[Din] Re: next steps for DINRG Re: 202410191733.AYC

[William Lehr <[e-mail]>]

distributed and decentralized often mean two different things. A 
distributed mechanism may be subject to centralized control.

decentralization has important implications for independence wrt failure 
modes which impacts reliability. Telephone service reliability is 
enhanced because failure of PSTN and Internet are not perfectly 
correlated so failure of PSTN need not mean failure of ability to make 
phone call.

virtualization allows control and function to be separated in geospace 
(distributed) that can have implications for performance (e.g., latency, 
reliability) that may not be known to higher-layer users that may seek 
to exert centralized control over a system that is distributed, etc.

On 10/21/24 10:17 AM, Lixia Zhang wrote:
> Hi Abe,
>
> I think you brought up a set of very interesting, and also very 
> important, questions and comments. To me, the top few are:
>
>   * "distributed or decentralized": it seems worth clarifying whether
>     the two words mean the same or different things in the DINRG context.
>   * the question in Thomas msg showed up again: how much the node
>     locations matter.
>   * "we find that Internet users have no permanent identity": this is
>     a fact, how this fact relates/impacts (de)centralization.
>
>
> To everyone on the list: please share your suggestions about next step.
> Dirk and I will try our best to summarize and structure all the 
> suggested discussion topics into Dublin agenda.
>
> Lixia
>
>> On Oct 20, 2024, at 7:21 AM, Abraham Y. Chen 
>> <aychen=[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Dirk:
>>
>> 0)    I have been reading the eMail threads and learning the charter 
>> of this Group for awhile. I would like to start from trying to 
>> understand your first DINRG objective:
>>
>> 1)    " Investigation of the root causes of Internet centralization 
>> ...  ":
>>
>>     Centralization vs. decentralization in a system could manifest in 
>> surprisingly alternating manners depending on which particular 
>> perspective that one's investigation is focused upon. For example,
>>
>>     A.    During the Internet infancy days, the PSTN (Public Switched 
>> Telephone Network) was criticized as being too centralized implying 
>> that the Internet would be distributed or decentralized. As this 
>> Group agrees, the Internet is now far from being decentralized, after 
>> all. The reason for this discrepancy is that back then colleagues 
>> were looking at the network facility to assume that the operations 
>> would have the same characteristics.
>>
>>     B.    Comparing the operations today, we find that Internet users 
>> have no permanent identity, except temporarily assigned by 
>> multi-national business conglomerates, thus not able to freely 
>> communicate with one another, starting from even a neighbor. This 
>> means that the Internet operation today is a centralized one. In 
>> contrast, PSTN supports dial-up modems that enable any and every user 
>> the freedom / flexibility / independence of contacting anyone around 
>> the world anytime for data communication (This was how the Internet 
>> initially got popularized, although very slow by today's standards) 
>> which is clearly a distributed and decentralized operation.
>>
>> 2)    The above may sound contradicting that a centralized facility 
>> supports decentralized operation while a decentralized one operates 
>> centralized. The fact is that the top layer operational behavior of a 
>> system determines which way it is from a user's viewpoint. In OSI 7 
>> Layer model, as far as I could understand, we should set 
>> distributed/decentralized as the criterion at OSI Layer 7 for every 
>> system. Which way the lower Layers appear to be really does not 
>> matter, as long as they can eventually support the ultimate goal.
>>
>> 3)    More specifically, the PSTN core equipment is so centralized 
>> that the identity of every subscriber loop is predetermined with a 
>> phone number. So, a CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) can be mass 
>> produced without the capability to acquire an identification upon 
>> plugging into a jack at the end of a subscriber loop. Essentially, 
>> the DHCP operation has already been accomplished in a user's mind. In 
>> the Internet, however, an IoT has to go through the process of 
>> acquiring an IP address (yet temporary) from the network core before 
>> it can operate, which means that an user can not operate 
>> independently at well.
>>
>> 4)    The above may be vague, unorganized, or philosophical. This is 
>> because I just began to formulate this analytical approach for 
>> visualizing the problem at hand. I believe that we do need to 
>> exercise our minds from this angle, or similar to be able to set the 
>> criteria and priority for qualifying an application or operation. So 
>> that, we may have some chance to achieve the goal of "decentralizing 
>> the Internet".
>>
>> 5)    Essentially, I believe that if a user does not have a permanent 
>> identity (static IP address) for communication through a system, the 
>> operation becomes centralized by having to rely upon a focal facility 
>> serving the coordination functions.
>>
>> I look forward to your thoughts.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>
>> Abe (2024-10-20 10:21 EDT)
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2024-10-18 04:41, Dirk Kutscher wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>> in Dublin, we are planning to continue our discussion on next steps 
>>> for DINRG.
>>> To that end, we are soliciting suggestions, interests indications, 
>>> and questions here. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to 
>>> share it here or by personal e-mail.
>>> We will collect everything and then prepare a summary before the 
>>> meeting.
>>> As a bit of background:
>>> As chartered, DINRG has different objectives:
>>> • Investigation of the root causes of Internet centralization, and 
>>> articulation of the impacts of the market economy, architecture and 
>>> protocol designs, as well as government regulations;
>>> • Measurement of the Internet centralization and the consequential 
>>> societal impacts;
>>> • Characterization and assessment of observed Internet centralization;
>>> • Development of a common terminology and understanding of 
>>> (de-)centralization;
>>> • Interaction with the broader research community to explore new 
>>> research topics and technical solutions for decentralized system and 
>>> application development;
>>> • Documentation of the outcome from the above efforts via different 
>>> means (e.g., research papers and RFCs) as inputs to the broader 
>>> conversation around centralization; and
>>> • Facilitation of discussions between researchers, organizations and 
>>> individuals involved in Internet standards and regulations.
>>> Let us know, which of these objectives should be emphasized in your 
>>> view, and whether you have specific interests within these topics 
>>> that should be discussed more.
>>> Best regards,
>>> Dirk and Lixia
>>>
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>>
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  Dr. William Lehr
  Research Associate
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