[148] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Smoke and Flame
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent England)
Tue Nov 13 10:47:45 1990
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 10:33:00 est
From: kwe@buitb.bu.edu (Kent England)
To: amanda@visix.com, com-priv@psi.com
>
> Has it occurred to anyone that the current "policies" about connectivity
> and traffic seem to require The Thought Police in order to be effectively
> implemented? What is wrong with this picture?
>
> --Amanda
>
Well, yes, Amanda, it has occurred to many of us. What is
wrong is that the policies are unenforceable and those who are
expected to apply the policies (network managers and end users) have
no mechanisms to apply requisite policies.
The need to apply policies is very real and unavoidable.
Government agencies which subsidize networking are accountable for the
way in which they spend their money. I wouldn't want it any other
way.
But when we moved to an Internet with multiple subsidizing
agencies and commercial networking interests and when we take another
look at accountability and resource management, we threaten to stand
the Internet protocol design policies on their collective ears.
Suddenly, we have many policies to enforce where once we had but one
(DARPA). With but one policy, you need no policy mechanism (except to
decide on eligibility to connect).
TCP/IP was originally designed for robust connectivity.
Almost no thought was given to policy based routing and resource
management, naturally. It was "First come, first served" and the
network would do its utmost to deliver traffic with no guarantees.
TCP/IP in the current context needs vastly different design
imperatives which could not have been anticipated during the initial
design. Policy based routing and resource allocation and management
in routers are called for.
Or are they? Are we are at a crossroads? We can take the
Internet totally commercial overnight and hope that that eliminates
the need for resource management and accounting, or we can accept the
fact that we are in a new world and develop protocols that work in
that world.
Personally, I think we need robust protocols that also allow
for fine grained management of network resources. When you look at
the needs of the voice network (anticipating integrated services
networking at high bandwidth) and integrate video, you come to the
conclusion that resource reservation is required. Stateful routers?
Heavens, it's a culture shock for most. But it makes life more
interesting and that is a plus.
--Kent
