(off list)
--On Tuesday, 06 March, 2007 15:46 -0800 Tony Hain
<alh-ietf@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> While I agree with Brian that the enterprise draft will be
> difficult, I also believe the SOHO one will be virtually
> impossible to get agreement over.
I agree, although I think we might disagree a bit about the
reasons. On the other hand, I also think that a serious IETF
(or other) effort to try to define such a thing would have
value, even if it only produced an info document about why the
problem is hard and what the issues are before failing and
collapsing.
> The issue is that most ISP's
> don't yet get the point that the device needs to be dual
> managed, because they are still in the mindset that there are
> just a couple of devices behind each customer nat at most and
> very little change to the configuration over time.
Hmm. Unless the economics of ISPs who deliver services to
residences and SOHO setups have changed _very_ significantly
since I was last deeply immersed in those very confidential
numbers, no one is doing any real remote management regardless
of what Phillip considers appropriate or necessary. One could
imagine ISPs able to download new images that were the same for
everyone, but the margins just aren't there for anything other
than the "everyone gets the same boundary config and you can put
whatever you like behind it" or "if you fuss with this, it is
your problem" arrangements that are prevalent today.
My guess is that the economics would support a device that
combined a cable modem or DSL box with some significant inbound
and outbound firewall capabilities, including the ability to do
some rate-limiting, reasonable control over ICMP as well as TCP
and UDP and probably some real-time protocol. I'd expect that
box to be delivered to the customer either fully locked up or
configured at setup time with any new configuration requiring
payment of a separate fee. If I were designing one of these,
I think I'd put a couple of flash memory slots in it (SD or
whatever one prefers) that could be used to reimage or reprogram
the box or give the customer more control. They wouldn't do
anything that could not, in principle, be done over the net but
the idea of sending the customer off to _pay_ for an unlocking
function or some other set of functions and then receiving a key
would, I think, be a lot more plausibly marketable than paying
for something that appears to be less tangible.
And that is the answer to Phillip's concern about what to do
about old hardware too. Just as Verizon sent me a letter last
week that said that I'd better have a plan about getting rid of
any analog-capable mobile phones I might still have, the ISPs,
if backed by either judicial or government pressures (which I
believe to be necessary to accomplish anything) could easily put
out a note that says "a reasonable level of protection for the
network from you is now necessary. That can be done in two
ways. One is to upgrade your box, which will also give you the
capability of obtaining fewer restrictions. The other is that
we do it centrally, which will give you a very restricted
environment (but not so restricted as to have impact on the
typical residential user), and we will charge you a fee for it."
> FWIW: nat has not slowed the consumption of IPv4 addresses
> enough to be the panacea people keep hoping for. It is clear
> that most network managers are going to do squat until there
> is a crisis to force action. That will occur sometime after
> 2010 when they need more than they already have and find that
> the lease price per IPv4 address per day has been moving up
> from its current averages of $1/day or $5/day depending on
> contract length (a price service providers seem to have no
> trouble collecting while the addresses are still Free from
> IANA). For those who wonder about the date see:
> tndh.net/~tony/ietf/IPV4-pool-combined-view.pdf
Agreed, but we have had this discussion before. And I am in
strong agreement that the perception of crisis --either of the
type you identify here or of a serious threat of regulation or
litigation as above-- is the only thing that is likely to create
actual motion. If nothing else, the margins are just too small
to do anything "because it is good" if it drives up costs even
to the extent of a few training courses for support staff.
There will need to be something, almost certainly external, that
can be blamed as a reason for introducing disruption, forcing
new hardware, or increasing costs (probably all three in
practice). But, if we can predict something happening, under
any scenario about cause, the time for the IETF to get started
on its part of the job is "soon" or even "now", not after the
crisis occurs and everyone starts running off in their own
directions because no one has pointed the way.
john
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