Subject: Re: IAB comments on Green Paper

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:32:39 -0700 (MST)

> From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>

> > >  - do the assignment of protocol numbers ourselves, not get to
> > >    choose any board members of IANAng, and have no influence.
> > 
> > Translation: status quo.
>
> No it isn't. Today the IANA and the IP address registries
> listen to the IETF about address allocation policy
> (remember CIDRD?). We would lose that.

I disagree.  From where I sat, it appeared CIDR was not driven by the IETF
but by the people running the routers.  CIDR happened despite the IETF,
and was largely a done-deal by the time arguing, shouting, and so forth
was finisehd in the IETF.  Besides, by most accounts, there was no real
technical alternative to the CIDR and non-portable addresses.  Even the
worst bureaucrats tend to do the right technical thing when there is
absolutely no alternative and when the issue is already decided by the
people running the machines.

The opportunity to Participate on the IANAng board is a fraud for the
foolish.  If this IANAng board is not worthless, it will listen to sound
technical advice from outside.  If it cannot hear answers like CIDR from
outside, then being inside would be worse than a waste of time.  Being
inside would means you would be silenced and controlled.  Us of us who
are primarily technicians instead of managers recognize the situation.
We know that if we are usually technically right, then we do not need to
be co-opted by the bureaucrats.  We can simply state the technical facts
and let history unfold.  On the other hand, if you let the bureaucrats
speak your words for you, you always lose.

> Think carefully about the IANAlite proposal that Jim Dixon
> outlined.

Think carefully about the notion of "co-opt."

Also think carefully about the continuing saga of the Clinton
administration's efforts to nationalize healthcare in the U.S.
The parallels between the two continuing histories are striking.

Donald Eastlake is right.  The only way to survive is play only the games
that really matter to you and in which you are competant.  If you succumb
to the tempation of Participating In The Process With The Big Boys, you'll
lose.  The Big Boys will feel no malice as they digest you; they won't
even remember eating you.

I was not joking about annual re-registration fees for protocol numbers.
First there will be land rushes and efforts to establish markets in the
various protocol number spaces.  Then a charitable outfit will volunteer
to level the playing field and make everything fair with nominal fees
(compared to the commercial value of the protocol numbers) and entirely
fair procedures (fair as seen by those writing the rules).  In other words,
NSI and domainnames all over again.  For example, the PPP working group
would soon be forced to rent CR and CCP numbers by people playing the same
games as were tried with the bogus patents on Van Jacobson header
compression.  Non-technical people natually and always think that it is
cheaper and much more reliable to compete by stifling or parasitizing the
competition than by inventing something better.

Actually, fees for UDP and TCP port numbers would probably happen first.
If you've been around more than a few years, you will have seen a very
large number of very low key controveries about who owns which reserved port
number.  The port number space is crying out to be 'regularized' by NSI.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 12:39:45 -0500

> The parallels between the two continuing histories are striking.

Frankly, the whole thing is enough to make me say that our answer to
the Administration should be:

"The internet is international, we are technical, and you are national
politicians and thus neither international nor technical.

We will have nothing to do with you until such time as you pass a law
requiring that we do so, at which point many of us may simply quit our
jobs and let the congressmen go out and see if they can manage to
configure BGP on a Cisco on their own. We suspect that will last about
15 to 20 minutes, after which the lynch mobs of angry users will appear."

> even remember eating you.

This is a game, actually, that we have to play, but our mistake is
trying to play by their rules.

We should simply say "no thanks. We build items that work. You create
monstrous government bureaucracies and deficits. You stick to your
specialty, and we stick to ours."

This is another phase in an ongoing international war between the
people who have been making the world increasingly tied together and
functional, and the politicians who are deadly scared that we will
make them irrelevant. Our job is to do our job -- even if that means
that we very consciously ignore what the politicians ask.

As things stand, they really have no legal right to dictate anything
to us. We've just been going along because we're too scared to pay
attention to that salient fact. Our mistake has been cooperating. We
should be making them take pilgrimages to us, rather than going in
buses to see His Majesty Mr. Magaziner.

Perry