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 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" 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" 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" 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" 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 ******************************