Subject: Re: (!) Vint Cerf designing network for solar system (!)

From: Noel Chiappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 01:16:00 -0500

> From: Vince Fuller <[email-masked]>

    > I'm surprised Noel hasn't already flagged this one - maybe he didn't
    > want to re-open this can of worms

Exactly. Been there, done that. I don't see any point to rearguing all these
points for the 17th time (especially on a list this size, with the number of
people who missed the last 16 iterations).

I do remain amused by the irony that if I hadn't pushed to get the host IP
layer changed to use a mask (in RFC-1122, IIRC, not worth the energy to look
it up) *even before we fully figured out how we were going to use it all yet*,
deploying CIDR (which is currently keeping the Internet afloat) would have
been far more of a pain.

However, the concept of adding generic mechanism intended to make your life
easier later, *once you figure out how to use it*, appears to be a lost idea
these days. (E.g. an endpoint<->locator binding table, with the binding from
one to the other fixed at connection open time for the moment, with hooks to
allow the binding to be changed once we have developed a *secure* mechanism
for so doing.)

It's always impressive how impossible things can be, once you've made up your
mind in advance that they are impossible.

	Noel

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 22:51:09 -0800

>these days. (E.g. an endpoint<->locator binding table, with the binding from

This is an important technical/architecture issue.  However as you've 
stated it, I believe it is wrong and dangerous.  It is one thing to provide 
a reasonably familiar, basic construct and leave the details for 
later.  Designing a generic mechanism, when there is no real idea how it 
will be used, can too easily lead to providing the WRONG generic mechanism.

The generic net mask mechanism was reasonable because there was already a 
pretty good idea of the way to use such a mechanism.  It's not that the 
details are trivial, but rather than the risk of not being able to work 
them out is small.

By contrast, SNMPv1 had a generic security field that turned out to be 
useless.  There was not enough experience to have a serious idea of the way 
it would/should be used, at the time it was designed.  When there was a 
serious effort at providing SNMP security, later, they had to toss out the 
original field and start over.

d/

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Dave Crocker                                         Tel: +1 408 246 8253
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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 22:51:09 -0800

d/

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From: Steve Deering <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 15:13:59 -0800

At 1:16 AM -0500 3/14/99, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> I don't see any point to rearguing all these points for the 17th time... 

But you couldn't resist the urge to stoke the arguments anyway?

> these days.

By the way, we added to IPv6 a generic mechanism for node (or possibly
finer-grain entity) identification independent of location, even though
we haven't figured out how to use it.  I'm looking forward to seeing
proposals for ways to exploit that capability from those who advocate
identifier/locator separation.

Steve

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From: Steve Deering <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 15:13:59 -0800

Steve