Re: [EME] EME charter

[Saikat Guha <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, 2006-11-12 at 21:52 -0800, Joe Touch wrote:
> Problem-causing middleboxes don't *want* to be found; they want to be
> "transparent".
> 
> Resolving - or prohibiting - that transparency should be included and
> addressed.

Middleboxes that are _truly transparent_ are not problematic (by
definition almost). Translucent middleboxes, on the other hand, should
indeed be addressed.

One reason such translucent middleboxes exist is that there is no way
for the middle to inform the end of policy much less require the end to
enforce it (the corporate firewall case). Another reason is that the end
cannot effectively direct the middle (the NAT case); perhaps NATs would
have been less problematic if source route was a first class citizen in
the Internet or DNS names carried end-to-end in packets. 

To the extent that the lack of middle-to-end and end-to-middle
communication prevents middleboxes from being truly transparent (to the
app layer) or fully visible (to the network layer), EME resolves to
address the problem IMHO.

-- 
Saikat

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