Subject: RE: Palladium (TCP/MS)

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 08:54:19 -0700

> The IETF is explicitly named in one of the 2 links. And suppose that the
> majority of PC users connected to the Internet stop using TCP/IP and
> replace it with TCP/MS... What would be the role of the IETF in such a
> picture? What kind of influence would the IETF have on µ$oft? What if
> TCP/IP just disappears? Don't WE have to be afraid of an Internet under
> one private monopolistic control?

Your fears appear to be based more on emotions than facts. To the best of my knowledge, the TCP/IP stack that ships in Windows conforms to the IETF standards and interoperates with the stacks that ship on other platforms -- it is certainly meant to. Several Microsoft employees participate to the IETF, volunteering a sizable amount of their time. Microsoft itself has a history of working with the IETF, including providing financial support to the RFC editor through ISOC. 

-- Christian Huitema

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From: "Haren Visavadia" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 18:37:42 +0100

If Microsoft can not produce secure products, what chance is there of
them producing a secure protocol?

IETF is more experienced than Microsoft at producing protocols.

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From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:48:46 -0700

Christian Huitema wrote:

> Your fears appear to be based more on emotions than facts. To the best 
> of my knowledge, the TCP/IP stack that ships in Windows conforms to 
> the IETF standards and interoperates with the stacks that ship on 
> other platforms -- it is certainly meant to. Several Microsoft 
> employees participate to the IETF, volunteering a sizable amount of 
> their time. Microsoft itself has a history of working with the IETF, 
> including providing financial support to the RFC editor through ISOC. 

Christian, most of this note sounds like an apology of the form 
"Microsoft is Okay because we give to charity", not because they do the 
right thing.  If Microsoft is doing development on enhancements to the 
stack, this organization has good reason not to trust the results, based 
on past experience (i.e., Kerberos).

Eliot

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From: "Stephen Sprunk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 08:52:17 -0500

Thus spake "Eliot Lear" <[email-masked]>
> on past experience (i.e., Kerberos).

OTOH, does anyone have any evidence Microsoft is attempting to "embrace and
extend" at or below the transport layer?  This smells like a reporter's
paranoia.

Microsoft's application protocols (e.g. CIFS aka NetBIOS, Kerberos) are
certainly problematic, but I've heard no complaints about their IP stack in
several years.

S

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From: Måns Nilsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 16:25:39 +0200

--On Tuesday, October 22, 2002 08:52:17 -0500 Stephen Sprunk
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> certainly problematic, but I've heard no complaints about their IP stack
> in several years.

Also, this entire paranoia stems AFAICT from the fact that it in XP (as
opposed to earlier Windows releases) is possible to open raw sockets. Wow,
what a security problem. 

-- 
Måns Nilsson    http://vvv.besserwisser.org

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From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 08:40:15 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "Stephen Sprunk" <[email-masked]>

> ...

Is PPP below transport?  Some of us have memories of fun and games
in the PPP working group, abeit several years old.

Every outfit is vulnerable to the tempation to embrace-and-extend.
Organizations such as Microsoft that are exceptionally provincial and
unable to conceive of the possibility of networks that don't look like
a single, large, well controlled corporate network are particularly
vulnerable.  (Recall the many mechanisms above TCP in Microsoft products
that are almost criminal in the Internet but that might be good ideas
inside the safety of big corporate networks.)

An organization like Microsoft that has formally endorsed the idea
and has a history of embracing-and-extending above transport and in
non-network products cannot be expected to avoid the tactic below
transport should it ever appear profitable, no matter how much it
gives to charities including the ISOC and IETF.

Again, other big organizations (specifically including Cisco) are not
above embracing-and-extending out of ignorance, provincialism, and
failures to bother to do interoperability testing (possible causes of
the Microsoft PPP hassles) if not malice.  

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: Chris Evans <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:37:48 -0800

access-list 100 deny ip 207.46.230.218 0.0.0.0 12.246.56.92 0.0.0.0 gt 1
access-list 100 permit ip any any

oh well.  :)

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From: Robert Moskowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:59:25 -0400

>the Microsoft PPP hassles) if not malice.

Do not attribute to malice that what comes from management decisions.

Robert Moskowitz
Senior Technical Director
ICSA Labs
	(248) 968-9809
Fax:	(248) 968-2824
[email-masked]

There's no limit to what can be accomplished
if it doesn't matter who gets the credit