Subject: [seamoby] MIP & SeaMoby are 3G biased

From: Phil Neumiller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 13:13:51 -0500

Pat, Gary, and ADs,

Interesting you should mention the "Internet community" Pat because
3G networks are private and not part of "that" community as far as I can
tell.  We are not here to work with or for potential customers especially if
they are another SDO building private networks.  We are here to improve
the global Internet.

If that is what you and Gary are here for, I suggest you take your  work
elsewhere (perhaps 3GPP2) and leave SeaMoby to work on the global
Internet as WGs in the IETF are supposed to do.  The IETF is supposed
to architect the global Internet and that is "its" priority not 3GPP or
3GPP2 "customers".  I am going to raise hell about this Pat.  It has become
very clear to me that MIP (from what Raj and Phil R. have said) and
SeaMoby are now completely biased towards 3G and I am taking this
to the IESG.  If my appeal goes nowhere, then I have lost, but at least
I have stated my case and I have stood up for what I believe.  I don't
mind being called a "conspiracy wacko" since I will be in good company.

Best regards,

Phil Neumiller

Patrice Calhoun wrote:

> >> Pat, Gary, and Hamid, are we working for MIP/3G or not?  We
> >> need to know now to stop
> >> a draft that could be completely pointless IMHO.
> >
> >Frankly, you have lost me. I either don't get your point, or your
> >arguing both sides of a solution issue.
>
> Ditto.
>
> Perhaps we could stop the conspiracy theories, and start working on requirements
> gathering for a protocol that will be useful for the Internet Community. If the
> 3Gs are a potential customer, then so be it, but we are focusing on a protocol
> that has wider applicability.
>
> PatC

---

From: Arthur Ross <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 12:57:02 -0700

>mind being called a "conspiracy wacko" since I will be in good company.
As usual, I have to echo Phil's view.

What we have here is a fundamental clash. A clash both of culture, and of
structure/charter.

There are very fundamental difference between the IETF and the SDOs. The
formal SDOs (the members of the 3GPPs), such as TIA and ETSI, are industry
consortia of for-profit companies. They have membership fees (usually quite
large). They have dedicated offices, full-time paid employees, attorneys,
formal charters, formal rules of procedure, and formal governing bodies.
They exist, to a large degree, as a sort of insurance against accusations
of unfair collusion that undoubtedly would ensue if there were to be
privately cooked up standards. A long-time rep of one of the telecom giants
once told me that those open meetings are "what keeps us all out of jail",
a view that my personal experience with them reinforces. They do indeed
have a very strong mutual self-interest in producing well thought out
standards that work (not always achieved, as we all know), and they do it
with great formality and rigorous process.

The IETF is a totally different animal. It is, as I understand it, all
volunteer, uncompensated, with facilities, such as they are, provided pro
bono by various educational, government, and corporate entities. Its
organization is loose and informal, depending on a spirit of mutual
cooperation and good will, rather than bureacracies, legalistic procedures,
and attorneys, to accomplish its work.

This is a sure-fire recipe for conflict, given the fact of the Internet
explosion as a global business platform. The notion of supporting
"customers" for the IETF work product has no formal basis; rather, it is
only a vague notion of openess and reasonableness, with diverse opinions as
to what that means, in the minds of the participants.

The closest thing I have found to a guiding principle relevant to this
argument seems to be RFC2026, §1.1:

   The Internet, a loosely-organized international collaboration of
   autonomous, interconnected networks, supports host-to-host
   communication through voluntary adherence to open protocols and
   procedures defined by Internet Standards.  There are also many
   isolated interconnected networks, which are not connected to the
   global Internet but use the Internet Standards.

   The Internet Standards Process described in this document is
   concerned with all protocols, procedures, and conventions that are
   used in or by the Internet, whether or not they are part of the
   TCP/IP protocol suite.  In the case of protocols developed and/or
   standardized by non-Internet organizations, however, the Internet
   Standards Process normally applies to the application of the protocol
   or procedure in the Internet context, not to the specification of the
   protocol itself.

It does seem that Phil's right, given this current framework. The IETF
exists for the good of the global Internet, not necessarily as a service
organization to the business world, except where the business interest
coincides with the good-of-the-Internet criterion.

This seems like a very fundamental question of philosophy, scope, &
charter. Is it perhaps time to think about creating a formal charter for
the IETF? I personally tend to oppose that, but the fact of the well-funded
800 pound gorilla that is "3G" may make this attitude difficult to sustain
in practice. Is the "good-of-the-Internet" for sale to those with the
deepest pockets (read: most able to send an army of partisans to the
working groups)? This needs to be confronted.

Please sign me up as another of those "wackos".

   -- Best regards,
   -- Arthur

---

From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 22:32:27 -0400 (EDT)

I will take it even further than Arthur or Phil.  If the IETF continues to
be too slow and engineers are consistently overruled by committee to do
things which hold up the market and are not the best technical solution
then its time to leave the IETF in some spaces. Not all spaces and as much
I would not like to see such a shism I do think this mail thread is one of
many wake up calls.  I don't believe its a conspiracy but when some person
tells me something won't work or will work they say and I know they are
wrong and they have not written code or something in 15 years but they win
because they are more powerful that is when I think there is a big
problem.  I am not putting up with it much longer in any part of the IETF.
But I have hope it will get fixed somehow.

/jim