[8627] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: An Open Letter
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Sat Nov 27 18:38:43 1993
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 93 18:22:53 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
Larry, Thanks for your response!
> > 3. There should be no restrictions at the top.
>
> I would go so far as to say there should be no restrictions, period. I pay
> for the pipe that connects me to/from the global "IP cloud". My packets get
> to/from anybody else who is connected to the cloud.
Well, in general yes, but something like a healthcare coop network or a
radiology department network may not even want to be wide-open to the
outside. Also, the "am I a network?" problem doesn't go away without
restrictions from the top, it becomes an issue between provider and
customer, to be settled case-by-case in the market.
> A suffiently richly-connected lattice wouldn't care if Network
> A wasn't speaking to Network B; packets could cascade around B via C, D,
> E...Z, it would seem.
Maybe some of the routing guys can step in here, but it's my impression
that we're barely able to handle routing for a hierarchical structure
now. When there are many possible routes from A to B, and the poor
routers have to do all that thinking/lookup for each packet ... well
I'm glad I don't make routers.
> Well, my simplistic conceptual answer is that we should design the
> fundamental architecture of the Internet so that no one party is even ABLE
> to capriciously disrupt it...
Agreed! I just couldn't think of a way to do this within the current
state of routing technology as I understand it. ATM is coming, but
Craig Partridge (I think) commented recently about the nightmare of
mapping IP routing onto ATM. ATM likes to do phone calls ... you set
up the session (call) and all the packets go the same way. IP has the
routing divorced from anything resembling a session concept. He had
some other points too, I think.
../dick
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
