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On Friday 17 June 2011 12:23 PM, Paul Wilson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:97EFAF55E5CDD058DB80CF3D@dg.local" type="cite">Parminder,
<br>
<br>
Has anyone actually demonstrated that "something went wrong with
the Internet" in this particular regard?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Dear Paul, <br>
<br>
If the particular regard you refer to is 'IPv4 - v6' related, that
is not what my detailed comments are about at all. My comments are
about the Internet overall, as it was supposed to be, and things it
was hoped it will do. The erosion of the end to end principle was
taken as a point of departure in this regard. So well yes, the
subject line may be confusing for such a discussion. and I would
change it if this particular discussion of 'where the Internet is
headed overall' does proceed further.<br>
<br>
Regards, parminder <br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:97EFAF55E5CDD058DB80CF3D@dg.local" type="cite">
<br>
Can you explain exactly what you think has gone wrong?
<br>
<br>
Thanks,
<br>
<br>
Paul.
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
--On 17 June 2011 12:07:40 PM +0530 parminder
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:parminder@itforchange.net"><parminder@itforchange.net></a> wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
<br>
On Friday 17 June 2011 11:27 AM, parminder wrote:
<br>
<br>
Hi All
<br>
<br>
Karl provide a concise description of what is happening and what
went
<br>
wrong with the internet. This analysis is best represented in
the
<br>
following paragraph
<br>
<br>
<br>
(Quote starts)
<br>
<br>
In addition users of the net no longer view the internet as a
vehicle for
<br>
the transport of packets from one IP address to another. Rather
users
<br>
today see the internet as a bag of applications. They don't
care how the
<br>
engines underneath work as long as the applications work. In
other
<br>
words, users don't care about the end-to-end principle.
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
And since users no longer care about the end to end principle,
the user-
<br>
centric or consumer-centric world-view that almost monopolises
IG
<br>
discourse can now safely assume and assert that the end-to-end
principle
<br>
is no longer required to be pursued. The lesson for those who
think
<br>
'public interest' is merely the 'simple' sum of individual
interests is
<br>
very clear here, and I have heard of lot of IGC members
explicitly or
<br>
implicitly stress this view as an important plank of their
political
<br>
thinking. Would be eager to hear what they have to say in the
light this
<br>
apparent paradox about end to end principle and the Internet.
parminder
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
So we have to evolving forces:
<br>
<br>
A) the desire of gov'ts and others to create and regulate
choke points
<br>
into/out-from their chunks of the net
<br>
<br>
B) the the consumer-eye view of the net as a platform for
applications
<br>
<br>
These two forces combine to allow the net to evolve in a
direction many
<br>
of us do not like to think about - a kind of soft fragmentation
that I
<br>
call the "lumpy" internet.
<br>
<br>
(quote from Karl's email ends)
<br>
<br>
Apart of understanding what is happening, we are a political
advocacy
<br>
need to figure out 'what can and should be done about it'. And
in this
<br>
respect the following part of Karl's email is very instructive.
<br>
<br>
"It would be sad indeed, from the point of civil liberties and
<br>
expression, to kiss goodbye to the end-to-end principle. But
that loss
<br>
is as much due to users who view the network as applications as
to any of
<br>
the other forces - attractive toys often distract us from social
values. "
<br>
<br>
Is it not something new that 'individual users' are acting in
this way,
<br>
it is a way they or we always/ mostly behave. Not everything can
be given
<br>
the right direction and, when needed. corrected by individual
users
<br>
themselves acting independently (the techno-liberal view) or
consumers
<br>
voting through their dollars (the neo-liberal view). This also
shows the
<br>
strong overlaps of the techno-liberal and neo-liberal views in
their
<br>
practical outcome and impact, which in this case, for instance,
is that
<br>
we have nearly lost out on end-to-end principle, and the chances
of
<br>
building the Internet as really an egalitarian platform and
force, which
<br>
was the global society's hope for quite some time.
<br>
<br>
We need collective/political processes, how much ever a
techno-liberal,
<br>
instinctively hates the very term, to guide our soceities in the
<br>
direction we want it to go. The dream that the new technology
paradigm
<br>
will by itself do it for us is fast evaporating, and it is good
time that
<br>
we pulled our heads out of the proverbial sand. It is time that
we, as a
<br>
prime civil society group in the global IG arena, tries to come
up with a
<br>
sound political vision - both substantive and institutional -
for how the
<br>
Internet should serve the highest and most noble causes or
social values
<br>
that we espouse, or, in default, one will have to say, which we
think we
<br>
espouse.
<br>
<br>
<br>
parminder
<br>
<br>
<br>
On Friday 17 June 2011 04:32 AM, Karl Auerbach wrote:
<br>
<br>
On 06/16/2011 02:30 AM, Izumi AIZU wrote:
<br>
<br>
Or, what was the biggest reason/rationale not to make IPv6
compatible
<br>
with IPv4....
<br>
<br>
<br>
IPv6 had a somewhat difficult birth back in the early 1990's.
<br>
<br>
There were actually several proposals - my own favorite was a
thing
<br>
called TUBA, which was an adaptation of the ISO/OSI
connectionless
<br>
network layer. There were several aspects that were
interesting, and it
<br>
had an address that was expansible up to 160bits. The hostility
towards
<br>
ISO/OSI is still strong today - much to the detriment of the
internet -
<br>
and was much stronger back then. So TUBA sank beneath the
IETF's waves.
<br>
<br>
It was recognized back then that there were several issues in
play; the
<br>
address size was recognized as but one issue among many.
<br>
<br>
The format of the address was another - the variable size of the
TUBA
<br>
"NSAP" scared people who built routers because of the overhead
of parsing
<br>
a flexible address format.
<br>
<br>
Which leads to the big issue that IPv6 never squarely faced -
the issue
<br>
of how routing information is created, aggregated, propagated,
used, and
<br>
withdrawn on the net. As a general rule the net's routing
infrastructure
<br>
needs to be able to propagate route information faster than the
average
<br>
rate of route change. And since those days we've learned to be
a lot
<br>
more skeptical about the authenticity of routing information.
<br>
<br>
Early on there was much talk and though about IPv6 transition -
how
<br>
things might co-exist, even with intermediated interoperation of
IPv4 and
<br>
IPv6 devices. But over time the energy to have a smooth
transition
<br>
withered and left us more with a conversion from IPv4 to IPv6
rather than
<br>
a transition - the difference is subtle, conversion tends to be
a more
<br>
painful hurdle to leap than a transition.
<br>
<br>
My own personal feeling is that IPv6 is too little and too late,
that it
<br>
will hit with about the same force as ISO/OSI - which like IPv6
had the
<br>
backing of governments (GOSIP) and large companies (MAP -
General Motors,
<br>
TOP - Boeing).
<br>
<br>
We are here talking on a mailing list in which many of the
discussions
<br>
are based on a recognition of the increasing desire of
governments,
<br>
intellectual property protectors, corporations, and others to
stake out
<br>
territories for them to control.
<br>
<br>
In other words, we here are quite familiar with the fact that
there are
<br>
many forces that want to carve the internet up into fiefdoms and
draw
<br>
paywalls or tariff-walls or censorship lines around their
dominions.
<br>
<br>
In addition users of the net no longer view the internet as a
vehicle for
<br>
the transport of packets from one IP address to another. Rather
users
<br>
today see the internet as a bag of applications. They don't
care how the
<br>
engines underneath work as long as the applications work. In
other
<br>
words, users don't care about the end-to-end principle.
<br>
<br>
So we have to evolving forces:
<br>
<br>
A) the desire of gov'ts and others to create and regulate
choke points
<br>
into/out-from their chunks of the net
<br>
<br>
B) the the consumer-eye view of the net as a platform for
applications
<br>
<br>
These two forces combine to allow the net to evolve in a
direction many
<br>
of us do not like to think about - a kind of soft fragmentation
that I
<br>
call the "lumpy" internet.
<br>
<br>
Such a lumpy internet would be composed of distinct, but each
fully
<br>
formed, IPv4 (or IPv6) address spaces. Each lump would have its
own
<br>
routing infrastructure, own hierarchy, etc. If someone, like
China or
<br>
Comcast, needed more addresses than IPv4 could provide, they
could create
<br>
more lumps for themselves, each with a full 32-bit address
space.
<br>
<br>
These lumps would be connected by Application Level Gateways -
things
<br>
like web proxies. These would act as relays between the lumps.
<br>
End-to-end addressing is by names, such as URIs or twitter tags
or
<br>
whatever seems appropriate.
<br>
<br>
This may seem far fetched, but it is not unlike the way that
mobile phone
<br>
networks interconnect applications (voice being one application,
texting
<br>
be another) between competing, even hostile providers such as
AT&T and
<br>
Verizon.
<br>
<br>
(These ALGs are much like a concept I proposed back in the 1980
and that
<br>
Cisco revived a couple of years back - they are essentially the
<br>
application layer analog to layer 3 IP routers.)
<br>
<br>
Domain names would become contextual - their meaning would
depend on the
<br>
lump in which they were uttered. However, people don't like
surprises
<br>
and there would be a natural pressure for the DNS naming systems
of
<br>
different lumps to construct mechanisms or clearinghouses to
assure a
<br>
reasonable, but probably not perfect, degree of consistency,
while
<br>
allowing local/per-lump variations and extensions. Application
level
<br>
gateways might find that one of their jobs is mapping out
inconsistencies
<br>
of names between lumps.
<br>
<br>
Internet lumps have some attractive properties, at least in the
eyes of
<br>
some:
<br>
<br>
- They are "owned" so that the owner, whether that be a
country or a
<br>
corporation or a religious group, can open contact with the rest
of the
<br>
world only through guarded portals (i.e. their set of
application
<br>
gateways.)
<br>
<br>
- Those portals can be taxed, censored, data-mined as
desired. And
<br>
since application level gateways pull user-data up to the
application
<br>
layer, there is no need for deep packet inspection technologies.
<br>
<br>
- Since each lump is in itself a complete IPv4 space, there is
no need
<br>
for transition to IPv6. Each lump could give itself the entire
32-bit
<br>
IPv4 address space, just as today we each re-use the same chunks
of IPv4
<br>
private address space behind the NAT's in our homes.
<br>
<br>
- Application level gateways between lumps do not require
super-NATs,
<br>
so the 64K limit on TCP/UDP port number issues do not arise.
<br>
<br>
This not necessarily an attractive view of the future, but it is
possible
<br>
and, I believe, likely.
<br>
<br>
It would be sad indeed, from the point of civil liberties and
expression,
<br>
to kiss goodbye to the end-to-end principle. But that loss is
as much
<br>
due to users who view the network as applications as to any of
the other
<br>
forces - attractive toys often distract us from social values.
<br>
<br>
--karl--
<br>
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<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<br>
________________________________________________________________________
<br>
Paul Wilson, Director-General, APNIC
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dg@apnic.net"><dg@apnic.net></a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.apnic.net">http://www.apnic.net</a> +61 7
3858 3100
<br>
<br>
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