> > According to you, this has nothing to do with the IETF. It might > result > > in the congestive collapse of the Internet, but who cares, the IETF > > doesn't do street lights. I would like to see the criteria which > > determine that telephones belong on the Internet but street lights > don't! > > thanks for making the most concise statement of the conflict here in the > discussion so far! > I think this point is one of the critical causes of conflict when talking > about the IETF mission - and unless we lance the boil, actually talk about > it, and attempt to *resolve* the issue, we will go on revisiting the issue > forever, with nothing but wasted energy to show for it. Well, to paraphrase a well known leader, "the IETF, how many divisions?" The gist of this comment is that someone developing a network application protocol ought to somehow get a blessing from the IETF. Reality check. Who got the IETF approval to deploy ICQ, Kazaa, or for that matter HTTP? If the Internet is so fragile that a poorly developed application can break it, then the IETF response should not be to try control each application. It has to be, design checks that can be implemented by cooperating hosts and routers so that their neck of the Internet is in good health! -- Christian Huitema