Subject: Re: decentralization of Internet (was Re: Bruce Schneier's Proposal to dedicate November meeting to saving the Internet from the NSA

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 22:06:01 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>

    > LISP does nothing for decentralization. Traffic still flows
    > hierarchically

Umm, no. In fact, one of LISP's architectural scaling issues is that it's
non-hierarchical, so xTRs have neighbour fanouts that are much larger than
typical packet switches. In basic unicast mode, any xTR is always a direct
neighbour to any other xTR; no xTR (in basic unicast mode, at least) ever goes
_through_ another xTR to get to a third xTR. All LISP basic unicast paths
always include exactly two xTRs.

The actual detailed paths do mimic the underlying network, of course: if the
network is hierarchical, the paths will be hierarchical, but if the network
were flat, the paths would be flat. (Or is that what you meant?)

    > you add the mapping system which is naturally hierarchical and another
    > vulnerability.  

No more so than DNS; they are exactly parallel in their functional design.

	Noel

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 22:15:44 -0400

> were flat, the paths would be flat. (Or is that what you meant?)

Yup. The encapsulation is not much of an obstacle to packet examination.

> No more so than DNS; they are exactly parallel in their functional design.

Yes but DNS vulnerabilities have been covered elsewhere.

Cheers... Scott