Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 375
Netizens-Digest Tuesday, April 3 2001 Volume 01 : Number 375
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 09:07:00 -0400
From: Philip Busey <veld@veld.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Howard and Ronda and anyone else out there, I am trying to carefully digest
this discussion and I am missing the letter from Howard C. Berkowitz
hcb@clark.net to which Ronda ronda@panix.com replied on Mon, 2 Apr 2001
13:30:38 -0400 (EDT)
First an introduction. As a plant scientist
http://grove.ufl.edu/~turf/refs/resume.html with a passion for writing and
graphics, I have developed web sites for four years, e.g.,
http://earthfire.com and I have a mixture of interests in the Internet for
business, for representation of minority points of view, for education, and
for actually freeing us from the clutter and disorganization of
information. I believe that we should welcome diverse expressions, even
those we believe to have no redeeming value, which means that we must pay
the price for diversity. The alternative is far worse. Also, I never watch
TV, or at least it's been over 5 years since I saw a whole program.
According to my calculations, the Internet community has until 5 April 2001
to comment on the committee appointments.
Most of the people appointed to the committee have bachelor's degrees in
math and engineering, even though some went on to JDs and to careers in
business. Thinking that a person's first degree is more telling about the
person's real love, I would not conclude that because they are now working
in business that they have no sympathy for the free discourse of
scientists. Furthermore, for a committee that is primarily charged with
looking at technical issues, and not setting overall policy for the
Internet, I think that they still represent a vast amount of diversity.
What seems to be lacking, in my opinion as a scientist, is not more
scientists, but persons from the humanities and related areas, who have not
been involved in the development of the Internet. Since the committee's
scope includes domain name disputes there should in addition to attorneys be
some people familiar with linguistics and communications and advertising.
Since part of the scope of the committee includes Internet Searching, there
should be someone with more of an anthropology or psychology background who
can deal with the ergonomics of finding information. Basically I am saying
that this proposed committee is too well familiar with the Internet, as it
has developed, and should have no lack of appreciation for nuts-and-bolts
solutions. But what they lack is the experience of people who know more
about history of knowledge and before the Internet.
Phil
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:36:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
Phil and Everyone,
All netizen list posts are digested and kept online at:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/netizens/digest/
The current thread starts in Digest_1-370.txt .
Take care.
Jay
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 09:37:51 -0400
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@clark.net>
Subject: Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
>Howard and Ronda and anyone else out there, I am trying to carefully digest
>this discussion and I am missing the letter from Howard C. Berkowitz
>hcb@clark.net to which Ronda ronda@panix.com replied on Mon, 2 Apr 2001
>13:30:38 -0400 (EDT)
(sent privately)
>
>First an introduction. As a plant scientist
(there is hope in my struggle to dominate my tomatoes, if not the Internet)
>http://grove.ufl.edu/~turf/refs/resume.html with a passion for writing and
>graphics, I have developed web sites for four years, e.g.,
>http://earthfire.com and I have a mixture of interests in the Internet for
>business, for representation of minority points of view, for education, and
>for actually freeing us from the clutter and disorganization of
>information. I believe that we should welcome diverse expressions, even
>those we believe to have no redeeming value, which means that we must pay
>the price for diversity. The alternative is far worse. Also, I never watch
>TV, or at least it's been over 5 years since I saw a whole program.
>
>According to my calculations, the Internet community has until 5 April 2001
>to comment on the committee appointments.
>
>Most of the people appointed to the committee have bachelor's degrees in
>math and engineering, even though some went on to JDs and to careers in
>business. Thinking that a person's first degree is more telling about the
>person's real love, I would not conclude that because they are now working
>in business that they have no sympathy for the free discourse of
>scientists. Furthermore, for a committee that is primarily charged with
>looking at technical issues, and not setting overall policy for the
>Internet, I think that they still represent a vast amount of diversity.
The more I read, the more I am troubled about their charter. If their
job isn't to set policy requirements, what is it? The IETF has
working groups on DNS Extensions and DNS Operations, and DNS issues
come up in many other groups. True, the IETF explicitly does not
develop user interfaces, which are a key aspect in directory systems.
I suspect there are technical forums for that, but directories are
not my area of expertise. Remember also that LDAP and other
mechanisms are seen as complementin DNS.
>
>What seems to be lacking, in my opinion as a scientist, is not more
>scientists, but persons from the humanities and related areas, who have not
>been involved in the development of the Internet.
And right there is a problem of precision. Previous stages of this
discussion suggest many "starting dates" of the Internet, so what
constitutes "being involved at the beginning?" I tend to think of the
original work starting around 1971 and accelerating in the early to
mid 80's. My own involvement with TCP/IP, rather than X.25 and OSI
alternatives, began seriously in the mid-to-late 80's. While I've
been involved with many mailing list, newsgroup, and chat room
virtual communities, I've never been part of a Freenet.
> Since the committee's
>scope includes domain name disputes there should in addition to attorneys be
>some people familiar with linguistics and communications and advertising.
That's sadly amusing. I know _some_ eloquent attorneys, but, for a
profession seemingly grounded in the meaning and use of words, most
attorneys tend to the inoomprehensible. I have a running argument
with a lawyer friend -- he says many of the archaic usages are done
so the courts know EXACTLY what is meant, but I point out things like
"Whereas" that have, as far as I can tell, no meaning.
>Since part of the scope of the committee includes Internet Searching, there
>should be someone with more of an anthropology or psychology background who
>can deal with the ergonomics of finding information. Basically I am saying
>that this proposed committee is too well familiar with the Internet, as it
>has developed, and should have no lack of appreciation for nuts-and-bolts
>solutions. But what they lack is the experience of people who know more
>about history of knowledge and before the Internet.
General knowledge about the history of knowledge, and history in
general, doesn't necessarily appear in resumes. I can think of an
assortment of respected Internet engineers with whom I can have deep
discussions of the evolution of medicine, of military events, of
government, etc. These are personal interests and may not be well
known. My two closest working colleagues and I share interests in
carpentry and cooking, but it would be hard to discover that from our
writings.
>
>Phil
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:04:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: ronda@panix.com
Subject: Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
"Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@clark.net> writes:
(I will also respond to some earlier comments as soon as I have time)
>The more I read, the more I am troubled about their charter. If their
>job isn't to set policy requirements, what is it? The IETF has
>working groups on DNS Extensions and DNS Operations, and DNS issues
>come up in many other groups. True, the IETF explicitly does not
>develop user interfaces, which are a key aspect in directory systems.
>I suspect there are technical forums for that, but directories are
>not my area of expertise. Remember also that LDAP and other
>mechanisms are seen as complementin DNS.
Interesting. It would be helpful to understand the difference between
this NAS DNS committee's charge and the IETF's activity.
Historically the NAS has been asked for policy input. They are
asked to do a report on some scientific or technical development
and make policy recommendations for the US government on what
is the best course of action.
As my article in Telepolis on this new committee pointed out, the
US government officials often act on policy reports, rather than
according to party lines when there is a policy report that has
been created by some appropriate entity.
So the role of the NAS in this regard is indeed policy as far as
I can tell. However, the IETF has historically looked at the
development of the Internet and its needs (Is that also the role
of the research arm of the IETF?)
>>What seems to be lacking, in my opinion as a scientist, is not more
>>scientists, but persons from the humanities and related areas, who have not
>>been involved in the development of the Internet.
The problem of the committee is that I don't see *any* scientists
at the current moment. I agree that engineers can be scientific
in their engineering and probably the best engineers are.
But in reading technical papers about the development of the Internet
I have been impressed by the few really scientific papers I have
found.
There are good technical papers, but those are not the same as
scientific papers. I could list a few of the fine scientific
papers I have read and studied and these include JCR Licklider's
1960 paper on Man Computer Symbiosis and the paper by Robert Kahn
and Vint Cerf on "Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"
published in 1974. There are some later papers that I also found
quite interesting. This is the paper by Robert Kahn "Resources-Sharing
Cmputer Communications Networks" (1972) This paper sets out
what I found as the situation and problem that had to be solved
by the creation of an Internetwork protocol.
So if someone is an engineer or has gotten a degree in engineering,
that doesn't necessarily mean the person is a scientist, though
that is a possibility.
>And right there is a problem of precision. Previous stages of this
>discussion suggest many "starting dates" of the Internet, so what
>constitutes "being involved at the beginning?" I tend to think of the
>original work starting around 1971 and accelerating in the early to
>mid 80's. My own involvement with TCP/IP, rather than X.25 and OSI
>alternatives, began seriously in the mid-to-late 80's. While I've
>been involved with many mailing list, newsgroup, and chat room
>virtual communities, I've never been part of a Freenet.
>
I agree it seems interesting that Howard and I have a different
understanding of what the Internet is.
And I realize Howard that you have made a point of taking seriously
the problem that there are such differences. That is a good sign.
I want to suggest that you (and anyone else on the list who is
interested in this issue) read the paper I wrote on this
subject.
The paper is
"The Birth of the Internet : An Architectural Conception for
Solving the Multi Network Problem"
The url is http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt
(or I can send a copy to anyone interested)
(The paper says it is part v of a longer paper, but it can be
read independently of the longer paper (actually hopefully a book)
it is part of)
In this paper I start with a perspective of information science
and Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon's contributions and then
look at the early development of the ARPANET and then the problem
that was posed, the MUlTIPLE NETWORK problem that by 1972
had become obvious and which the TCP/IP protocol was created to solve.
The paper proposes the importance of the concept of "open architecture"
developed by Kahn, and which Leiner documents in a paper he has written
(with contributions from others)"A Brief History of the Internet"
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.html
(I refer to the Leiner paper in my draft paper)
So this is perhaps a starting point for a discussion of what
is the Internet and is it the same as the ARPANET.
Until such a question is recognized and some progress is made
on it, it would seem hard to feel one could come up with the
understanding of how to scale the Internet.
I want to propose that the Internet is significantly different
from the ARPANET as it made it possible to communicate among
dissimilar networks which were under different administrative
control and which had different technical characteristics.
That the ARPANET connected dissimilar time sharing systems,
and dissimilar computers, but not dissimilar networks.
That the ARPANET IMP subnetwork was crucial to the interconnection
of the different computers and operating systems connected via
the ARPANET, but that the Internet created a protocol to make
the interconnection possible, i.e. to take up the communications
functions that the IMP subnetwork had performed for the ARPANET.
I think it is in the Leiner article that it says that the protocol
used on the ARPANET was more like a device driver not a communications
protocol. It depended upon the reliable transmission of the message
by the IMP subnetwork. TCP/IP replaced the need for such a subnetwork
as the protocol took on to provide for the transmission of the message.
The paper I did helps to explain this in terms of some of the
documents of the period and so provides a better explanation than
I can do here. But this is an important issue so I hope anyone
interested will read the paper and comment on it as part of this
discussion.
Cheers
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/birth_internet.txt
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 15:09:57 -0400
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@clark.net>
Subject: Re: [netz] There is a need for online discussion of new DNS NASCommmittee
>
>So the role of the NAS in this regard is indeed policy as far as
>I can tell. However, the IETF has historically looked at the
>development of the Internet and its needs (Is that also the role
>of the research arm of the IETF?)
Looking ahead to one of your comments below, the group is the
Internet ENGINEERING Task Force, _not_ the Internet Science Task
Force. You're probably thinking of the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF). I participate in both the IETF routing area and the IRTF
routing research group, so perhaps can offer some perspective.
Let's take the issue of scaling the global Internet routing system.
Roughly speaking, we have short and long-term components. Short term
means from now out to 2-5 years, and involves many IETF components as
well as operational engineering groups such as NANOG and RIPE. The
short to medium term fixes are seen as refinements to the existing
system based on the Border Gateway Protocol, version 4 (BGP-4). The
long-term fixes, more in the scope of ther IRTF-RR, are to identify
potential new routing mechanisms.
>
>>>What seems to be lacking, in my opinion as a scientist, is not more
>>>scientists, but persons from the humanities and related areas, who have not
>>>been involved in the development of the Internet.
>
>The problem of the committee is that I don't see *any* scientists
>at the current moment. I agree that engineers can be scientific
>in their engineering and probably the best engineers are.
>
>But in reading technical papers about the development of the Internet
>I have been impressed by the few really scientific papers I have
>found.
>
>There are good technical papers, but those are not the same as
>scientific papers.
May I point out a reality? The Internet has developed and met with a
great deal of success. Most of the researchers involved call
themselves engineers, rather than scientists, even though there may
be substantial rigor involved. In looking at new routing paradigms,
there's no question that any number of formal disciplines get
involved in the discussions.
Ronda, in my experience, working at all levels of Internet
development including the research phase, I've never heard anyone
make a serious distinction between engineering and science. Perhaps
this is something that comes from an academic perspective.
Of the more innovative routing researchers I know, the younger ones
tend to have computer science background, but they come out of
programs that are as much engineering as "science." Thinking of an
assortment of colleagues that are considered on the bleeding edge,
there are "scientific" backgrounds: optical physics, psychology,
biochemistry, geology, etc. What scientific discipline did you have
in mind as a prerequisite?
>I could list a few of the fine scientific
>papers I have read and studied and these include JCR Licklider's
>1960 paper on Man Computer Symbiosis and the paper by Robert Kahn
>and Vint Cerf on "Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"
>published in 1974.
I am baffled on the distinction you make between these and many of
the framework, experimental, etc., documents in the IETF. In my own
area of routing, work such as the SDR, UNIFIED, and NIMROD papers are
as formal as anything I can think of elsewhere.
I think Vint Cerf's doctorate is in math. But you are looking at
some quite old papers. Neither computer science nor networking
engineering programs were available to these authors.
Just for random validation, I just picked up the January 2001 issue
of ACM Computer Communication Review. ACM SIGCOMM, which publishes
it, is certainly among the most prestigious research venues. There
are three papers by six coauthors. While specific academic
backgrounds aren't given, two are in commercial research labs and
four are in academic institutions.
>
>So if someone is an engineer or has gotten a degree in engineering,
>that doesn't necessarily mean the person is a scientist, though
>that is a possibility.
>
>>And right there is a problem of precision. Previous stages of this
>>discussion suggest many "starting dates" of the Internet, so what
>>constitutes "being involved at the beginning?" I tend to think of the
>>original work starting around 1971 and accelerating in the early to
>>mid 80's. My own involvement with TCP/IP, rather than X.25 and OSI
>>alternatives, began seriously in the mid-to-late 80's. While I've
>>been involved with many mailing list, newsgroup, and chat room
>>virtual communities, I've never been part of a Freenet.
>>
>
>I agree it seems interesting that Howard and I have a different
>understanding of what the Internet is.
>
>And I realize Howard that you have made a point of taking seriously
>the problem that there are such differences. That is a good sign.
>
I will read the paper.
>
>
>
>So this is perhaps a starting point for a discussion of what
>is the Internet and is it the same as the ARPANET.
If you want to go back to the earliest terminology, which I don't
necessarily recommend, both are catenets.
>
>Until such a question is recognized and some progress is made
>on it, it would seem hard to feel one could come up with the
>understanding of how to scale the Internet.
Data network scaling has been an issue from the very beginning of the
ARPA work in 1969, but was an issue long before that. There were
many issues in telephone network scalability, ranging from the need
to go to dial systems because there were not enough people to staff
manual switchboards, to Vail's idea of universal service, to the need
to separate the forwarding and control planes of telephone switches,
to area code shortages, etc. Some of these issues date to 1913 or
earlier. There were even problems with pre-telephony telegraph
systems, such as the need to place multiple sessions onto a single
wire pair (Bell's area of interest before telephony), the need for
store-and-forward mechanization with transoceanic cables, etc.
Indeed, look at Tom Standish's _The Victorian Internet_ to see
scalability problems with the Napoleonic-era French semaphore system.
>
>I want to propose that the Internet is significantly different
>from the ARPANET as it made it possible to communicate among
>dissimilar networks which were under different administrative
>control and which had different technical characteristics.
>That the ARPANET connected dissimilar time sharing systems,
>and dissimilar computers, but not dissimilar networks.
I don't understand your definition of "network." It seems a rather
artificial distinction -- there are huge operational differences
among UNIX, TENEX, and IBM TSO environments. These environments,
incidentally, did not have to be single computers. There always had
to be a degree of similarity to make anything work -- the addressing
plan had to be centrally defined, or we would have a problem
equivalent to different people with the same telephone number.
From the very specific implementation, not social standpoint, a
reasonable definition of the _public_ Internet would include:
the set of hosts numbered in registered address space (i.e., with
address space delegated from ICANN/IANA to ARIN, RIPE NCC, APRICOT,
AFRNIC, or LACNIC), and appropriate DNS reverse mapping
exchanging reachability information, either directly or indirectly,
using the Border Gateway Protocol
To go a bit farther, the "guts" of public Internet routing is the set
of Autonomous Systems that exchange reachability information with
BGP-4. Paraphrasing from RFC 1930, an AS is:
a set of routers and addresses,
under one or more administrations,
that presents a common routing policy to the global Internet.
>
>That the ARPANET IMP subnetwork was crucial to the interconnection
>of the different computers and operating systems connected via
>the ARPANET, but that the Internet created a protocol to make
>the interconnection possible, i.e. to take up the communications
>functions that the IMP subnetwork had performed for the ARPANET.
Again, I am totally confused what fundamental, functional differences
exist among the IMP-IMP, EGP, and BGP protocols. They are all
intended for exterior routing.
>I think it is in the Leiner article that it says that the protocol
>used on the ARPANET was more like a device driver not a communications
>protocol. It depended upon the reliable transmission of the message
>by the IMP subnetwork.
Are you sure that you want to be making some of these distinctions?
It is counterintuitive until you get into the details of protocol
design, but reliable transmission, as the term is generally used to
mean retransmission in the event of errors, is specifically NOT
desirable for all applications. Voice and video applications are
quite tolerant to moderate levels of unreliable transmission, and
would tend to break if retransmission were imposed on them. I've
attached a posting I made recently to a networking education list,
which might help or might be overly protocol specific.
- ----------
X-Sender: hcb@pop3.clark.net
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 18:11:54 -0500
To: Cisco@groupstudy.com
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@clark.net>
Subject: Re: Dumb question of retansmits
>John Neiberger wrote,
>Someone who knows more about the specifics than I do will correct me if
>I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly HDLC will not retransmit due to a
>line error. And again, IIRC, neither does PPP, frame relay, or
>ethernet. My impression is that those protocols utilize error
>detection, but not error correction. I have absolutely zero experience
>with x.25. Does it retransmit due to line errors by default or does
>that feature need to be configured?
>
>From what others have been saying, it sounds like current reasoning
>suggests that it's better if the hosts are aware of network problems so
>that upper-layer protocols can make the necessary adjustments.
It depends. There definitely are cases where combinations of slow
transmission speed, long propagation delay, and high error rates make
link-level retransmission more appropriate for optimized throughput.
Certain applications, such as voice, are more intolerant to delay (as
might be caused by retransmission) than to error. They have no error
correction whatsoever, although they have error detection that causes
them to drop errored packets.
There are other cases where forward error correction (FEC) makes
sense. FEC involves sending additional error-detecting and
- -correcting bits with a frame, increasing the overhead, but allowing
the receiver to figure out what the transmitted bits were without the
need for retransmission. FEC can get quite mathematically complex,
but it is useful in certain applications where retransmission
(anywhere) would be VERY painful. Consider the extreme case, for
example, of telemetry to deep space probes where speed-of-light delay
can be in minutes or hours (Voyager? You out there?). Additional FEC
applications are found in wireless transmission, and in certain modem
applications at the bleeding edge of bandwidth for a medium.
Another variant of retransmission is SSCOP, the data link protocol
for SS7. SSCOP allows redundant links to be set up, with the
structure that if either, but not both links, receives a packet with
a bad frame check sequence, the packet is accepted only from the link
with the good FCS. Retransmission takes place only if both links
detect an error, or one link fails. This is NOT an inverse
multiplexing protocol intended to deliver twice the bandwidth over
paired links; it is intended for situations where the traffic MUST
get through and the delay of any sort of retransmission is
undesirable.
Other applications resend the data, but in a less anal-retentive
manner than SSCOP. Some digital weather facsimile broadcasts simply
retransmit the same weather map several times. Experience has shown
that in the space of 6-10 minutes, every receiver will get an
error-free copy, which is quite fast enough to get new weather
information by the time anyone can do anything about it.
There may be retransmission above the transport layer, as with
NFS/RPC. In such cases, there's no real need for the lower layers to
retransmit.
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #375
******************************
