On 03/23/2013 02:27 AM, Bob Hinden wrote:
To raise this discussion up a bit, I can think two other related reasons why there may be less corporate diversity in the IETF. The first is that it's possible to build applications and businesses that take advantage of the Internet without having to come to the IETF to standardize anything. The work of the IETF (and related organizations like W3C, IEEE, etc.) have made this possible. A success problem so to speak. The second is that it's very hard to make changes at the IP and transport layers and have them be deployed in scale given middle boxes. Many organizations have stopped trying and focus on making things work on top of http. This also doesn't require coming to the IETF.
Perhaps not, but the extensive proliferation of middle boxes is arguably due to various failures within IETF, such as the failure to promote end-to-end security or the failure to extend the Internet architecture to accommodate legitimate needs of networks.
Keith