[1531] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Alternate routing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (yakov@watson.ibm.com)
Wed Oct 23 18:02:08 1991
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 18:01:08 EDT
From: yakov@watson.ibm.com
To: com-priv@psi.com
Folks,
During recent days we had rather interesting (at least to me)
discussion on this mailing list. We've been discussion ToS,
source-sensitive routing, commercial versus non-commercial,
etc...
In an attempt to clarify all the complexities we have to deal
with, I would suggest that before proceeding further, we need
absolutely clear understanding of the following four items:
1. What is the problem we have to solve.
Once we have clear understanding of the problem, we
need to look at possible solutions.
2. What are the possible solutions to the problem.
It might be desirable to consider more than one
alternative.
3. Once we have a list of candidate solutions, each
individual solution needs to be evaluated with respect
to its cost versus benefits.
4. If a proposed solution impose additional burden,
who are the participants that have to share the burden ?
I think that comparatively little attention had been
paid to (1) (unless source-sensitive routing, or QoS sensitive
routing IS the problem). IMHO discussing (2) without (1) is equivalent
of presenting a solution that looks for a problem.
I also think that we need to do very good work in (3) before
making any decision. We need to keep in mind, that the Internet
is a production environment, NOT appropriate for experiments.
Cost versus benefits assessment may be quite handy for
the "cost versus benefits assassination" of some potential
solutions.
With respect to (4) it is important to distinguish between
two different scenarios: in the first case only the organisations
that need to solve a problem share the burden associated with
the solution to the problem; in the second case other organisations,
who care less about a problem of a particular organisation
need to share the burden associated with the solution to the problem.
At the extreme, in the former case a problem of a SINGLE organisation
may require a solution that will put burden on ALL of the
participants.
Yakov.
