From: Bob Frankston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: May 21, 2007 12:54:58 PM EDT
Am I missing something but this seems to hark back to the days of making the network smarter and the users dumber. Why do we assume that the most interesting applications require dedicated resources? Is this about Hollywood or about sharing information? Now we want the network to guarantee security are we so desperate for peace of mind that wed rather return to the past then deal with reality? Reminds me of the peace of mind that people find in Intelligent Design. Id feel far more comfortable if GENI funded efforts to understand connected applications rather than trying to make a smarter network or a new communications infrastructure built alongside the Internet as if the Internet were a physical object not a concept. Alas, this slicing up the substrate into predefined managed middles sounds like just the opposite of the defining concept of the end-to- end Internet. It makes the applications dependent upon highly valuable assured bits which is a return to the world of the center- defined telephone system. By assuring dependency it breaks the fundamental dynamic that has made the Internet work so well. In todays Internet (prototype) applications are not dependent upon any particulars of the path and thus we've been able to take advantage of an abundance of "junk bits". What is glaringly absent from all these efforts is supporting the Internet at the edge or, more to the point, from the edge. The networks in our homes must operate completely without any dependency on any part of the network outside -- thus you cannot rely on an IP address allocation or the DNS if you are to send a message from your light switch to your light fixture. You can then interconnect your network to your neighbors networks without depending on any network elements from others. And eventually you will connect the world without any dependency upon the benevolence of ICANN or ARIN and you will not depend on the DNS for stability. Yet all this research seems to be going in just the opposite direction and is assuring that the applications will be fatally dependent upon a synthetic and sterile version of the real world. The real world exists, the P2P and other communities have embraced it. But the real Internet is far too frightening to those who want to buy solutions to well-defined problems. Better to defang it and assure that only good applications will be funded and that it will be the 1950's again with The Internet Company assuring the proper allocation of resources for each application. Whats the difference between TIC and TPC? Remember that a BBN spinoff Genuity bet the company on selling high value bits and it lost the bet. If our military thinks that this is good design then we have every reason to be very afraid. From: Lauren Weinstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: May 21, 2007 2:32:21 PM EDT I'm not sure that Bob's concerns about GENI specifically are entirely justified, but he's certainly correct about the overall trends. There's scarce interest among the corporate or governmental elite (to the extent that these are distinct categories) for the end-to-end Internet with users in control. In fact, the push is in exactly the opposite direction, both for income stream maximization and for societal "management" (the latter will typically be termed "security," "war on terror," and/or "protecting our children." The end-to-end Internet is an amusement that the communications giants and global governments were willing to let develop so long as it didn't interfere with established agendas. Now that the Internet as we know it is a real threat to the status quo, the push to "evolve" to something more controllable is in full swing. The dream of such proponents of an "under our thumb" Internet: Every bit controlled. Every bit tracked. Every application certified. Uncertified end-to-end applications strangled. Every connection and packet tappable. Every user fully identified. All data recorded. All data retained. Love Big Brother. This will take time of course, and might still be prevented. But by and large, folks like us who keep pushing for end-to-end Internet user control rather than central control are viewed as increasingly irritating and perhaps even dangerous dinosaurs. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren From: "Zegura, Ellen Witte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: May 22, 2007 3:33:53 AM EDT Ive seen the IP thread about GENI that was prompted by yesterdays announcement that BBN will be the GENI Project Office (GPO). Along with Scott Shenker, I am helping lead the GENI Science Council (GSC), the group that represents the research community that will make use of the GENI facility. I wanted to respond to a few parts of Bobs message. Primarily, I wanted to make clear that GENI is a facility for experimenting with new Internet architectures, not a proposal to BE the new architecture. The reason for slicing is to allow multiple experiments to run on the same physical resources at the same time. The slices are managed so that experimenters dont step on one another during the testing phase. There are other funding programs in NSF that will fund the research on alternative architectures and ideas that can be tested in the GENI facility. These include the FIND program, and many other networking and distributed systems programs. Of course, one could propose that GENI itself be the new architecture and surely some will -- and then folks like Bob and others could reasonably debate the wisdom of that. Were not there yet, though, and its important to keep the distinction between GENI as a facility and GENI as a proposed new architecture. With respect to the suggestion that money would be better spent on research that improves our understanding of how to operate well from the edge, I guess I view that as complementary. GENI is likely to support experiments that modify edges and use a standard IPv4 or v6 core, perhaps with instrumentation inside the network that would allow more insight into what helps edge-controlled apps work better. Ellen From: Bob Frankston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: May 22, 2007 4:50:28 PM EDT Ill admit that much of this is an expression of my own frustrations as I try to explain why Internet Inc is the wrong model just as I try to explain why broadband is the anti-Internet. I see GENI as a symptom of incrementalism even though its just a funding mechanism for research. I realize that it is not really supposed to be the next Internet but nonetheless it is filling that role by being a focus of Internet research. I don't blame the sponsors for the hype but it's still useful to take a look at it as a proxy for the idea that we should look at the network architecture rather than at how we use connectivity. Im also biased towards solutions that empower the individual rather than institution be they corporations or governmental agencies. If there indeed equivalent from the edge efforts I would like to know about them. For now Im treating GENI is the face of Internet research whether or not its meant to be. Its a useful foil for contrasting the network-centric approach to alternative approaches. If GENI is indeed "a facility for experimenting with new Internet architectures" then the absence of the null case is telling. This is not necessarily the fault of those sponsoring GENI or other such efforts except as a reminder of the lack of funding for approaches that aren't as well-defined. I've been arguing that the Internet has been defined by the end-to- end argument as a constraint -- that is, the inability to depend on any particular architecture. Attempts to improve the architecture with smart protocols like multi-casting and to extend it with V6 have been problematic while P2P approaches have met with wide spread adoption. These P2P efforts are the real inheritors of the Internet's End-to-End constraint. What most concerns me is the seeming lack of this defining constraint in the research efforts. It leads to efforts to solve complex problems like phishing and scaling in sterile environments that can't exhibit these problems. There seems to be a presumption that issues like security can be addressed in a physical architecture of a network. I cited the light switch/fixture problem because it seems so trivial yet demands a solution that does not depend on the network as a solution-provider. All we can presume is two consenting devices that might be able to exchange messages. To be more precise one can indeed assume a network of services but what makes this problem so interesting is that it arises because I have not permitted myself to take advantage of the overwhelming temptation to rely on network services and thus we can decouple the system elements. Such solutions are not only able to exhibit Moore's law effects they are also more stable. My own "research" consisted of trying to do projects such as home control (and, while at Microsoft, working with Honeywell and Intel to (unintentionally) learn what doesn't work). It's the same kind of constraint that I used for home networking (no installers or service providers) which arose from my experience with personal computing. I remember efforts like Project Athena failing to "get" personal computing. I don't think I'm too cynical to observe that well-defined experiments on a network test bed are very appealing to those who need to have fundable projects with deliverables. Congressional scrutiny of funding almost requires local justification of each step while efforts to improve connectivity at the edge are too-easily treated as threatening by those who associate P2P with a loss of control. The question then is where is the effort to solve problems in making use of whatever transport is available to do our own networking and to create solutions at the edge. Problems like phishing cannot be solved inside the network nor can they be "solved" in a closed sense. I also argue that efforts to solve scaling problems in a test bed fall into what I consider the trap of trying to solve a problem instead of seeing the opportunity in solutions already available. Compositing local connectivity when we can assume abundant capacity is very different from presuming scarcity with a single entity can manage the complex routing through chokepoints. Why aren't we asking why we can't take advantage of the full capacity of the available fiber (and other transports) rather accepting this synthetic scarcity and reveling in the complex algorithms necessary to work around it? How do we support projects that aren't as amenable to closed solutions but are still vital? This is a nontrivial question and, perhaps, we have to rely on by-product of the effective marketplaces. This is why individuals can create P2P solutions without organizational funding but such funding helps in doing professional solutions as weve seen with Skype and from Firefoxs challenge in scaling the effort. That leaves a lot of problems, like phishing, seemingly orphaned because its not as amenable to solutions in isolation. --------------------------------------------------------------- WWWhatsup NYC http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.isoc-ny.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
