Dear Harald, 1. Very good work. Extremely clear and useful.
At 07:50 03/05/04, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
I have tried to incorporate the extremely useful feedback I got on this list and from the Korea plenary.
I hope this is ready to send to IETF-wide Last Call. This is your chance to get at it early :-) Take care,
2. But I am very embarrassed to understand how "a large, heterogeneous collection of interconnected systems that can be used for communication of many different types between any interested parties connected to it", can be anything else than value-neutral.
This alights the constant disagreement I have with many here. Until now I considered there were only two visions of the Internet.
1. the very clear 47 USC 230 (f)(1) definition: "The term 'Internet' means the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks." This means a network of machines for the entire globality of the world.
2. a consensual metastructure of names, addresses and protocols to support numeric relations between its participating users and user agents. This means a network of users/usages, matching the all the needs the globe over.
In both cases I fully understand what "making the Internet work better" may mean.
1. to better match the state of the art, to better resist to hackers and to better grow in size or in technology support
2. to better fulfill the user needs, to permit be surer datacoms, to strive to support everyone for everything they need.
Timely, safe and scalable. I can live with both understandings as they say the same thing to a technology oriented body: "the technology must perform better". In this I agree with Fred Baker's, Dean Anderson's ... propositions or even with the one proposed if what follows was removed.
In the proposed draft, there is an in between dogmatic vision of the internet which is _not_ technically rooted (you underline it):
<quote>
We want the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment to openness and fairness. We embrace technical concepts such as decentralized control, edge-user empowerment and sharing of resources, because those concepts resonate with the core values of
the IETF community. These concepts have little to do with the technology that's possible, and much to do with the technology that we choose to create.
</quote>
This means:
- there is an IETF community
- it has core values
- best supporting these values has priority to best supporting the technology efficiency (first understanding) or the best possible usage (second understanding).
This makes IETF a Church.
- it dedicates itself to a subset of the internet system it makes the "Internet" (boarders unclear).
This makes the IETF a sect (I certainly do not want to sound outrageous here, but calling a cat a baby cat, helps to more clearly identify the implied meaning).
I have no objection to the principle of such an approach, once it is clearly published as you do it now. To the contrary, to some extent I welcome it because it clarifies a lot of issues. In particular why IAB never published an architectural model of the internet: this model is actually made of the core values of the IETF community. This explains why IETF does not need market studies, why users have not their say. Why USG develops its own internet elsewhere. Why RFC cannot be updated: one does not update a catechism. It is not technical engineering but applied evangelization.
I would not even have objections to all this, if my long, reviewable and reality based analysis matched the (by nature) non negotiable IETF core values and their resonating technical consequences. But I technically disagree with them, for a deeper personal core value: to make a good job out of my own life.
- I understand what is an open protocol and I do not see much of them in here. I do not know what a fair electron or an honest byte can be. You know my formula on this: "I do not expect my telephone to be democratic, I expect it to work". Sorry to be IETF agnostic. This lead me to the Coliseum several times already.
- from my humble analysis, and accepting many graduated exceptions, I consider decentralized control, edge-user empowerment and resource sharing as outdated concepts of the 60s (I entered network operations in 69 and never used them before meeting the Internet four years ago). I am used and I made my life dedicated to R&D of distributed global control, user's full concerted granular empowerment, subsidiarity, numeric continuity relations and interaction, hybrid networks, etc.
Obviously I may be wrong, but this creed regidity (integrism?),
- makes the IETF technically unreliable when the life of millions and the world's economy depend on the internet solutions (with small "i")
- should make the proposed goal to be corrected as "The goal of the IETF is to make the Internet work better along the IETF core values".
Now, a general comment: all this seems inconsistent or even opposed the rest of the texts of this excellent draft of yours.
Thank you for the clarification about the IETF Church I had not fully understood yet. But I am low IQ.
jfc
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