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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 339
Netizens-Digest Friday, September 17 1999 Volume 01 : Number 339
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Internet Pioneers Panel Discusses Challenges for Future
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Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 12:27:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Internet Pioneers Panel Discusses Challenges for Future
Internet Pioneers Panel Discusses Challenges Facing the Internet
by Ronda Hauben
rh120@columbia.edu
The place: Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA. The date: Tuesday, August 31, 1999. The time, 17:15. (1)
The Moderator is Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet.
Among the panelists are Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmerman who
created the Cyclades packet switching network in France in the
early 1970s; Larry Roberts and Len Kleinrock pioneers of the
ARPANET, the earliest packet switching network; Bob Kahn and Vint
Cerf, also ARPANET pioneers, who went on to design the TCP/IP
protocol for the internetworking of diverse packet switching
networks; and Paul Baran, whose research helped to pioneer the
development of packet switching technology.
The occasion: the 10th anniversary of the creation of the
award honoring lifelong contributions to the field of computer
communications research which has had an important impact on the
work of others. On the stage is a panel of those who have won the
award over the past 10 years.
For his first question, Metcalfe asks what the panelists
think of the new protocol IPv6 which has been created to replace
IPv4, the current version of the protocol that makes the Internet
possible. Surprisingly, almost all the panelists say that they
see IPv6 as problemmatic. Vint Cerf notes that there isn't any
pressure from users or vendors to make the change. He adds,
however, that lots of devices are being planned which will need IP
numbers and thus justify converting to the new protocol.
Len Kleinrock asks why there has not been any attention
given in the new protocol version to make future changes easier.
Sandy Fraser, another of the panelists, points to expenditures by
big business which he believes will lead to a large installed
base making it expensive to make future changes.
Bob Kahn reminds the other panelists about how the
earliest version of the TCP/IP protocol only anticipated that
there would be a few networks as part of the Internet. They
thought they would never need addresses for more than 1/2 dozen
or dozen national networks. But soon the maverick invention of
the ethernet spawned local area networks, changing the landscape.
In hindsight, Kahn notes, what should be the future is clear, but
when going forward, it is hard to see ahead. "We are going to get
it wrong again," he warns, if there isn't adequate thought put
into what will be needed. Instead of going by the principle
"ready, aim, fire," when tackling such problems, he observes,
there's the tendency to "ready, fire, aim" or "fire, aim,
ready." He suggests the need to get ready first and then to take
aim at a problem, in order to be able to recognize whether or not
the correct problem has been identified.
Kahn proposes that the problem which led to the creation of
IPv6 may have been looked at in a way that is wrong or that there
was a need for a different approach to the problem. He notes that
this is an example of where the research community hasn't done a
good job of thinking through the future and what is needed.
The discussion moves on to what the problem is that causes
long delays for some in accessing the world wide web. The
panelists consider whether there are technical causes of the
delays which the appropriate research efforts could identify.
Changing the focus of the discussion, Metcalfe asks Louis
Pouzin what his view is of the creation of ICANN. He asks Pouzin
if ICANN will blow the whole thing apart.
Pouzin responds, that since he lives in France, he isn't
sure what the issues are in the United States, but that you can't
give up on the concerns of people around the world. The task of
assigning unique IP numbers is not a real problem, Pouzin
explains. But there has been a warp in handling it at the
international level. Pouzin asks: What is wanted? Is there a
desire for a situation whereby a few years from now a number of
countries will be up in arms and decide after all they could just
as well organize their own Internet? That it may be problemmatic,
but that they can handle it among themselves.
Pouzin explains that the ITU is in charge of allocating
virtual international resources of communication. That such
sensitive issues must be handled by an international committee.
There is no other way as they have the experience and the
relationship and the habits of diplomacy.
Vint Cerf comments that he can't believe he is hearing
Pouzin say that the ITU is better. Cerf disagrees that the ITU
would be appropriate to solve the problems.
Pouzin admits that they are difficult problems but that this
is the way to handle such difficult problems because there are
so many items that are national obligations that in the end, this
is how it is done.
Cerf again disagrees, noting that ICANN has had a difficult
birth but believes that ICANN is needed because industry is
the only game in town with regard to who can oversee the Internet
names and numbers.
Another of the panelists, David Farber, interjects his view
that ICANN got stuck in quick sand. It should have gotten
an interim board to get the actual board, and only then taken on
the difficult issues, he advises. First set up the infrastructure
and then take on the functions. Farber disagrees that ITU's
process would be appropriate for the Internet.
In response to a question from Metcalfe about some of the
technical obstacles to the further development of the Internet,
Len Kleinrock points to feature shock, or the problem for the
user of absorbing new interfaces that require hours and hours of
new learning.
Opposing the tendency toward the "dumbing down" of the
network, Kahn describes how the potential of the Internet will be
lost if people can't themselves interact with the Net. He
proposes that there should be ways to help people learn to become
programmers so that every citizen would be able to get the
Internet to do what he or she wants. Kahn also suggests that
speech understanding research could help by making it possible to
give computers verbal rather than typed instructions.
Further discussion on the desirability of voice activation
leads Kleinrock to warn against voice activated agents given the
difficulty of human precision in understanding what the
computer has understood and then in being able to control the
computer.
Farber refers to the fear of people that the computing
environment will expose everything a person does online to the
observation of government. Others on the panel recognize this as
a problem but also that there is the problem of corporations
using the Internet to gather information on people. Another
problem presented is the need to gather data to diagnose
networking problems.
Metcalfe asks if the Internet architecture will continue to
scale making it possible for many more networks and computers and
people to be connected. Sandy Fraser warns that the vision and
the architecture that has made such scaling possible is being
eroded. He wonders where the leadership will come from to
continue to sustain the catenet concept, the concept of a
diversity of networks being able to interconnect and communicate.
Also Fraser urges the need to reestablish the importance of basic
concepts that are at the foundation of the Internet, such as the
datagram.(2)
Another panelist, Paul Green, reminds the audience of the
two cultures concept introduced by the British writer C. P. Snow.
Technology, Green proposes, can be used for enslavement or
empowerment, and there is a need for understanding and exchange
between those involved with the liberal arts and the sciences. He
points to the one sided portrayal of technology in George
Orwell's book "1984". Instead of such a frightening scenario, the
diffusion of communication can bring international peace and help
solve the problems of the disadvantaged, Green adds.
Kahn questions how one can determine the issue of the
ability to scale the Internet from current knowledge. He compares
this to trying to predict the ability of the world economy to
scale. Both are hard to predict, he contends, because we don't
know what will be invented.
Metcalfe asks if there are any silver bullets that will
solve current problems. Kahn replies that it is much easier to
build something reliable than to debug problems. He explains that
it is crucial to have records of what happens on the Internet to
be able to solve the technical problems. And though this may fly
in the face of concerns with privacy, it is crucial to come to
grips with this problem. It isn't possible to keep the Internet
reliable without keeping certain kinds of records. He explains
that the telephone system had found a way to monitor the workings
of the system and so has been able to solve this problem.
The big expense that AT&T had incurred in buying a cable
company is presented by Sandy Fraser as the motivation for the
company to encourage customers to buy as much video and audio as
possible to pay for AT&T's investment.
Others like Dave Clark and Bob Kahn raise the importance of
exploring what users will want to do using the Internet, rather
than deciding for users what they will do.
As his final challenge to the panel, Metcalfe asks what would be
the most interesting questions to pose to a graduate student
contemplating research in the data communications field.
Kleinrock proposes studying the field of nomadic computing.
Also he suggests exploring issues such as: If one gives up all
privacy, how much security could one achieve on the Internet?
That the relationship between security and privacy require study.
Kahn proposes exploring the relationship of design theory with
engineering practice. That there is the need to do good design
and to have a way to have measurable results to compare with the
theory. Paul Green urges students not to take a micro problem,
but to work on something that they would be proud of, and to make
it count.
The panel ends after two and 1/2 hours. The acoustics in
the Harvard building known as Memorial Hall where the panelists had
been seated were poor, making it often difficult to hear each
other or for some in the audience to hear. Also most had been
through a tiring day before the panel gathered at 17:15.
Despite the difficulties, however, something had been
achieved. Some of the panelists challenged the fads in Internet
research and development, urging that the problems need more
effort to be understood. Several of the panelists freely
disagreed with each other, yet often did so without any hostility
or animosity. This led to a discussion where different views were
presented so that the issues could be explored in a broader way
than often happens in technical conversations. Also the issues
examined were for the most part either social, or the discussion
of the technical issues included social concerns or
considerations. This, too, was quite different from the narrow
technical discussion that is often proposed as the model for
technical issues.
The panel discussion helped to present a view of the field
of data communication that contributed to the foundation of the
Internet and to its early development. Including discussion of
social concerns as a part of the discussion of the field, helps
to establish the fact that the user is part of the data network
and the needs and interests and concerns of the user are an area
to be included in the field of research and study. This then
presents a glimpse into the future when the user and the
interests of the user interacting with the hardware and software
are recognized as a vital part of the Internet. Instead of
viewing the user as customers or as victims of commercial firms
vying for market share, users will be viewed as citizens of an
online collaborative and participatory networking society, or more
simply as Netizens.
The panel did not, however, grapple with the most important
issues of the continued development of the Internet. Such issues
have to do with the way that, at least in the United States, the
academic and government and other public or educational forms of
Internet development have been subsumed within a commercial
sphere, where any broader vision of the user as netizen or of the
need to connect all users has been ceded to industry who only
view users as customers. JCR Licklider who promoted much of the
early vision for the development of computer networking,
maintained that network access must be seen as a right, rather
than as a privilege. This view required that all the population have
the ability to have access to the developing computer network.(3)
And that the network be interactive, encouraging the users to
participate online and in developing it into something that would
meet the needs and desires of its users. This vision had the user
participating in creating the ever developing vision for the
future of the Internet. That is the challenge that users need to
take up, taking the torch from the pioneers and carrying it
forward.
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(1) The event was the opening session of Sigcomm'99, sponsored by
the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Data Communication of the
Association of Computer Machinery (ACM). The conference was held
from Tuesday, August 31, 1999 through Friday, September 3, 1999.
See http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm99
(2) The datagram was one of the early conceptual and technical
advances which made it possible to have an internet. A datagram
is a packet containing only source and destination information in
addition to the data being transported. It doesn't contain
information about the path for reaching the destination.
(3) See for example "The Computer as a Communication Device",
by JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor, "Science and Technology: for
the Technical Men in Management" 76 (April 1968): 21-31. Reprinted
in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: 1915-1990", 21-41, Palo Alto,
Calif. Digital Systems Research Center, 1990. See
http://memex.org/lick.html and http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #339
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