Subject: "redesign[ing] the architecture of the Internet"

From: [email-masked] (Sean Doran)
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 01:46:23 +0100 (CET)

N.B.: I trimmed this:

| From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
| To: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
| Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked],
| 	[email-masked]
| Subject: Re: Mail sent to midcom (fwd) 
| Sender: [email-masked]

Down to this: [email-masked]

Keith Moore asserts:

| for midcom it's especially valuable, since a number of people in
| midcom seem to think that they have the right to redesign the
| architecture of the Internet.  they definitely need clue inputs 
| from elsewhere.

Keith, who does have the right to redesign the architecture
of the Internet, and under what circumstances?

This is a serious question.

	Sean.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 00:12:05 -0500

> This is a serious question.

and it deserves a serious answer.  

To make fundamental changes to the architecture of the Internet would 
affect a great many people with widely varying interests.  Such an
effort would therefore need to be done slowly and deliberately, with 
broad input, a great deal of care in its management, sound technical 
foundation, a design team or teams of *very* talented people to
evaluate multiple approaches according to previously-established
criteria, with iterated review and feedback from a wide variety of 
interests. In short, it would need to try to get at least rough 
consensus from the whole technical community.

The IPv6 effort tried to approximate this idealized process.  It
was a painful struggle.  A lot of people weren't happy with the result,
and hardly anyone is happy with all of the result.  But at least
there was an attempt to get broad input, consider a variety of 
approaches, and to craft a compromise that served the needs of a 
wide range of interests.  If we had to do another thing like this 
we might handle it better based on what we learned last time around.
But most of us hope we won't have to do something else like this
anytime soon. 

As for the circumstances, we'd have to have a shared realization
either that the old architecture could no longer serve our needs
(such as we had with IPv4) or that a new architecture would be so 
far superior to the old one that it would be worth the pain of 
development and transition.

Contrast this with the kind of effort (and there have been a few
things like this in recent years, so I'm not singling anyone out in 
particular) that says "we'll just tweak this one thing here to solve 
our immediate problem" even though this tweak creates problems for 
other interests who aren't represneted in the working group.

Keith

---

From: "Eliot Lear" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 10:23:22 -0800

> and it deserves a serious answer.

While I don't agree with Keith's phrasing or use of the word "right", I do
believe it boils down to a question I'd like to ask (and answer) in
response:

    How does the IETF assert authority to cause changes?

It does so through technical merit.  In as much as most of the standards
have technical merit, people will view the IETF as an authority.  We degrade
that authority when we allow stupid things through the standards process or
when we make statements that are excessively obvious or wrong to the
Internet community (for some definition of community).  I don't doubt for a
second that each and every AD understands this, and takes his or her role
quite seriously.

A scalable attainable (or better yet - demonstrable) technical vision is an
important part of the IETF's credibility, and our standards process is built
around it.  Such power should not be underestimated.

Even so, we as an organization have NO claim on the future of the "Internet
Architecture", whatever that is.  A small group individuals with a cute idea
can have dramatic impact, no matter what the IETF thinks.  Witness WWW and
NAT.

Eliot

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 10:59:19 -0800

>and hardly anyone is happy with all of the result.  But at least

and, in fact, the "architectural" changes were relatively minor.

that should make the possibility of major architectural changes all the 
more intimidating.

d/

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 17:10:54 -0500

> Architecture", whatever that is.  

I strongly disagree.  IETF essentially "owns" the Internet Protocol
specification and has change control over it.

> A small group individuals with a cute idea can have dramatic impact, 
> no matter what the IETF thinks.  Witness WWW and NAT.

no argument that such a group can have "dramatic impact" (for good 
or ill) but that's not the same thing as changing the architecture.

a bomb can have a dramatic impact on a building also.  but when a 
building is bombed, we don't use the word "architecture" to refer
to the rubble.

Keith

---

From: "Eliot Lear" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 10:02:26 -0800

> specification and has change control over it.

Well, I still disagree, but at least you've taken a step in the right
direction by being more specific.  Internet Architecture is an amorphous
blob.

> or ill) but that's not the same thing as changing the architecture.

Today we have transparent proxies, reverse caches, global DNS redirectors,
and all sorts of other amusing Things.  You can say they're not part of the
architecture.  But what does it mean?  They're there because the
functionality needs to be there and otherwise wasn't.  The same could be
said about NATs, as bad as they are.  Remember Ritchie's famous quote, "you
can fill a void and it could still suck"?  The fact is X is here as opposed
to something better.

Did the people at MIT have the right to write X???

---

From: Peter Deutsch in Mountain View <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 14:03:42 -0500

g'day,

Keith Moore wrote:
. . . 
> consensus from the whole technical community.

<Bwaaahhahahahah!>

Okay, I now I've gotten that out of my system, I encourage you to read
the "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" books that arose from the
BBC series of the same names. The authors brilliantly skewered the
sometimes overwhelming pomposity of both the British Civil Service and
the British Political Class who seek to manipulate the system to their
own, sometimes even benevolent, ends. Of particular relevance would be
any one of the several explanations offered up by Sir Humphrey Appleby
as to what the Civil Service would do to any idea that they regarded as
"too brave" or "radical". I'm sure that if I spent five minutes leafing
through my now somewhat tattered copies I'd find passages that were
completely in sympathy with yours. 

Keith, you lived through the OSI Wars, the explosion of the Web and the
exponential growth of the past 15 years. To now write about things being
"done slowly and deliberately" suggests that you missed something here.
The "Internet Architecture" didn't spring full blown from the brow of a
collective benevolent elite, and the role of the IETF today isn't to
preserve this legacy for all time against the infidels. It's to continue
the good work that got us here.

If the IETF really were to slow down as much as your message seems to
indicate you want it to would simply doom the organization to
irrelevance. Fortunately, there is little evidence that the group is
following your lead on this, but this is getting a little tiresome.

> wide range of interests.  

Oh, and by the  way - so far, it hasn't solved the problem it was
designed for (because it hasn't been widely adopted), is poorly
understood by people who should be using it and the market has supplied
a host of competing, sometimes crusty (and yes sometimes downright ugly)
alternatives to some subsets of the problem. This is what we have to
look forward to, if we can save "the architecture" from NATs?

BTW, the above sentiment is *NOT* intended as a slight on the many smart
people who put a lot of effort into IPv6. I just want to caution you
that your "slow and deliberate" process wont necessarily get you where
you want to go. Sadly, the real world moves too fast, and people will
tend to do what they feel is in their own best interests. Your goal
should be to harnass that energy for good. You don't do that by fiat or
commandment.

You've fought the good fight against NATs. Unfortunately, you lost.
Perhaps this is due in some small part because your fundamental approach
has been to claim omnipotence for the IETF (or, as you put it "for
IETF", what's with the missing article, anyways??). You chastize the
apostates, attempt to abrogate concepts by exercising a non-existant
moral authority supposedly due the IETF because of its past successes
and heck, now you even claim that the IETF "essentially 'owns' the
Internet Protocol specification and has change control over it". Wow...

As if the IETF can or should attempt to maintain its technical
leadership role by hiding behind intellectual property or patent law.
Boy, has anyone around here read "Animal Farm" lately? "Four Layers
Good, Seven Layers Better", anyone??

. . . 
> other interests who aren't represneted in the working group.

The bottom line is that the "IETF way" was a success more because it
embraced just such Darwinian Selection than because it embraced the
measured, slow-paced path to architectual purity you now advocate.
Nobody likes *all* of the somewhat interesting, if architecturally
implausible, organisms sometimes thrown up for consideration by the
Darwinian process. But only *some* people hate the fact that it lead to
humanity (and thus, IP! :-) Keith, you really should trust the process a
lot more than you do...

						- peterd

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Deutsch                            work email:   
[email-masked]
Director of Engineering                    private :   
[email-masked]
Content Networking Business Unit        
Cisco Systems

   "So finally Hacker proposed what Appleby had always proposed: namely,
    that they start by creating equal opportunities for both women and
    blacks. In the recruitment grades. And they drew up terms of
reference
    for an interdepartmental committee to report on methods of choosing
the
    right individuals to be civil servants, to report four years hence.
By
    which time Hacker would certainly no longer be the Minister."

                                - "Yes, Minister", pg. 373
                                   Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay
                                   ISBN: 0 563 20665 9

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 17:16:33 -0500

> can fill a void and it could still suck"?  The fact is X is here as opposed

no argument about that.  so now that these things are here and we
understand their deficiencies, let's work on something better!

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 18:05:26 -0500

Peter,

It does often seem to be the case that poorly designed short-term 
solutions to problems are adopted before well-designed things that 
work well in the long-term, particularly when the long-term solutions
come with a greater transition cost.  NATs made more sense than IPv6
for a certain subset of popular applications meeting certain criteria;
the error was in people assuming (or being misled) that these were
the only applications of interest.  Now people are proposing solutions
to the NAT problems which are more complex than IPv6, at a time when
IPv6 is becoming available "off the shelf".

The "fight" isn't "over" because the Internet continues to grow, and to 
evolve quite rapidly and probably will continue to do so for quite some 
time.  Neither NAT nor IPv6 (as we know it now) will be the terminal state.  

And while I would be the first to admit that the entire Internet
suite of protocols didn't spring fully formed from Athena's head, neither
do I buy an argument that assumes that everything worthwhile occurs
organically and that natural selection in the marketplace is the 
only force that matters.  A great deal of the success of the Internet 
is due to some good solid design in IP and TCP. These did not crop 
up at random, and they did not come from a private vendor; and they 
proved superior to competing technologies from both vendors and ISO.
And if for example OSI had won instead of TCP it is difficult to imagine 
how the web would have succeeded under such conditions.

In the physical world, bridges are designed, not discovered.  It 
requires substantial investment and usually inconvenience to build 
them; they don't just happen by accident.  But when a bridge gets too 
weak or the traffic load gets too large for it, we don't argue that 
the bridge is as Nature intended. Instead, we build a better bridge.

Keith