Subject: Re: How the IPnG effort was started

From: "John Loughney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 13:43:02 +0200

One question.  Governments don't assign street adresses at birth, why would they assign IP addresses? IP addresses are addresses, not Internet Identifiers.

John

------------------- Original message -------------------
Subject: Re: How the IPnG effort was started
From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Time: 11/20/2004 5:13 am

On 19:10 19/11/2004, Kurt Erik Lindqvist said:
>I have long thought that the knowledge of having long (life-long)
>persistent, well-spread unique personal identifiers are bad was general
>knowledge. Then again, I guess the US biometric stuff has proven me
>wrong on that already.

I am not sure I understand the English of this remark. I suppose you mean 
that you thought if everyone known a user 's persistent number the user 
would be worried? If this is the case, it only makes my points that IETF 
lacks market studies and reporting from the end-users. This a general 
demand that Telephone companies hesitated to provide due to the complexity 
until mobiles came in. Now it is a simple common demand to have on fixed 
lines the same features as on mobiles (permanent and temporary numbers).

This does not mean that you are bound to a single number, the same you are 
not bound to a single mobile. Let not think "the users should do it the way 
I think", but "I am to permit the users to do it the way I never thought 
they would do it", because it is generally the way these people behave ....

Does this respond your remark?

>I am going for the sake of argument to go along with your reasoning
>above (although I don't agree). Apparently there is something here to
>be gained, as we need to 'promote' a particular technology that is
>under control of intergovernmental treaties. First of all, what would
>the sales pitch be? I am seriously interested, and as you are arguing
>for this model you must have an answer. Second, if I understand you
>correctly above, you are implying this is not a 'free service' today,
>while it would be under the ITU, sanctioned by governments. Correct? In
>your view, how would allocations of IP addresses and ports, and
>protocol numbers be made? Last, how would a address policy process look
>like under the ITU and international treaties?

OK. Until this threat I was embarrassed because I thought that "real world 
evidences" were too far away from IPv6 designers. When Quite - and Aaron 
confirmed - said that IPv6 was IPv4 with larger addresses, I started 
thinking that we could make it, even with NATs which belong to the IPv4 
world. Let consider what is new in IPv6 and where are the problems.

We have several propositions :
- IPv6=IPv4+longer addresses
- NGN is many things needing long addresses (may be /256) using IP as their 
core (ITU)
- IETF is accustomed to small ISP operators, the rest of the world 
deregulates big Telcos.
- there are 800 millions of Internet users and 1.3 billions of mobile owners.

NGN shows that the world (in general) is not opposed to the IP technology. OK.
Web deployment and mobiles show that the users have developed a brainware 
where names and numbers have their different roles which are not far from 
their technology purpose and that people know how to play with them. OK.
Everyone agrees that we need more addresses; so everything seems fine. 
Except that it does not catch. Why ?

I think it does not catch, because this is the old IPv4 model, that it 
still relies on ISPs and that if addresses are longer they still are far 
too short. Because they are managed by RIRs who have no societal and no 
political power. But mainly because we consider the wrong product: no one 
is interested in the Version 6 of the IP protocol. There are a lot of 
people interested in the management and political capacity to manage /128 
long addresses.

The real product is the addressing plan. And the reasons why no one is 
excited are that:

- these addresses are managed "a la IPv4", as a unique Vint Cerf's/ICANN 
numbering area. This is what they want to correct with ITU. I submit there 
is no conflict. IPv6 has 6 different numbering plans. Let say that 001 is 
for the US Vint's legacy and 011 for international. That Vint can manage 
the 001 area and the ITU the 011 area. This is status quo.

- now, the way ITU wants to manage the international digital address 
numbering plan is in using DCC (or the like). (DCC is data country code). 
The same as there are ccTLDs in naming. So Frank has no problem for his 
SOPAC islands. They are entitled as many addresses as others. Does that 
change anything for the RIRs and the routing? No, this is simple address 
management.

- the way the countries will manage their numbering space is up to them. 
But if I refer to the telephone solutions, my guess is that many will 
differentiate routing and addressing in a very simple way (and this is 
certainly what the ART (French FCC) wants to hear about - because this is 
what users want : IP addresses are to be independent from the ISP). This 
means that they will allocate national IDs that you will be able to use as 
a NetworkID or as a UserID. And you will probably get the UserID for free 
at birth or creation, probably additional ones on a small fee and you will 
pay for the routing to your NetworkID.

How does that fit into a /128? Very simply. The final global network 
address will result from the concatenation (probably described in 0-Z 
numbering) of :

- a numbering plan header (like 011) + may be one or two additional digits 
to qualify plans, documentation, anycast, multicast, and he type of 
service/network (like telephone, Internet, TV, Radio, Posts, etc. )
- DCC+national number as a Network ID. Global routing is made at this level.
- DCC+national number as a UserID. Network local routing is made on that one.
- users interfaces.

This means that when I subscribe to a network or another I will keep my 
same UserID in each network, but my number starts with the NetworkID of the 
access provider. So, if I concatenate the traffic of several ISP this makes 
no problem. I can even pay these ISP on the basis of the datagrams they 
carried. A mobile changing from network will be easily followed. The /128 
address of my French mobile when I travel in Korea will be will be 
011xx+KoreanISP+FrenchID. No different from having jefsey.com, jefsey.org, 
jefsey.net.

This means that everyone has an address for his web/mail, for broadcasting 
TV or cognitive radio, etc. You can discuss international agreements, 
establish treaties on content, on address-back (feed back on an address?) 
payment authentication, establish usage warranties and insurances, etc, 
etc. We are in regalian (Government role) business.

Obviously there are objections. And these objections are what has to be 
worked on to sell "IPv6".

0. there is no more way to make money worldwide because I have been given 
an Excel table to fill. IDs will be allocated by Govs the way they want. 
What will be paid to RIR, NIR or LIR will be their real service with QoS 
control. This calls probably for a new economic model.

1. there is no room enough in /64 as actually (if I understand well) /128 
addresses are just /32 addresses extended to /64 with a user subaddress 
payload. User addresses will probably requires /80 or /96. Less than half 
in the routing tables. But structuring may permit clever thinking.

2. there are much more needs to address virtual objects than just computer 
ports. So wee need to establish a numeric root of the numbering schemes 
accessible through the network, to give them an addressing capacity (this 
is what we called the Uninum proposition) of an unlimited size (their 
purpose is not necessarily to number network entities, but to number 
entities which can be reached through the network). They may eventually be 
supported by numeric names. These addresses will become more and more 
important as unique lingual and time independent references. But this is 
another aspects of the changes we needs.

I rushed this. I hope it is clear enough.
jfc

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---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:08:55 +0100

On 12:43 20/11/2004, John Loughney said:
>One question. Governments don't assign street adresses at birth, why would 
>they assign IP addresses? IP addresses are addresses, not Internet Identifiers.

Dear John,
apart from a general analysis confusion between what is a "name" and what 
is an "address" (which may concern users as well as objects), and an 
obvious US nexus of the IETF analysed in RFC 3774, which too often leads 
the debate to be based on US examples only (i.e. on 1/192 of the number of 
the world's legal cultures and technical and commecial experiences - look 
at the US only comments on ISDN). But even in the USA each citizen has a 
SSN. Even in the USA streets are given a name, and houses a nr.

The confusion comes from a lack of anlysis of the real world, of a good 
model that everyone will accept, understand and use. So the same concepts 
are discussed with the same consistent and complete understanding. This 
threat is a very good example of this: arguments, concerns, propositions, 
proposed solutions mixes marketing, sales, political, technical, societal 
elements.

But most of all the main point here is the users demand. The IETF should 
not want to address its own questions, but to permit the users to use the 
network the way they will actually want to use it (which in general is NOT 
the way IETF meant it - or there would be no NAT, there would be a 
unviversal use of IPv6, no P2P, etc.). No updated road-map négotiated with 
the "users" (developers, manufacturers, operators, governments, end-users, 
applications specifiers, in 6000 different languages, millions of different 
local, coporate, community, familly, trade, cultural authorities, etc.).
jfc

---

From: "Stephen Sprunk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:06:42 -0600

Thus spake "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
> SSN. Even in the USA streets are given a name, and houses a nr.

The SSN analogy isn't perfect; technically US citizens aren't required to 
have an SSN, and a million or so do not.

Street names and numbers are a perfect example of what we're discussing, 
though; do you propose that we completely redesign the mail and road system 
such that people can take their addresses with them when they move?  That's 
exactly what you're talking about doing to IP.

> model that everyone will accept, understand and use.

No, you're the only one that's confused.  The IETF has a well-defined model 
and definitions for names and addresses, and you are willfully ignoring 
those definitions to hide the fact your arguments make no sense.

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

---

From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Nov 2004 20:19:18 +0000

let me apologize in advance.  it's saturday here and i'm behaving offtopicly.

> One question.  Governments don't assign street adresses at birth, why
> would they assign IP addresses? IP addresses are addresses, not Internet
> Identifiers.

well, here in the land of the PATRIOT act, there's been some discussion of
taking a DNA sample at birth and keeping it on file.  a one-way hash of the
numerical analysis of the sample would make a very unique value.  think of
it as the human equivilent of ethernet's 48-bit MAC address.  don't laugh,
this kind of thing plays really well in "the red states" where the executive
branch of the U.S. government is trusted beyond any possible reproach.

128 bits ought to be just about right.  so, ipv6 may yet come into vogue.
-- 
Paul Vixie