Subject: Internet standardisation remains unilateral

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 14:58:34 +0200

What did they say, in the movie Apocalypse Now? "I like the smell of
the troll in the morning"?

http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_standardisatio.pdf

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:08:43 -0400

> http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_standardisatio.pdf

Oh my.  Louis Pouzin is quite a long way from being a troll:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pouzin

He invented the datagram...

I think his slides do miss some essential points, but that it's a case 
of correct numbers producing incorrect recommendations.

So his suggestion to submit to national standards bodies represent a 
very reasonable desire for broader participation, albeit down a path I'd 
expect to be counter-productive.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:30:30 -0400

--On Monday, October 21, 2013 14:58 +0200 Stephane Bortzmeyer
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> What did they say, in the movie Apocalypse Now? "I like the
> smell of the troll in the morning"?
> 
> http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/
> uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_
> standardisatio.pdf

Do you have any idea what Slide 8 is about?  Some of the entries
make no sense to me at all.

    john

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:30:09 +0200

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 09:08:43AM -0400,
 Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote 

> He invented the datagram...

Some people say it is Leonard Kleinrock. I welcome any precise
references on the history of the datagram, specially if they are
accessible online (whuich is rare for scientific papers of this
time). Anyway, the fact that someone did something great X years ago
(he also wrote the first shell and built Cyclades) does not mean he
cannot troll today.

> I think his slides do miss some essential points, but that it's a
> case of correct numbers producing incorrect recommendations.

Fair summary. His remark about the use of english is a good
example. Is it a problem? Yes? Can anyone see a solution? No (and he
does not suggest one).

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:37:46 +0200

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 09:30:30AM -0400,
 John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 19 lines which said:

> Do you have any idea what Slide 8 is about?

No, I don't and that's one of the reasons I used the term
"troll". Pouzin often mentions "problems with Unicode" but he never
documented them in detail.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:17:32 +0800

I'd say it is a pretty biased presentation. History of the Internet has an impact… current situation is getting more balanced… you should count continents, not individual countries from EU against all of US… most international organisations work on some language… in most organisations people need time and money to participate... and I don't see a lot of undue influence from any direction in our current work.

This is not to say that we shouldn't work hard on making the IETF more diverse and more geographically distributed, more easy for everyone to attend, lead by a more diverse set of people - we should. But not because of this presentation.

Jari

---

From: Jelte Jansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:24:14 +0200

> make no sense to me at all.

It's a bit unfair to discuss the slides without the accompanying talk,
but if I'd have to guess I'd say it is an offtopic critique of the
problems of whois databases (on the one hand that they contain personal
data, on the other hand that they tend to be incomplete and not as well
maintained as one might hope), and the well-discussed problems of
unicode and IDNA.

It doesn't seem like they are examples of the original problem
statement. But, again, one would need to have the full context of the
presentation to be sure.

Jelte

---

From: Jorge Amodio <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:34:16 -0500

He is right that the USA and perhaps other developed countries dominate the
Internet standardization process but there is a good reason why and that
when I talk with people from developing countries like mine (Argentina)
they don't are able yet to understand that blaming the "north" is not the
solution and what they need to do is to gets hands on into the issue and
develop/implement reasonable policies to have more participation in the
process.

Obviously there is a lot of participation from people from the USA or
working for US companies, full time or almost full time participation in
the IETF process requires for the participant to have a sponsor, after all
she/he still needs to live in a decent place, feed her/his family and pay
the bills, and have some security for retirement in the long term, plus pay
for the trips, etc, etc.

US companies (and sometimes the government) know very well that it has a
lot of strategic value for the company, and the country, to sponsor such
type of individuals. I doubt that Vint Cerf, Halald Alvestrand (which btw
is from Norway not the USA), and many others, are part of the daily grind
working at Google and punching time cards, but Google recognizes and value
having such type of individuals embedded in the development of the
Internet, and they have big pockets to fund them.

The issue is that the knuckleheads in charge in other parts of the world
don't get yet to understand that if they want to be part of the process
they have to invest in it, and particularly sponsor skilled and capable
individuals so they can dedicate most of their time and brain to it and not
worry about how they will pay the bills at the end of the month or if they
will have a job next week, and for sure they will have to compete for
talent with US based companies.

So for the knuckleheads stop whining and do something ...

My .02
-J

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:14:10 -0400

> http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_standardisatio.pdf

I think it is counter productive to label opinions you find unpleasant
'troll'. That implies that the only reason the views are raised is to
provoke a pointless argument.

In this case the slides were directed at a different audience entirely so
accusing the author of trolling the IETF is discourteous and insulting and
the accusation should be withdraw.

The view of the IETF described is very common outside the US and the IETF.
You may disagree with that view but it is foolish to label a commonly held
view 'troll'.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:20:43 -0400

On 2013-10-21, at 11:14, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I think it is counter productive to label opinions you find unpleasant 'troll'. That implies that the only reason the views are raised is to provoke a pointless argument.

I don't think Stephane was labelling an opinion a troll. I think he was labelling the source of the opinions a troll.

Joe

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:38:18 -0400

>references on the history of the datagram, specially if they are

No, Kleinrock claims to have invented packet switching, not the 
datagram.  There was an article before his death by Donald Davies, 
who looked quite closely at the claims that Kleinrock invented packet 
switching as well as Baran and Davies.  I have read Kleinrock's 
thesis which is the source of the claim and I don't see it.  Davies' 
very fair article did not see it either.

>(he also wrote the first shell and built Cyclades) does not mean he

I have contended that whether or not you see packet switching as a 
breakthrough depends largely on how old you are?  ;-)  People of the 
period from a more telecom background see the idea of breaking data 
into small pieces (remember message switching systems already 
existed) as a radical idea.  If you were a little younger and your 
background is in computing, then packet switching in obvious.  From a 
computer person's point of view, if the problem is posed of 
communicating between computers, the solutions is clear:  The data is 
in a buffer, pick it up and send it.  What else would you do?  ;-)

Pouzin's insight was that the packets should be routed independently 
and not all follow the same path.  Furthermore, Louis' reasoned that 
no matter how good the network was, the hosts would check to make 
sure that everything got there.  Hence, he reasoned the network did 
not have to do a perfect job, but only make a "best effort" and that 
an end-to-end transport protocol would ensure reliability.   You 
won't find any of this in Kleinrock's thesis.  All of this was 
implemented in CYCLADES in 1972 (and is well documented in many 
papers which are on-line and in subsequent histories).  The original 
ARPANET did not work this way, although Type 3 messages (datagrams) 
were added later.  (I have always found it interesting that every 
project taken on by Baran and Larry Roberts after 1970 were all 
connection-oriented, none were based on the datagram concept.)  The 
real revolution here is that Pouzin took communications from a 
deterministic model of connection-oriented to a stochastic model of 
datagrams.

For me, this shift in thinking comes in two stages that I liken to 
what we saw in geology:   Some people came up with a new idea, packet 
switching (continental drift) and after looking at it, it was refined 
to the datagram concept (plate tectonics).  While from a distance we 
often see these changes as sudden and complete in one big insight 
they seldom are.

Pouzin is one of the best thinkers I know.  You may not like what he 
says, but even now he is far from being a troll.  His hit rate 
exceeds most of us!  ;-)

>example. Is it a problem? Yes? Can anyone see a solution? No (and he

More on this after reading some more.

Take care,
John Day

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 17:53:19 +0200

On 10/21/2013 04:34 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
> Halald Alvestrand (which btw is from Norway not the USA)

This illustrates part of the problem.

It depends on the type of argument you want to make and then you count 
people different. You count Harald as someone who comes from Norway. The 
author of the slide deck wanted to make a different argument and so he 
sees Harald as a person working for Google, as US-based company.

We had the same issue in the diversity discussion.

Ciao
Hannes

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:58:44 -0400

From my experience over the years, I would generalize this that the 
developed world has dominated the standards process in this field, 
whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others.  Most of 
that has to do with the expense involved in participating.  Since the 
1990s, the ability to participate on-line has done a lot to lower 
that barrier and we see that.  At one point IEEE was considered a US 
professional organization and all of their standards were run through 
ISO.  Some still are.

It still takes time for countries to "come up to speed" and do we 
really have any idea how many are watching but contributing 
infrequently. As Jorge points out we are seeing this change, although 
perhaps not as fast as we (or they) would like.

Yes, English is a problem for all non-English speakers.   It takes a 
lot of effort to work in a foreign language even when you are fluent, 
and English isn't the easiest of languages.  ;-) I have discussed 
this with many people and there does not seem to any way around it. 
150 years ago, it would have been French.  How often do you see two 
non-English speakers conversing in English because it is the only 
common denominator?  It looks like we are stuck with it.  I know of 
no standards committee that does not operate in English, although 
some may run plenaries with translation into one or two other 
languages.  (For all of you non-English speakers, be glad that most 
of us American English speakers don't speak another language!  Lets 
you talk about us without us knowing what you are saying!)  ;-)

As with most things like this, if the problem isn't stressed progress 
against the issue will be even slower.  There are structural issues 
in the IETF that allow over representation in meetings, what some 
might call stacking meetings, but this seems to be a case more of 
companies stacking meeting rather than countries.

But as a friend said to me, it is good to see that after 40+ years, 
Pouzin is still getting people riled up!  He has a very long history 
of this!  ;-)  It got him black balled in France.

Take care,
John Day

At 9:34 AM -0500 10/21/13, Jorge Amodio wrote:
>He is right that the USA and perhaps other developed countries 
>dominate the Internet standardization process but there is a good 
>reason why and that when I talk with people from developing 
>countries like mine (Argentina) they don't are able yet to 
>understand that blaming the "north" is not the solution and what 
>they need to do is to gets hands on into the issue and 
>develop/implement reasonable policies to have more participation in 
>the process.
>
>Obviously there is a lot of participation from people from the USA 
>or working for US companies, full time or almost full time 
>participation in the IETF process requires for the participant to 
>have a sponsor, after all she/he still needs to live in a decent 
>place, feed her/his family and pay the bills, and have some security 
>for retirement in the long term, plus pay for the trips, etc, etc.
>
>US companies (and sometimes the government) know very well that it 
>has a lot of strategic value for the company, and the country, to 
>sponsor such type of individuals. I doubt that Vint Cerf, Halald 
>Alvestrand (which btw is from Norway not the USA), and many others, 
>are part of the daily grind working at Google and punching time 
>cards, but Google recognizes and value having such type of 
>individuals embedded in the development of the Internet, and they 
>have big pockets to fund them.
>
>The issue is that the knuckleheads in charge in other parts of the 
>world don't get yet to understand that if they want to be part of 
>the process they have to invest in it, and particularly sponsor 
>skilled and capable individuals so they can dedicate most of their 
>time and brain to it and not worry about how they will pay the bills 
>at the end of the month or if they will have a job next week, and 
>for sure they will have to compete for talent with US based 
>companies.
>
>On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer 
><<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> wrote:
>
><http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_standardisatio.pdf>http://innovation-regulation2.telecom-paristech.fr/wp-content/uploads/Documents/thematiques/Standardization/Pouzin-Internet_standardisatio.pdf

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:32:56 -0400

> Some people say it is Leonard Kleinrock. I welcome any precise

With a very strong interest in /not/ getting into the history debates, 
I'll point out that datagram is a term of art this is different from 
packet switching.  Besides the Wikipedia entry on Louis, I'll note that 
I've regularly hear him credited for influencing the work on IP.

But my main point was that he's a very senior contributor in this space.

> example. Is it a problem? Yes? Can anyone see a solution? No (and he

I thought all of his points worthy of consideration.  Of course, that's 
different from /agreeing/ with all of them.  But worthy, nonetheless.

d/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:37:11 -0400

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Joe Abley <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I don't think Stephane was labelling an opinion a troll. I think he was
> labelling the source of the opinions a troll.

That is the same thing.

It is rude.

It is bullying.

It should stop.

---

From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:39:57 -0700

On Oct 21, 2013, at 6:30 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]> wrote:

> time).

Pouzin might have coined the word "datagram" in an early 70's paper (memory is vague now), but it seems that the concept of datagram is already in Paul Baran's seminal paper published in IEEE Trans. on Communications (March 1964).
And yes it is online (credit to David Goldberg who scanned the paper):
    http://www.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/Baran64.pdf
(read pages 6 & 7)

FYI 

> Anyway, the fact that someone did something great X years ago

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:40:43 -0400

> documented them in detail.

Calling someone a troll is an ad hominem.  We aren't supposed to do that 
in the IETF.  At least, not publicly.

To call a very senior, very serious contributor a troll because their 
slides don't explain something is rather worse than ad hominem.

One could even imagine invoking a criterion that is that inappropriate 
as qualifying the critic as a troll...

d/

ps.  and no, this note is meant not to be responded to.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:54:34 -0400

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'll point out that datagram is a term of art this is different from packet
> switching.  Besides the Wikipedia entry on Louis, I'll note that I've
> regularly hear him credited for influencing the work on IP.
>

Giving credit for particular inventions is always problematic. I had
occasion to review the history of the invention of email. There are many
people who made important contributions and not always the ones that they
got credit for.

And sometime the contribution is not coming up with an idea but to perform
triage.

Take the Web, every part of the Web had been proposed before by Ted Nelson.
The only difference between Tim's idea and Ted's was that Tim's could be
implemented. Ted had 110% of a solution Tim stripped that down to 90% that
could be deployed and even though the Web does not have referential
transparency or universal indexicality etc., it was good enough to allow
Google etc. to add those in afterward.

That is a pattern that I see repeated again and again in Internet
development. A lot of the early pioneers were crazy guys whose ideas were
too extreme to be fully realized and had to be interpreted by someone else.

The point here is that when we are looking at security solutions to defeat
PRISM, what may be the most important choice is not which problems are
solved but which are left out. I think that what we have today in email
security is a Ted Nelson scheme that tries to do be too much and ends up
failing to be anything.

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:25:24 -0700

> John Day wrote:
> How often do you see two non-English speakers conversing
> in English because it is the only common denominator?

All the time, and that is especially true in France; the only way to do
business across Europe is English; no one speaks all of French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian,
Polish, Romanian, Greek and yes English. The de-facto situation is that
almost everyone who steps outside their little part of the world speaks
their native language and English.

But too many French are entrenched in an anti-American culture that
refuses to learn English.

> It looks like we are stuck with it.

We are, and there is no point whining about it without actually doing
something about it.

> Jorge Amodio wrote:
> [..] but there is a good reason why and that when I talk with people
> from developing countries like mine (Argentina) they don't are able
> yet to understand that blaming the "north" is not the solution

And in this case it's even more misguided because France is not a
developing country.

Michel.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:45:00 -0400

--On Monday, October 21, 2013 15:37 +0200 Stephane Bortzmeyer
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> "troll". Pouzin often mentions "problems with Unicode" but he
> never documented them in detail.

That was a lot of what caused me to wonder.  I certainly know of
things I consider problems with Unicode, but they aren't with
scripts he is likely to be complaining about.  We also know of
the issues that Jefsey and others have raised about majuscules,
but unless I've been misinformed, the relevant AFNOR coding
standards don't reflect the difference.   So, whatever should or
should not be done about those issues, it is hard to blame them
on Unicode (at least if there wasn't a formal request from AFNOR
to Unicode to make the distinction that was dismissed or
rejected).

I've got the same reaction to "IDN technical restrictions".  I'm
not aware of any significant ones unless one has a desire to
use, e.g., symbols, as domain name labels.  And, as far as
"visual ambiguities" are concerned, I'd love to know what he
proposes because, despite lots of dancing around (and large
collections of committees and procedures where ICANN is
involved) the only really effective fixes I can imagine are to
not try to do IDNs (and also prohibit "0" and "1" from ASCII /
LDH domain names) or to discard the DNS in favor of some system
that would apply different matching rules in different parts of
the tree. 

As Dave Crocker says, Louis is certainly no troll.  That doesn't
prevent wondering about some of his comments sometimes.

Incidentally, I consider most of those slides to be distortions,
presumably  in support of a rather specific agenda or at least
the result of a very different perspective on appropriate global
networking technology.  That agenda isn't news (nor is the
"national networks connected by gateways" model and perspective)
and the slides should probably not be dignified by a reaction
from the IETF.  But, when he says something that appears to be
substantive and relevant, I have enough respect for him and his
contributions to want to try to understand if there is anything
to it that we should be considering.

best,
     john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 08:33:53 +1300

>     http://www.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/Baran64.pdf

Yes, and all that was in his RAND Corp. reports published in 1962.
Donald Davies gave him credit, too. Kleinrock, as far as I know, worked
on how queueing theory applies to packet networks - and that was
important too.

More to the point, we did try the "submission via national standards
bodies" approach. I believe it was called OSI.

   Brian

---

From: Martin Vigoureux <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:40:54 +0200

Michel

> refuses to learn English.

Could you elaborate on how much is "too many"?

Merci

-m

---

From: Måns Nilsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:50:01 +0200

Subject: Re: Internet standardisation remains unilateral Date: Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 05:53:19PM +0200 Quoting Hannes Tschofenig ([email-masked]):
> It depends on the type of argument you want to make and then you
> count people different. You count Harald as someone who comes from
> Norway. The author of the slide deck wanted to make a different
> argument and so he sees Harald as a person working for Google, as
> US-based company.

I know Harald. He is from Norway. There is nothing more to say than that. 

( Jorge, your post was excellent! ) 
 
-- 
Måns Nilsson     primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE                             +46 705 989668
Okay ... I'm going home to write the "I HATE RUBIK's CUBE HANDBOOK FOR
DEAD CAT LOVERS" ...

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:27:43 -0400

> bodies" approach. I believe it was called OSI.

Whether it worked is a matter of which metrics you judge it by.

They have a MUCH nicer HQ than we have. Ergo it worked in one regard
important to some people.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:32:22 -0400

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Måns Nilsson <[email-masked]>wrote:

> Subject: Re: Internet standardisation remains unilateral Date: Mon, Oct
> 21, 2013 at 05:53:19PM +0200 Quoting Hannes Tschofenig (
> [email-masked]):

And I am a UK citizen and I work for a company where most of the senior
management are British. But from the point of view of most governments
concerned about 'Diversity' we count as US.

One of the reasons that the Web is so heavily US based is that it was the
only country with suitable existing infrastructure where most of the
pioneers could get visas to work.

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:37:07 -0400

I was unaware of any OSI HQ!!  Wow!  Where is it?

At 8:27 PM -0400 10/21/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Brian E Carpenter 
><<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> 
>wrote:
>
>
>Website: <http://hallambaker.com/>http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 21:54:16 -0400

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 8:37 PM, John Day <[email-masked]> wrote:

> **

The ITU HQ is in Geneva. Quite an impressive entrance hall.

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 19:47:51 -0700

>> Michel Py wrote:
>> But too many French are entrenched in an anti-American
>> culture that refuses to learn English.

> Martin Vigoureux wrote:

One. Pouzin is tilting at windmills. Whatever his agenda is, he's acting
like a crying baby (or a politician) and expecting to get back some
visibility by putting the blame on the IETF, (as we all know a
subversive agent of the "Great Satan" the US). I'm with Stephane here:
I'm allergic to BS. And I'm with Jorge too: instead of whining, do
something.

Why not having standard bodies operating in Basque or Catalan (two minor
dialects in the South of France) while we're at it? This is ridiculous.

Recently on the FRnOG mailing list we had another troll whining about
the RIPE-NCC documents being in English. I say to both: get a life.
There is nothing more global than the Internet, and whether you like it
or not the language is English. Adapt or go do something else.

Michel.

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 13:52:55 +1100

On 22/10/2013, at 1:47 PM, "Michel Py" <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  Adapt or go do something else.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it?

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:03:34 -0400

Interesting.  I was deeply involved with OSI for many years and never 
went there.  I thought that OSI was one of the thousands of ISO 
projects and ITU was just tagging along.

Gosh!  Learn something every day!  Thanks!

At 9:54 PM -0400 10/21/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 8:37 PM, John Day 
><<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:56:41 -0400

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 01:45:00PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
 
> proposes  

Having just sat through his presentation at the IGF meeting, I think
what he proposes is roughly, "Change math so that trees don't have a
single root."  He has just advocated "multiple roots", has asserted
repeatedly that ICANN controls the entire DNS and that the DNS is
therefore controlled by the US, and that IDN is not enough because.
Happily, we have open-root (perhaps amusingly, available from
http://open-root.eu/), which is prepared to offer you this
alternate-root, not-IDN-but-internationalized, all-works-magically
solution.

I have a great deal of respect for M. Pouzin's contributions to the
technical development of the Internet.  I'm afraid, however, that I
can't tell the difference between what he just proposed and a barker's
proposal for the Medicinal Compound, "efficacious in every case".

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 22:30:21 -0700

Hi John,
At 08:58 21-10-2013, John Day wrote:
> whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others.  Most 
> of that has to do with the expense involved in 
> participating.  Since the 1990s, the ability to

Yes.

>participate on-line has done a lot to lower that barrier and we see 
>that.  At one point IEEE was considered a US professional organization and all

Let's assume that ietf@ is a data point for "participate on-line".  A 
scan of the mailing list archive for this month would show that the 
following IESG and IAB members have participated:

   Jari Arkko
   Benoit Claise
   Ted Lemon
   Barry Leiba
   Adrian Farrel
   Stephen Farrell
   Joel Jaeggli
   Pete Resnick
   Gonzalo Camarillo
   Stewart Bryant
   Spencer Dawkins
   Hannes Tschofenig
   Andrew Sullivan
   Eliot Lear
   Russ Housley
   Joel Halpern

All members have not participated (see above).

I would look at it this way; if I tell Person X that he/she has the 
ability to participate on-line and the person tells me: "I don't see 
everyone participating on-line", what would my response be?  If I 
give a less-than-honest response it won't be convincing.

>infrequently. As Jorge points out we are seeing this change, 
>although perhaps not as fast as we (or they) would like.

I don't think that there are any numbers for "contributing 
infrequently".  It is premature to say whether there is a visible 
change (in terms of countries) or not.

>lot of effort to work in a foreign language even when you are 
>fluent, and English isn't the easiest of languages.  ;-) I have

Yes.

The is also the problem of culture.  Person X and I may speak the 
same language (it might not be English) but it can still be difficult 
for us to have a conversation.  Person X might not be comfortable to 
tell me what he/she thinks or that he/she has not understood what I 
said.  It might be some variation of cultural leveling.

>As with most things like this, if the problem isn't stressed 
>progress against the issue will be even slower.  There are 
>structural issues in the IETF that allow over representation in 
>meetings, what some might call stacking meetings, but this seems to 
>be a case more of companies stacking meeting rather than countries.

Yes.

There is a clash of values at some level ...

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 02:47:42 -0400

I know, I know, responding to myself, but a follow-up conversation
makes me think I should be a little more charitable.

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:56:41PM -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> He has just advocated "multiple roots"

This turns out to be a consequence of his (quite correct) observation
that, for a user, the full context isn't necessary.  We already have
this notion in the DNS -- that's what the search path function is for.
M. Pouzin thinks this ought to be much more ubiquitous, in much the
way that you don't have to dial the full phone path (or anyway, not
everywhere) every time you call a local number.  From this, he gets
alternate roots.  So he's not simply being a crank, though I don't
fully understand how he gets to the conclusion he's reached.

Now, having corrected my previous uncharitable description, I suggest
that if people want to discuss DNSng, we do it on another list.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Jukka Ruohonen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 09:58:47 +0300

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 01:45:00PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> networking technology. 

Well, the slides are certainly somewhat provocative (like good slides often
are?). But I would guess that many of the observations are easily shown to
be empirical facts. It is hardly any news as such that there are national
and company interests embedded in the standardization processes.

Besides, IETF has of course been a popular case among the scholars of
standardization. See for instance, Gencer, M. (2012): The Evolution of
IETF Standards and their Production. International Journal of IT Standards
and Standardization Research 10(1). (Behind a paywall.)

- Jukka.

---

From: Roger Jørgensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 10:18:25 +0200

> or not the language is English. Adapt or go do something else.

The current de facto standard on Internet is English yes. That might change
given time, like 10+ years.
What I personal is very sure of is that it will not changed to Norwegian
(where I'm from), or any other European language.

If it was to change it was because there was a major amount of users,
tech companies, infrastructure and activity using that language. Not to
forget backing of real money and investments. Europa don't have that,
USA alone match our size in amount of Internet users, not to forget
that we do not have just one language here, we have many.

Take a wild guess what language that might get some of that in near
future (10-20years). China.

-- 

Roger Jorgensen           | ROJO9-RIPE
[email-masked]          | - IPv6 is The Key!
http://www.jorgensen.no   | [email-masked]

---

From: Christian de Larrinaga <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 10:12:56 +0100

Bakailao argi dago hizkuntza unibertsala! RFCs arrantza espedizioak
dira. Ez dago?

Christian
> Michel Py <mailto:[email-masked]>
> 22 October 2013 03:47
>>> Michel Py wrote:

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 08:08:47 -0400

Combining multiple replies

> I'm allergic to BS. And I'm with Jorge too: instead of whining, do

And what if that something is get the French government to contribute to a
rival to IETF? Or combine with the governments of Brazil and Mexico to
create a larger anti-IETF?

> or not the language is English. Adapt or go do something else.

Don't complain too much about that part of his scheme. The only thing more
likely to doom the aIETF to irrelevance is to adopt ASN.1 as the mandatory
encoding.

> therefore controlled by the US, and that IDN is not enough because.

ICANN is a US company incorporated in California that pays its head close
to a million dollars a year. If Congress passed a law requiring it to do
so, ICANN would drop Palestine and Cuba out of the root. Have you watched
US politics recently? Care to assure me that it won't happen?

If DNSSEC and the rPKI are deployed in their current form ICANN would have
the ability to enforce control, there would be a prohibitive cost to
defections.

There are technical approaches that could preserve the structure of the DNS
naming system but remove ICANN from the equation.

For example, an alternative DNS root supported by a dozen governments could
offer registration direct into root for the same price as currently charged
for a .com. They can direct their national registrars to chain to the new
root. It would strip ICANN's ability to sell domains at $250,000 a time.

France has already driven Europe to develop and deploy its own rival to GPS
at a cost of many billions of dollars. They can do the same for the DNS.

> alternate-root, not-IDN-but-internationalized, all-works-magically

Do not assume that because a group of crackpots setting up an alternate
root in an underground bunker that doubled as a meths lab failed to set up
an alternative root that all such plans are tilting at windmills. [Yes I
know it was a different breakaway root but the principle is the same]

> proposal for the Medicinal Compound, "efficacious in every case".

No, these guys are completely serious and there is an international
movement to bloody the nose of the US in response to the Snowden leaks.

They don't need to know what they are doing technically. The technical part
is easy from their point of view.

And why assume that the correct response to such an effort is to resist it?

I am quite willing to shoot other people's puppies. I think we have to
admit that the current rPKI design is dead as a parrot at this stage.
Putting that on the table merely adds the RIRs to the target list along
with ICANN. I have been pointing out that if ICANN wants independence from
the US then it needs to give up control of the DNSSEC apex signer for
several years.

The question is not what we might have to give up but what we might get in
return. When I wargame the alternatives I see one particular scheme that
any governmental attempt to break from US control is forced to place very
large bets on because making that change is the key to enabling all the
others. This is even more so when we look at routing security than in DNS
space.

The key is IPv6.

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 09:16:41 -0400

I don't always agree with Louis, and he isn't always right (but who 
is?), but I can guarantee that the ensuing discussion with him is 
always enlightening.  ;-)

He has been known for riling feathers of the status quo for a very long time.

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 20:35:09 -0700

> Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> And what if that something is get the French government to
> contribute to a rival to IETF? Or combine with the governments
> of Brazil and Mexico to create a larger anti-IETF?
 
Let them try it. It will fizzle when they lose the little traction they have now in the fallback of the Snowden leaks. In 2016 when Brazil (you picked it, not me) hosts the Olympic Games, they lose $100 million of per click advertizing because they have moved their stuff behind an alternate root or whatever pipe dream and nobody can access it? Have them eat their own dog food. History repeats itself; each time there is evidence of mismanagement from foreign powers, secessionist feelings flare and some smart @55 will exploit that to their own advantage.

> The key is IPv6. 

Then you have a problem, because France is the only country that has remotely tried to deploy it.
Phillip, with all due respect for your very valuable past and present contributions, you're a dreamer. The reason you worry about the idea of the French government combining with Brazil and Mexico is as invalid as you think that IPv6 can be deployed. You believe in the dream, the market believes in money.

Get IPv6 deployed in the real world and then I will pay attention to the French threat to take over the IETF and the Internet. Otherwise it will get in the same state of "non-deployment" that is not to be worried about.

> Christian de Larrinaga wrote:
> Bakailao argi dago hizkuntza unibertsala! RFCs
> arrantza espedizioak dira. Ez dago?

I knew some Basque would step in! Thanks for playing, Christian ;-)

Let's make a deal about the official IETF language:
Mondays: Basque
Tuesdays: Catalan
Wednesdays: French
Thursdays: Norwegian
Fridays: Spanish
Saturdays: Esperanto
Sundays: English

Deal ?

> Roger Jørgensen wrote:
> What I personal is very sure of is that it will not changed to
> Norwegian (where I'm from), or any other European language.

+1

That being said, and back to the point I have painfully trying to make, I have not felt the resistance to English from people in your native country nearly as much as I have felt it in my native France.

> Take a wild guess what language that might get some
> of that in near future (10-20years). China.

Your logic is flawless, for a wild guess. It would be my #1 pick as well; size does matter. That being said, many people in the US feared that it would happen with India in the software development market years ago, and it did not happen. As Jorge put it very nicely, US-based corporations have managed to assimilate Indian talent, and it is no mystery that they are trying to assimilate Chinese talent.

Define assimilate? We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. 

Michel.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 07:39:32 -0400

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:35 PM, Michel Py <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> Let them try it. It will fizzle when they lose the little traction they
> have now in the fallback of the Snowden leaks. In 2016 when Brazil (you
> picked it, not me) hosts the Olympic Games, they lose $100 million of per
> click advertizing because they have moved their stuff behind an alternate
> root or whatever pipe dream and nobody can access it? Have them eat their
> own dog food. History repeats itself; each time there is evidence of
> mismanagement from foreign powers, secessionist feelings flare and some
> smart @55 will exploit that to their own advantage.
>

I cannot imagine that dropping the new ICANN TLDs and requiring
French/Brazilian/Indian ISPs chain to a different root that includes the
ccTLDs plus the original seven TLDs would have the effect you suggest.

.com, .net and .org are essential for the running of the Internet. ICANN is
not. If it wasn't for the fact that a breakaway root would likely be under
UN control and give an opening to the countries who would like to impose
global censorship.

> Phillip, with all due respect for your very valuable past and present
> contributions, you're a dreamer. The reason you worry about the idea of the
> French government combining with Brazil and Mexico is as invalid as you
> think that IPv6 can be deployed. You believe in the dream, the market
> believes in money.
>

The reason I worry about such things is that I work with other people who
are paid to think about such things.

I saw what failing to appreciate the concerns of the French government did
in the case of RFID tags.

> Get IPv6 deployed in the real world and then I will pay attention to the
> French threat to take over the IETF and the Internet. Otherwise it will get
> in the same state of "non-deployment" that is not to be worried about.

I seem to remember that I first pointed out that NAT and middleboxes were
the technical tool for NAT deployment over ten years ago. From a technical
point of view, IPv6 must be completely plug compatible with IPv4, not as
people attempted at the time a gating factor on other technologies.

I could get IPv6 deployed if I had national level resources behind me.
Failing that, create a brand 'Internet 2.0 Ready' and set out a set of
requirements that middlebox etc. providers must meet to display the brand.
Ensure that products that are I2.0 branded are completely network agnostic
and give full service on both the old network and the new, including
mechanisms that make use of NAT-ed addresses on IPv4 fully acceptable.

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:31:17 +0000

Warning: politically incorrect statements exist in this email.

At 08:58 21-10-2013, John Day wrote:
> From my experience over the years, I would generalize this that the developed world has dominated the standards process in this field, whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others.  Most of that has to do with the expense involved in participating.

The expense is a factor, but I would dispute the conclusion. To begin with, I would note Mark Smith, who has a draft open in v6ops but to my knowledge has never attended or only infrequently attended IETF meetings, and Vernon Schryver, who has done quite of a bit of work in DNS and other infrastructure but is rather proud of the fact that he participates only virtually. It's unusual to be entirely virtual and get something done - it's a lot easier for people that rub shoulders physically at IETF meetings and take subjects to the list - but it is possible and is done. People in developing countries can contribute on mailing lists as easily as anyone else can, and at the same level of travel expense and attendance fees.

I think the primary reason that the developed world dominates standards processes is that the developed world has a commercial interest in them. A network operator needs to understand how the protocols s/he depends on work, and needs to be able to design and debug his/her use of them. They don't need to know fine details like Alternate Tuesday Rules except out of interest. The folks who write that code absolutely have to know, and have to be able to ensure the correctness and completeness of the specifications. Hence, people worldwide consume specifications, but the people and companies whose livelihood depends on involvement in the standards creation are the ones primarily involved in creating them. 

That's not a slam on developing countries or their capabilities - they have smart and capable people just like the developed world does. But they are, by definition, underdeveloped - they do not operate in the same way that developed countries do, nor do they develop the technologies that the world uses. As they develop economically, they become capable of doing that, as for example India is becoming. But then they are developed countries or at least further in that direction, not "developing".

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:55:06 -0400

Couldn't agree more.  I was guessing that there were some who only 
participated on-line but since I didn't know for sure, I didn't go 
that far.  As I said, the problem of attendance has been greatly 
reduced if not eliminated.

Agreed that business interest is the primary driving factor and since 
most vendors are in the developed world, that is where the 
participation comes from.

Every standards committee I have ever had contact with found it 
difficult to get "user" participation,  Generally, those 
organizations argue that the standards work was beyond what they saw 
as their planning horizon.  Of course, this doesn't stop them from 
complaining that they had to buy what the vendors produce as opposed 
to what they might liked to have seen!  ;-)  But we all know how 
management tends to think.  ;-)

Take care,
John

At 2:31 PM +0000 10/23/13, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
>>  From my experience over the years, I would generalize this that 
>>the developed world has dominated the standards process in this 
>>field, whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others. 
>>Most of that has to do with the expense involved in participating.
>
>The expense is a factor, but I would dispute the conclusion. To 
>begin with, I would note Mark Smith, who has a draft open in v6ops 
>but to my knowledge has never attended or only infrequently attended 
>IETF meetings, and Vernon Schryver, who has done quite of a bit of 
>work in DNS and other infrastructure but is rather proud of the fact 
>that he participates only virtually. It's unusual to be entirely 
>virtual and get something done - it's a lot easier for people that 
>rub shoulders physically at IETF meetings and take subjects to the 
>list - but it is possible and is done. People in developing 
>countries can contribute on mailing lists as easily as anyone else 
>can, and at the same level of travel expense and attendance fees.
>
>I think the primary reason that the developed world dominates 
>standards processes is that the developed world has a commercial 
>interest in them. A network operator needs to understand how the 
>protocols s/he depends on work, and needs to be able to design and 
>debug his/her use of them. They don't need to know fine details like 
>Alternate Tuesday Rules except out of interest. The folks who write 
>that code absolutely have to know, and have to be able to ensure the 
>correctness and completeness of the specifications. Hence, people 
>worldwide consume specifications, but the people and companies whose 
>livelihood depends on involvement in the standards creation are the 
>ones primarily involved in creating them.
>
>That's not a slam on developing countries or their capabilities - 
>they have smart and capable people just like the developed world 
>does. But they are, by definition, underdeveloped - they do not 
>operate in the same way that developed countries do, nor do they 
>develop the technologies that the world uses. As they develop 
>economically, they become capable of doing that, as for example 
>India is becoming. But then they are developed countries or at least 
>further in that direction, not "developing".
>
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