Subject: RE: [seamoby] IETF Architecture Work (RANT)

From: James Kempf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 08:39:50 -0700 (PDT)

John,

I suggest you look at http://www.ietf.org/overview.html. This 
page is what the IETF says it does. Architecture is in the first sentence.
According to this, IETF *already* does architecture. So it is not
a matter of whether we should start doing it or not.

The problem is, we are doing a lousy job of it. And, as I tried
to point out in my posting several days ago, other groups are taking
IETF protocols and doing architecture with them that is directly
contrary to the Internet architecture as it currently stands.

So, we are by default letting other SDOs do architecture with our
protocols that will end up screwing the Internet in the end.

		jak

>Delivered-To: [email-masked]
>From: [email-masked]
>To: [email-masked]
>Cc: [email-masked]
>Subject: RE: [seamoby] IETF Architecture Work (RANT)
>Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:21:00 +0300
>
>Phil,
>
>> If there was EVER a time for the IETF
>> to sincerely start documentings is architecture work (which 
>> it is doing a lot of these days under the covers) it is now.
>
>I'd definately vote against this.  I think that other SDOs 
>become fixed into their architectural view and stagnate.
>
>Also, it also implies that there is a correct way to do
>things.  IP technologies have been very successful because
>they have focused on the interoperability of the protocols,
>not on the architecture.  
>
>The IETF does provide architecure pieces for certain
>protocol sets, but anything larger, I fear would be
>doomed to failure.
>
>br,
>John

---

From: "Phil Neumiller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:55:09 -0500

// EVEN MORE RANTING

Even if we don't call it architecture, what the WGs should be doing
is improving the global Internet for mobility and not reacting to other SDOs
that show up in numbers at WG meetings and demand that the IETF
do things for them.  I don't get why the IETF has been so responsive
to these other SDOs.  Clearly,  this has been a huge distraction for the
MIP WG over the last few years.

Let's EXTEND the global Internet to support the best wireless mobility
on the planet and let other SDOs worry about supporting their legacy
systems.  WHY is the MIP charter so dominated with work from the
3GXXrs I must ask?  They are not the only customer, in fact with
the advent of "cheap" wireless, which most people are starting to see
the advantages of  (I can only hope), cellular architectures as built today
and the business models that support them will be deconstructed.

It seems much safer to bet on the Internet than to bet on any air
interface technology or set of standards that will be obsolete in a few
years.  The Internet has much more momentum and evolution and
we need to continue to improve the beast and not get side tracked
by fast talking TIA, ETSI, IMT, ISO, IEEE, or SIG de jours
representation.

// END rant

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Charles E. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:56:04 -0700

Hello Phil,

> MIP WG over the last few years.

Try looking at it the other way.  I have something to say about
this, since I tried to be very encouraging to get engineeers from
the other SDOs involved.

Mobile IP has been moderately, but not hugely successful.
That is, there have been millions of units deployed, not tens
of millions like there should have been.  One place where it
_could_ be more widely deployed is with new wireless networks,
and 3GPP* certainly qualify as standard bodies for new wireless
networks.  They are IETF customers.

Customers are allowed to express their requirements, and technology
providers are allowed (in fact, wise) to pay attention to those
requirements.  Sometimes, the requirements need to be reshaped
as the technology providers supply missing technical details to
the customers' views of their requirements.

I think this is exactly what has been happening in the Mobile IP
working group.  In fact, instead of characterizing it as a
distraction, I should characterize it as a healthy and almost
inevitable evolution.  The challenge, as always, is to stay
involved with the evolutionary process so that we don't get
gross mutants that crowd out the more beautiful and desirable
species.

> and the business models that support them will be deconstructed.

Seems unlikely to me.  A better chance is to get protocols that
maintain freedom of choice.  If we do that, then operators that
make restrictions may lose out to operators that offer services
for cheap, and freedom to pick other services according to the
desirable Internet end-to-end application model.  If we don't make
the protocols available, then we won't expedite the development of
the networks that offer the freedom.

A lot of the recent work engendering [seamoby] and fast handovers
in Mobile IPv6 was motivated, at least in part, by inputs from other
SDOs.  I think we will see a major push towards QoS for some of the
same reasons.  [digression: anyone see the nasty claims on the cover
of the new Wired magazine? -- I guess it means we have more work to do.]

> by fast talking TIA, ETSI, IMT, ISO, IEEE, or SIG de jours

I don't see this as reflecting any reality that I have observed
within the IETF recently.  And which "SIG" are you referring to?
If it's SIGMOBILE, then I have to respectfully but assertively
disagree with your characterization.  About IEEE, they're not trying
to derail our efforts.  I might wish they'd leave ad-hoc networking
out of their charter, but I don't think that causes them to deserve
such a characterization.

Regards,
Charlie P.

---

From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:24:08 -0400 (EDT)

> contrary to the Internet architecture as it currently stands.

I agree and contrary architecture to the Internet will also increase cost
of its use and the products built.  It will also cause transitions from
Catanet principles I for one believe should not be changed without much
caution.

/jim

---

From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:34:40 -0400 (EDT)

Phil,

I think we are off topic for our goal and my last response to non tech
stuff we won't fix the IETF here (but would love to if folks want offline
and I am thinking about starting an Internet Warriors private mail list).
But I don't agree that we can ignore 3Gxxx the target market for 3G is in
the trillion of revenue streams.  There is a business and technical case
to make sure MIPv6 works very well with 3G and micromobility for MIPv6
(Seamoby anyone ???).  I also believe we need to make sure the wireless
solutions work with the wireline Internet (why we must do architecture) so
when I am roaming with my PDA on the streets paying 30cents per/min when I
walk in my house to my wireless access point I can jump on my wireline
8cents per/min charge with "seamless handoff".  So I view the reason to
treat 3G very important is because its our wireless pragmatic input,
instead of wireless papers on theory or the existing wireless debaucle in
the U.S. and North America.  It will also be the first significant IPv6
deployed base and I admit my biases there for those who don't know me.

/jim

---

From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:36:25 -0700 (PDT)

> protocols that will end up screwing the Internet in the end.

   "Death of the net, film at 11:00"

   Oh, I don't think that it's quite that bad.
   However, the thing I find somewhat disturbing
   is the underlying assumption that we'd get the
   architecture *right*. We may, but there a lot
   of downside if we didn't but was rubber stamped 
   as "The IETF Architecture."

   Ultimately, there's still a significant amount
   of room for competing architectures where the
   market sorts the dead ends out. If we were in
   monopoly situation I might feel somewhat
   different, but we aren't.

   Can I also point out that we might be using 
   the term architecture in different ways? I
   generally think of "architecture" in the
   analogous way as to what an architect does when
   she puts lines on a drawing to build a house.
   3GPP, Packetcable, etc, are all in the business
   of producing those sorts of architectures.
   Under that definition, the IETF has never done
   architectures per se. It does have a base level
   model, set of assumptions, and guiding
   principles which facilitate protocol
   development but this isn't really the same;
   it's more like a guidelines which instruct
   architects the do's and don't on the net. Sort
   of like "don't build houses with the roof on
   the foundation".

		  Mike

---

From: Arthur Ross <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:37:08 -0700

>by fast talking TIA, ETSI, IMT, ISO, IEEE, or SIG de jours

<CONTINUE (ahmr) RANT>

Again, right on Phil.

To some degree, this argument is short-term versus long-term view. All
those folks who have over-sold the "Mobile Internet" to their investors now
have to ante-up, and they want at least the appearance of an IETF
imprimateur. They will figure out some way of cobbling together something
that works ... sortof. They have to, after spending, stupidly, upwards of
110 dB$ on spectrum (and that's only in western Europe). They tried to
promote this universal, do-everything service in the wired world: ISDN. It
has failed in the retail marketplace, where it makes much more sense. Why
anyone thinks it will succeed wireLESS continues to mystify me.

We are, I like to think, on the cusp of a golden opportunity, brought about
by this collective insanity of the corporate world.

For a long time now, I have thought that what we should be having is a very
basic discussion on the NATURE of network communication - not so much of
the architecture of it, but rather of "What problem(s) are we solving?",
or, perhaps more accurately, "What problems CAN be solved?" and "What are
the conceptual abstractions of that communication universe?" There is an
opportunity to at least try to get this right, while "big telecom" goes off
on its ill-advised course.

This might include such seemingly childish, naive questions as "What are
the entities doing the communicating?" The current mindset is
"Handsets/subscriber loops" in the telephonic universe, and "Hosts" in the
IP universe. What might they be in Voltaire's "best of all possible
worlds"?

I have long thought that the real, underlying endpoint entities are neither
"handsets" nor "hosts", but something that more nearly resembles a record
in a distributed database. The physical embodiment of it could take many
forms, but the essential abstraction would be the CONTENT, not the physical
realization. It would be logically separate from the embodiment of any
communication device. The association of the two would occur as a result of
network interactions (the SIM/UIM is a step in this direction). A variety
of information could reside in this identity record. Addressing would
resemble a distributed database query rather than a wireless-like wide-area
page. While this is, in the context of the current internet, a sort of "DNS
on steroids" concept, it should be quite easily doable, given the current
state-of-the-art in storage technology.

Seems to me that the endpoint of the communication should be this "identity
record", which, hopefully, could be plugged into, or associated somehow,
with whatever network access point is conventient - a wireLINE terminal, a
wireLESS terminal, a mobile subnet such as in an airplane or ship, etc. The
network would, by some means, update the routing as that endpoint record
thingy moves its attachment point. The record is a network proxy for the
real source/sink of the communication, be it a particular human, the human
in a particular business role, or some mechanical entity, such as a
business' database.

I see this kind of thing as the ultimate evolution of ALL public telecom
... somehow. I once heard the fixed telephone network described as a
"special case of a mobile network with very low mobility." Right on bro.

<RANT TO BE CONTINUED ... >

   -- Regards,
   -- A

PS: Recommended reading, for those of you who missed it in the original:

"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," by Charles
Mackay, originally published in 1841 London. While his central topic is a
series of investment manias that ran through Europe in the 18th century,
alchemy, and the vogue for witch burning in the 16th & 17th century Europe,
the human behaviors are VERY CLEARLY RECOGNIZABLE in recent events, both
financial and telecom. It's available in a Barnes & Noble paperback reprint.

---

From: "Phil Neumiller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 12:31:59 -0500

Hello Charlie,

OK so I probably over-reacted a tad (maybe even a bullfrog), however
I do want to address some of your points since I think some things
were mis-understood or mis-interpreted comments below.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles E. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
To: "Phil Neumiller" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: [seamoby] IETF Architecture Work (RANT)

> this, since I tried to be very encouraging to get engineeers from

OK, I guess the problem I see, is that we don't build hardware in the
IETF.  :-)  It seems to me, that wireless Internet could be there in massive
ways now, by avoiding all the leaps and bounds we are forced to go through
to support the cellular guys.  This is just my opinion and it should be viewed
as such.  For example:

The original wired Internet protocols didn't have to worry about AAA or
security or QoS to get massively deployed.  I am quite positive that wireless Internet
(not WAP or iMode) could have been deployed in the router sense on cheap
wireless for quite some time now had the "normal" Internet exponential
explosion occured.  It seems to me that somehow this progress was shut down
by large monopolistic carriers (and this is where Phil's wacko conspiracy theories
start to show (don't get me started on FCC auctions)) .  I am convinced that the
economy of scales would have been there to drive Bluetooth, 802.11b and other
WLAN and WPAN technologies prices down if "growing the Internet" over
wireless  was the IETF's goal rather than placating commercial cellular operators
concerns.  I realize this sounds sort of idealistic.  Who pays the bill?  Well its
going to be us paying for that spectrum because it will be passed on to us
and its taxation without representation as far as I'm concerned.

> networks.  They are IETF customers.

I am going to respectfully disagree Charlie.  It *COULD* have been
already deployed massively over WPAN and WLAN technology
had we ignored the cellular concerns of AAA and QoS and minutes
of use carrier class requirements and gone rapidly with a data only
model.

> the customers' views of their requirements.

I do agree with this, however, I also believe that the electoral system
taught us a lesson in the last US election, that a popular vote is not
necessarly best for the entire constituency.

> gross mutants that crowd out the more beautiful and desirable

The global Internet is a unique creature, more like a diety than
one of these creatures you are talking to.  The 1st law of the Internet
is to have no other Internet (sounds sort of familiar).  In the end, these
creatures are mortal, and the Internet will go on.

> the networks that offer the freedom.

[Apologizing ahead of time, here I go again, inserting foot into mouth]
Right now, "we have only one choice, Mobile IP."

> out of their charter, but I don't think that causes them to deserve

No, not SIGMOBILE, I was thinking of the Bluetooth SIG and some
others.  The IEEE is working on there own context transfer right now
in 802.11 TG 17.

Regards,

Phil

---

From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:50:45 -0400 (EDT)

Mike,

At a minimum we need to do good Requirements Definition and Analysis
phase.  That has been missing in many working groups for a few years.
That helps with sorting assumptions and guiding light out.

/jim

---

From: "Charles E. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 11:03:40 -0700

Hello Phil,

We're not so far apart, and yet we get to such different answers...

Phil Neumiller wrote:

> security or QoS to get massively deployed.  I am quite positive that wireless
> Internet (not WAP or iMode) could have been deployed in the router sense on
> cheap wireless for quite some time now had the "normal" Internet exponential
> explosion occured.

The WLAN cards were there.  The protocols were there.  Why didn't it
happen?  The spectrum was even there, in the ISM band, right?

I think the reason it didn't happen yet was because the market wasn't
ready.  Now the market for WLAN seems to be happening, and maybe we'll
get a lot more WLAN.  That will be great.  AAA won't be needed, although
perhaps it will find some use.

>                      It seems to me that somehow this progress was shut down
> concerns.

Again, what did the IETF fail to do?  It's more accurate, I think, to say
that the IETF did what seemed necessary, and new customers brought in new
requirements.  That's a lot different than vectoring into a distractive
swamp.

>           I realize this sounds sort of idealistic.  Who pays the bill?  Well its

This is a different issue, but since you brought it up I wish we
could somehow get it into the popular consciousness that the spectrum
is a _public resource_, not a purchasable commodity.  Most people
seem all too willing to cede control of it to large corporations and
the military.  Sigh.

> of use carrier class requirements and gone rapidly with a data only

I just don't get it, Phil.  No one stopped Motorola or IBM or any
other startup, small company, or large company from deploying
Mobile IP.  They just didn't do it in huge numbers.  My guess
is because they couldn't figure out a profitable business model.
How would ignoring the concerns of some customers work to encourage
other customers to use the existing protocols?

> necessarly best for the entire constituency.

More people voted for Gore, and it took massive and expensive rigging to
contravene the democratically mandated result.  But that's not wireless
networking, eh?

       ........

>>                                                If we don't make

Foot or not, I am not getting a clear idea from what's coming
out of your mouth.  How should the situation have been improved?

> others.  The IEEE is working on there own context transfer right now

Hmmm, that seems like a waste of time to me, I'll admit.

Regards,
Charlie P.