP address, as in MIP, is [perhaps] meaningful for routing 

purposes, but meaningless in the application context. One could envision 

a concept whereby there are various "views" of the endpoint space 

applicable for different sorts of applications (e.g. routing, logical, 

name-based, geographic, organizational hierarchy, demographic group, 

etc.). In this light, paging/addressing might be viewed/implemented 

as a kind of distributed database query. 

* What is the nature of the "identity" associated with, say, individual 

humans, that provides the basis/data for authentication? I'm thinking 

of something like a great-grandson of the SIM card concept, for example 

[... or maybe you will begin every session with a request to "spit in the 

little spitoon" on your laptop for the DNA analysis that authenticates 

the session. ;-) ]. 

* Is a broader concept of the "addressable individual" needed? [I have in 

mind functional pseudo-persons, associated with business & organization 

roles, databases of various kinds, etc.] 

* Is a "discovery" functionality needed? I.e. a generic method for exposing 

the internal structure of subnets and/or databases? I.e. a way of creating 

the local streetmap of an unfamiliar neighborhood? This might be especially 

important if the "mobile" entities have internal, time-varying structure 

[think, for a simple example, of folks in vehicles on the highway, each 

potentially with his PDA, phone, medical monitoring device, plus the 

"smart car" itself, etc., all of which are communicating through a 

wireless gateway of some kind; just such things are currently under 

development]. 

* What are the business and regulatory models? Giant electro-political 

hot potato, but very important, IMHO. The regulatory folks need to clean 

up their act if the mythical "wireless Internet" is to be anything other 

than hype and snake oil. 

I have in mind here a complete re-think of the spectrum license auction 

notion. I personally believe that auctioning the ether was, and still is, 

a bad idea, not in the long term public interest. The pro-auction 

argument is that real estate-like ownership is a prerequisite if 

investors are going to pony up the huge capital expenditures needed to 

build the "next generation" networks. The fallacy here, IMHO, is the 

PSTN-centric mindset. If what you are talking about is universal, 

readily-available wirless IP service, starting from a telephone network 

is very obviously a bad way of doing it. IMHO wireless IP access 

should be viewed, for regulatory purposes, as more like a public utility 

than the proverbial "walled garden" for which the owner charges at the 

tollbooth. You could make a lot of money by letting someone charge for the 

air we breathe too, but in neither case is it good public policy. 

There are many aspects to this, and many ways of pulling it off, as I 

have tried to convince the FCC for some time now. 

* What replaces the "walled garden" wireless air interfaces? Good question. 

I have some opinions as to what it MIGHT be, but other opinions may 

[read: "undoubtedly will"] differ. This will be, I hope, the subject of 

this new "wireless internet" discussion group. 

</RANT>