Re: Finding the appropriate work stream for draft-nottingham-for-the-users

[Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 19, 2019, at 8:05 AM, Stewart Bryant <stewart.bryant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rather than consider this aspect of our work, we should put more focus on putting in place the telecommunications technology we need to have in place in the 10 to 20 year time-frame. By then we will need bandwidths in the 1TB class to the users, power consumptions per bit that is minute compared to the current level, and latencies where the laws of physics are the only significant factor. It is unclear whether the current Internet architecture will satisfy those needs without change, and in my view that is the area that the IAB should attend to, rather than to work described in this draft.

This is certainly an exciting picture of the future that you are painting at layer 2 and layer 3, but I notice that you didn’t respond to Ole’s point, which I think is a great example of the problem.   Like it or not, the participants in the IETF have expertise that is relevant to things that you call “political,” and to suggest that we should not factor that into our decisions is unrealistic.   We are going to factor these considerations into our decisions whether we admit it or not.

But where IETF discourse goes badly wrong is when we have discussions where we haven’t agreed first on what we are talking about.   Then you see these hundred- or thousand-message streams of people talking past each other and never reaching completion, because nobody feels heard, because we didn’t take the time to figure out what questions we were trying to answer.

If you think about it, what you have proposed is actually just as political as anything else.   You believe that users should have maximally fast, minimally latent connectivity.   I think that’s a good goal, but it’s only a meaningful goal if the users want it.   Otherwise it’s just some shiny tech you’re working on.   And let’s be clear about this: it’s not at all clear that users want that.   What I mean is that users aren’t making purchasing decisions on the basis of whether they maximize throughput and minimize latency.   If they were, we wouldn’t still be seeing bufferbloat everywhere.

Understanding what users need and trying to address their needs is in a sense the core function of the IETF.   It’s not a side issue that we can ignore in the pursuit of technical excellence.