Re: [arch-d] ETSI launches new group on Non-IP Networking addressing 5G new services

[Stewart Bryant <[e-mail]>]

> On 8 Apr 2020, at 22:24, Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Yes, it is quite weird to think that government policy based
> admission to a telecommunications standard body was ever
> considered to be a good idea. I have only come to experience it as a 
> weapon in an economic war of aggression. 


There is of course history here. It is within my working lifetime that many PTTs were denationalised and ITU changed from being a meeting of civil servants to a meeting in which engineers working for private enterprise were permitted to attend, express a view and vote on outcomes.

It is a great pity that governments do not automatically allow any entity legally operating in their jurisdiction automatic entry to the ITU, particularly countries claiming to be core drivers of the “free world”.

That said the IETF really does need to be more open to new revolutionary ideas.

The old concept of the innovators dilemma applies to SDOs as much as to vendors. An idea that seems an outlandish toy to the established player who completely dismisses the concept as unworkable, a position reinforced by the threat to its core business, may indeed turn out to be a valid replacement for its major technology. Sooner or later someone will have an idea that ultimately leads to the obsolescence of IP. Whilst that seems unthinkable to many, remember how many thought that the internal combustion engine would provide the motive power for transport for ever. That position looks a bit shaky at the moment. If the IETF is always dismissive of a change from IPv6 to another forwarding layer, eventually some other SDO will latch onto its replacement and will take primacy in the development of what people will still call the Internet but which will work another way. Another lesson from the innovator’s dilemma is the exponential speed of the transition making it rare that an organisation supporting the old can reconfigure to the new.

The IETF could try to buck the trend here by more openly fostering investigation of the mechanisms and protocols that will ultimately replace its core offerings, and this is why we need more to be open minded about the operation of all parts of the Internet, something that I do not see in the IETF’s current mode of operation.

- Stewart