Subject: fyi: Paper: "State of the Internet & Challenges ahead "

From: ' =JeffH ' <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:04:07 -0700

Of relevance to pleanary/working group/hallway discussions of late. 

pdf available here (link to orginal .doc format below)..

http://kingsmountain.com/doc/NEC2007-OHMartin.pdf

(note that due to intra-document references in the original, the .pdf has 
"spurious" numbers interspersed in some of the text. .pdf produced by 
openoffice.)

I minorly reformated the below message for readability.

=JeffH

------- Forwarded Message

From: Steve Goldstein [[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:59 AM
To: Dewayne Hendricks; David Farber
Subject: Paper: "State of the Internet & Challenges ahead "

Olivier Martin, a long-time colleague, formerly from CERN (the  
European high energy accelerator lab in Geneva), has a fine
"State of   the Internet" preprint on his web site. Be sure to
view it in Page   Layout so that you can see the footnotes.  I
did not at first, and   missed them entirely, which was very
confusing, as there are numbered   references listed at the end
as well.

http://www.ictconsulting.ch/reports/NEC2007-OHMartin.doc

Olivier has retired, but apparently keeps busy as a consultant. 
He   was a major player in CERN networking from the very start of
things.    In the early days, CERN was the hub of European
Internet Protocol   networking, and it still is a major player
because of the HUGE amounts   of data that are generated by the
accelerators and shared globally.

State of the Internet & Challenges ahead

"How is the Internet likely to evolve in the coming decade"

To be published in the NEC'2007 conference proceedings
 (see footnote (1) below)

Olivier H. Martin (2)

ICTConsulting, Gingins (VD), Switzerland

Abstract

After a fairly extensive review of the state of the Commercial
and Research & Education, aka Academic, Internet the problematic
behind the, still hypothetic, IPv4 to IPv6 migration will be
examined in detail. A short review of the ongoing efforts to
re-design the Internet in a clean-slate approach will then be
made. This will include the National Science Foundation (NSF)
funded programs such as FIND (Future Internet Network Design) 
and GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations), European
Union (EU) Framework Program 7 (FP7), but also more specific
architectural proposals such as the publish/subscribe (pub/sub)
paradigm and Data Oriented Network Architecture (DONA).

Key words: Internet, GÉANT2, Internet2, NLR, NSF, GENI, FIND,
DONA, OECD, IETF, IAB, IGF, ICANN, RIPE , IPv6, EU, FP7,
clean-slate, new paradigms.

1 Introduction

While there appears to be a wide consensus about the fact that
the Internet has stalled or ossified, some would even say that it
is in a rapid state of degeneracy, there is no agreement on a
plan of action to rescue the Internet. There are two competing
approaches, evolutionary or cleanslate. While a clean-slate
approach has a lot of attractiveness it does not seem to be
realistic given the time constraints arising from the fact that
the IPv4 address space will be exhausted in a few years time,
despite the fact that IANA (3) (the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority) is about to allow an IPv4 "trading model" to
be created (4). Therefore, the migration to IPv6 looks
"almost" unavoidable, though by no means certain (5), as
the widespread usage of Network Address Translators (NAT) and
Application Level Gateways (ALG) is both unlikely to scale
indefinitely and/or to meet the ever evolving Internet
users" expectations and requirements. However, new ideas
arising from more radical and innovative approaches could
probably be retrofitted into the existing Internet, e.g.
self-certifying names, à la "DONA" (6). The purpose of
this paper is to raise awareness about the ongoing initiatives
with a special emphasis on technical issues and possible remedies
or solutions, it does not attempt in any way to be exhaustive as
the subject of the Internet evolution including the societal,
ethical and governance aspects are far too wide and complex to be
addressed in a single article.

_________________________________
1 http://nec2007.jinr.ru/

2 [email-masked]

3 http://www.iana.org

4 Could IP address plan mean another IPv6 delay? - Network World

5 the cost/benefit ratio is still far too high to build a
convincing business case

6 Data Oriented Network Architecture

Regards,

- --SteveG

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---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:12:48 -0700

Jeff,

With an opening sentence of:

> While there appears to be a wide consensus about the fact that the Internet
> has stalled or ossified, some would even say that it is in a rapid state of
> degeneracy, there is no agreement on a plan of action to rescue the Internet.

The document does not set a very helpful stage.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net
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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:45:53 +1300

> The document does not set a very helpful stage.

Well, try reading it before you rush to judgement. I've always
found Olivier's opinions well worth listening too.

   Brian

---

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:32:40 -0400

> found Olivier's opinions well worth listening too.

I tried reading it, but it is much more descriptive than perscriptive,
and in many places I didn't find a rationale to back up his opinions.
He also borrows a lot of material from many places, and while the web
pages are clearly marked in footnotes, in some cases it appears that
he does so without bringing in the context.  

For example, he has a diagram, "Areas of Internet Governance" which
includes in one of six clouds, "Illegal Activity: fraud, theft, child
pornography, gambling, trafficking, stalking, etc.".  Now, I don't
normally associate that (alongside Regulation, Legal Activity,
Standards, Operations, and Applications) as "areas of Internet
Governance" and he doesn't explain the meaning or the point he was
trying to make with that document.

As a result, I tried very hard to see what point he was trying to make
(and I reread the document based on your recommendations of his
opinions), but it was very hard not to dismiss him as a crank.
Perhaps a crank that had clearly mastered the game of buzzword bingo,
and with a clear bias towards circuit-switched networks with bandwidth
reservation as being far better than what the Internet currently uses,
which he calls "ossifying" and "degenerate", but I didn't see any
suggestions for how to make things better, even according to his
valuation criteria of what is good or degenerate.....

	  	      	      	   - Ted

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:31:40 +1300

Ted,

On 2008-03-21 10:32, Theodore Tso wrote:
> I tried reading it, 

Thanks...

> but it is much more descriptive than perscriptive,

True. I don't see it as a defect.

> and in many places I didn't find a rationale to back up his opinions.

Well, I think he's relying on a lot of common knowledge among
operational folk.

> trying to make with that document.

Firstly, it's still work in progress, so I'm sure he'd be glad of
your comments. Secondly, in the Internet governance meetings I have
reluctantly attended, illegal activity was a major topic. I'd agree
with you, btw, but the diagram reflects the meetings...
> reservation as being far better than what the Internet currently uses,

Way wrong. You're talking about the guy who installed the European
end of the first T1 IP link across the Atlantic and built one of the
first IXPs in Europe, to cite but two of his contributions to building
the Internet. Now, he also worked for a community that discovered that
the only way to meet its needs was to insert 10 Gb/s intercontinental
links to bypass the slow old Internet, but I assure you they run
IP packets.

> which he calls "ossifying" 

Well, for example, we haven't changed the inter-ISP routing paradigm
for the last 15 years and we haven't deployed the enlarged address
space that was defined 13 years ago...

> and "degenerate"

but we have broken addressing transparency

>, but I didn't see any

True. Let's get on with that, since it's the IETF's job.

    Brian