Re: [arch-d] Musings on Internet evolution

[Bill Woodcock <[e-mail]>]

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 3:26 PM, Jari Arkko <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Colin, Tommy, Alissa and me wrote some thoughts on COVID-19 impacts, Internet evolution, and future challenges. See here:
> 
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20200707-evolving-the-internet-through-covid-19-and-beyond/
> 
> But what do you think? What do you think has fuelled evolution, what do you see in store in these processes in the future, and what bigger challenges do you think we face in the Internet? Do you see other changes that functional aspects, e.g., about the way evolution happens? (We’ve seen some movement from standards to open source-based interoperability, for instance.)

I assume you saw this:   http://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/keeping-the-internet-up-and-running-in-times-of-crisis-4017c4c9/

We had quite a lot of expert input which didn’t make it into the report, as well, which I can summarize, if people are interested.

From my point of view, I think the most interesting finding is that this is the end of network-to-network (i.e. routed subnet) VPNs for home-office situations.  While that was supportable for a few executives, it doesn’t work if most of your workforce is WFH.

One of the big positives in the “new normal” has been the democratization of Internet governance meetings…  My colleagues Sara Alamin and Gaël Hernandez have a brief article coming out shortly on that topic.  When meetings happen online, they’re less dominated by people from countries which issue each other travel visas and which have inexpensive and frequent air travel between each other.  That’s good news, in a more-eyes-on-the-problem sense, and in a design-that-works-better-for-everybody-works-better-for-everybody sense.

The main conclusion I’ve been seeing people draw from the Zoom situation is that we’ve passed some sort of tipping-point of ridiculousness in the everything-as-a-service, in-the-cloud shitshow, and that governments, particularly, need to get back to a point where they’re capable of standing on their own feet and operating the services they need, using code they’re familiar with.  So, good news for open-source and open-standards, if people pay attention to that.

                                -Bill