http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/082205johnson.html
/* ARTICLE Did the Internet/IETF governance model work? In many respects, yes. Early on, the IETF produced key protocols at a much faster clip than other network standards bodies (such as the IEEE and the ITU). Although many IETF veterans strenuously object to calling the IETF a "standards body," whatever you call it, the IETF did an outstanding job midwifing protocols and accelerating the 'Net's adoption. */ Agree and disagree. There are still many things that need to be ironed out within the IETF and so called standards. Let's take a look at some of the protocols that have been broken, remodified, rebroken (slight Bushism), patched, entirely rewritten into a new "concept", RFC, etc. I think that a body similar to the IETF would do justice, but selection of who's on first, would have to be done on a voting basis or sorts. /* ARTICLE Does the model still work? I'm not sure. In my view, the biggest concerns facing the Internet today are regulatory and operational, rather than technical. For example, how do we encourage providers to respect each other's QoS tags? Is it acceptable for providers to censor traffic for competitive advantage? Should providers be required to devote some of their revenues toward services "for the common good," such as universal Internet access? */ Model of what... Putting in an RFC, getting comments from everyone what's the saying? "Too many indians not enough chiefs" or "Too many hands in the pot spoil the stew". Anyhow, I say this looking at broken protocols that are vulnerable to all sorts of mayhem and have been broken for years because it wouldn't be in the best interest to make things right and have everyone reconfigure their networks. Granted rebuilding a backbone NAP would be a horror story, everyone points to IPv6 as a solution and how grandiose it will be, yet IPv6 ("The Secure IP!) has been broken too. Not only that how many large providers are willing to take a hit in the pockets getting everything running the way it should be run. Why should they when they could do some shoddy patchwork until the next big hit. I know I'm rambling on, but come on now NANOG'ers as the Internet government. Some of the people here are great teachers in their own right and over the years I've probably learned more from NANOG than I have from any book, RFC, professor, etc., but I also know there are plenty of crybabies, plenty of morons, and even some on the IETF who have snubbed the notion of fixing broken protocols. I say this on the basis of me contacting quite a few on the issues of BGP/SBGP, ICMP and how I could break it out of boredom. Response "Shoo fly... You don't have any certs..." or "Hush... By you releasing horribly written papers with information you're going to cause mayhem." And other things along those lines. /* ARTICLE So what should we do? One answer is to call in the federal government. I'm not a huge fan of government regulation; it can be better than the alternatives, but regulation tends to slow down an industry's rate of innovation. Moreover, the Internet is international, so whose federal government would we turn to as the referee? Yet waiting for the free market to answer these questions doesn't seem to be working, either. */ Problems with selecting people from any company or government are "agendas". Who is to say that someone could be trusted from say taking a nice little payout to hush up on a problem. Not making an accusation lest someone at Cisco want to bore me with the threat of a lawsuit, but who is to be certain that even if some body was selected, you wouldn't have to worry about the big boys in industry paying to tweak "the Internet" to their liking. What if say Cisco (who has this huge issue their trying their best to cover up), greased the pocket of those in this body to quash the notion of Cisco having broken routers. Aside from that, what standards would this body set? Ten Commandments of the Interweb i. Thou shall route thy competitors packets fairly ii. Thou shall not install network analyzers without international warrants iii. Thou shall not allow evil traffic to pass through ones routes iv. Thou shall give access to any authority figure with or without warrants v. Thou shall maintain route tables vi. Honor thy NEIGHBOR_AS vii. Honor thy Backbone viii. Thou shall not null route thy neighbor ix. Thou shall play fairly with VoIP carries even whenst thine own's ILEC/CLEC loss revenue x. Thou shall remember all routes and AS's /* ARTICLE Call it the International Association of Networking Service Providers (IANSP). */ What about "Yet Another Acronym to Add in Some Dictionary That No One Will Respect in the Morning" (YAAASDTNOWRM) =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo GPG Key ID 0x97B43D89 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x97B43D89 It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. -- Niklaus Wirth