Subject: MAJOR ISSUE: Causes of "problems"

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 07:52:31 -0700 (PDT)

If a "problem" now exists where formerly there was none, a logical
question to ask is "what changed?"

So I'm curious as to what people think some of the underlying *causes* of
the "problems" are.  There has been discussion of an increase in
complexity due to the need to address security.

Another potential cause for discussion: scope expansion.

It can be argued that two of the major trends of the last few years are
"IP Everywhere" and "Ethernet everywhere".  No surprise then that both the
IETF and IEEE 802 have grown considerably over the period, incorporating
work that might have previously been handled in other standards bodies and
forums.

For example, over the last 5 years, the IETF has expanded its scope to
work on topics such as VOIP, SUB-IP, RDMA, IP Storage, etc.

Each of those expansions has required the IETF to accomodate a new group
of attendees, so that today many IETF partipants also participate in other
standards bodies such as ITU, ATM/Frame Relay/MPLS forum, 3GPP, 3GPP2,
IEEE 802, InfiniBand Trade Association, T10/T11, etc.

This is a bit akin to a company executing a series of mergers over the
years, trying to knit a patch work quilt of acquisitions into a coherent
whole.  It's difficult to do even with good management and lots of
resources -- but in the case of the IETF, additional management
bandwidth and resources may not necessarily be considered during the
scope expansion discussion.

So is "scope expansion" a potential *cause* of "problems"? Or is it a
"problem" in its own right?

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 18:03:45 +0200

Bernard Aboba wrote:
...
> "problem" in its own right?

I think it's really just global warming - i.e. something we have to deal
with as a given.

    Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 13:11:28 -0400

> So I'm curious as to what people think some of the underlying *causes*
> of the "problems" are.

The Internet has gotten considerably larger and more diverse.  It is no
longer sufficient to design a protocol that will work in a benign and
fairly homogeneous network for a relatively small group of researchers.
The environment is no longer benign - serious large-scale distributed
attacks are a weekly occurance.  Network capabilities vary considerably
- available bandwith between two points can vary by six orders of
magnitude, maybe more.  Apps now have to content with NATs, firewalls,
interception proxies, and other obstacles that subtly disrupt their
communications and impose arbitrary constraints on when they can
communicate.  Users' interests have also become quite diverse - Internet
users no longer mostly speak the same language or use a uniform set of
applications (although almost everyone uses email and the web, the
uniformity ends there).  So now we see a demand to make things work over
IP that demand far more from the network than IP was ever designed to
guarantee; we also see conflicts between the different demands.

With the increased size we are also finding some limits to the
scalability of the original design - not only in address space size but
also in routing, and in (the lack of a) comprehensive security
architecture.  We have adopted piecemeal workarounds for some of these
problems, but these conflict with one another and with legitimate uses
of the network.

Also, to gain consensus on a protocol it is no longer sufficient merely
to find a way to solve the technical problems of how to represent
the data and exchange the information.  Vendors will now insist that the
protocol support or even mandate their business models - even when these
contradict each other or are not in the interests of users.  And lacking
the confidence to compete in the marketplace, some vendors have resorted
to using IETF as a battleground - blocking working group activity either
with political means or by the threat of IPR suits in order to coerce a
particular outcome or delay the result.

The low-hanging fruit has already been picked - having solved the easier
problems we are now tasked with solving much more difficult ones -
including problems for which there is no known solution.

Given all of the above, it's amazing we're able to do any useful work at
all any more.

What did I leave out?

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 22:32:47 -0400

One thing I left out (probably not the only one)

IETF has become widely known and highly visible outside of the protocol
developer community.  Because of this, a greater number of people with 
widely varying interests now seek to influence the organization, for good
or ill.  And whether because they are envious of IETF's success, or 
disappointed at IETF's failures, or for some other reason, a greater number of 
people also attempt to interfere with IETF's operation.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 23:02:17 +0200

Bernard,

BA> So is "scope expansion" a potential *cause* of "problems"? Or is it a
BA> "problem" in its own right?

By way of trying to pursue the question you asked (...)

Perhaps both?

Expansion of scope means we spread our limited resources thinner.  This
means we cannot provide as much (necessary) attention to individual bits
of work.

In general, we often seem to treat ourselves as having infinite
resources.  For a community well-versed in queuing theory, this is
rather strange.

Expansion of scope also risks our working on things we know little
about.  The dangers of that are pretty obvious.

In general, we seem to focus only on whether a topic is important, and
not very much on whether we are community that is competent to work on
it.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>