On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 5:16 AM, Simon Leinen <simon.leinen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Noel Chiappa writes:> But in any event, it's doesn't void my point: if people wantYes, but it's harder than that. In the NAT case, were our (we being the
> something, we have two choices: i) blow people off, and they'll adopt
> some point solution that interacts poorly with everything else, or ii)
> give people the _capabilities_ they need/want (and thereby have some
> chance at minimizing the brain damage - since generally people don't
> care _how_ it works, as long as it _does_ what they want).
> I guess this is just a long-winded, engineering take on 'the customer
> is always right'.
IETF) customers the ISPs, the users (in this case "end users" who
insisted on connecting multiple devices without going incurring the
costs of becoming "commercial" customers), the vendors of then-current
equipment, the vendors of potential circumvention solutions (NATs)?
These groups of customers probably didn't agree on what they wanted
I think it was a little uglier than that.
ISPs and backbone providers were well represented in the IETF, home users, rather less so. The ISPs had a clear interest in killing of NAT which threatened the ISP business model.
People internalize their employers interests very easily and without knowing that they have done so. I have an acquaintance from Oxford who spends his time 'researching' climate change for the Koch brothers. He has no qualifications in the field. His 'research method' is essentially the method of Winston Smith in 1984. But he is completely convinced that he is a legitimate researcher and that he is right and the nobel prize winners whose work he is misrepresenting are engaged in an international conspiracy.
So when people were trying to mau-mau me into rejecting NAT as ideologically unsound, I had a different perspective.
It is never going to be in the customers interest to let their internetwork provider know what their internal network looks like. Never-ever-ever. I don't want my ISP to know because then they might sell that information to other people and I would be getting all sorts of demands for payment.
The business logic means that it will be NAT today, NAT tomorrow and NAT forever. Whether I am a commercial or a residential user, I am going to use that NAT box to protect my economic interests versus my supplier. And that will be the case regardless of how many IP addresses are available.
The IETF was originally the product of a group of people who looked at the telephone system and could see how to do the job differently. I don't see many people who look at the Internet in that way. The IETF has become more like what it has replaced.
The issue is not just welcoming newcomers, it is welcoming newcomers who can look at problems with a fresh perspective and reject ideological approaches. And that is why I am going to continue to point out the the governance model of the IETF is expressly designed to exclude dissident thinkers.
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