Re: My comments to the press about RFC 2474

[Richard Bennett <[e-mail]>]

  Russ says he believes the PR firm works for the Internet Society.

I speak for myself, hence the use of my name. If you read the press 
release I copied to the list, you'll note that it doesn't mention Russ's 
name at all, but it does mention his role at IETF.

I hope that answers your questions, Brian.

RB

On 9/7/2010 4:43 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Sigh. It's hard to resist tendentious messages. I have two
> questions for Mr Bennett.
>
> Q1.
>
>> message from our public relations agency
> To whom or what does "our" refer in this phrase?
>
> Q2. Does your signature block:
>>> Richard Bennett
>>> Senior Research Fellow
>>> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
>>> Washington, DC
> imply that you are making a statement on behalf that foundation?
>
> Regards
>     Brian Carpenter (writing only for himself)
>
> On 2010-09-08 11:26, Richard Bennett wrote:
>>    I think you should have shared the message from our public relations agency
>> that started this incident, Russ. Here's what it said:
>> ------------------
>> IETF Chair speaks on Paid Prioritization - Thursday, September 2, 2010
>>
>> "I note the recent discussion in the U.S. media in connection with 'paid
>> prioritization' of Internet traffic and the claim that RFC 2474
>> 'expressly contemplating paid prioritization.'  This characterization of
>> the IETF standard and the use of the term 'paid prioritization' by AT&T
>> is misleading.  The IETF's prioritization technologies allow users to
>> indicate how they would like their service providers to handle their
>> Internet traffic. The IETF does not imply any specific payment based on
>> prioritization as a separate service."
>>
>> Melissa Kahaly
>> Assistant Vice President
>>    <http://www.fd.com/>
>> 88 Pine Street, 32nd Floor
>> New York, NY, 10005
>> T [phone]
>> F [phone]
>> M [phone]
>> www.fd.com<http://www.fd.com/>
>>
>> A member of FTI Consulting Inc.
>> -----------------
>>
>> This clearly isn't Russ Housley speaking as an individual, this is the IETF
>> Chair making an official statement.
>>
>> The statement is misleading as RFC 2474 neither *implies any specific payment*
>> nor *denies any specific payment*. RFC 2475, RFC 2638, and RFC 3006 are plenty
>> clear on the relationship of technical standards to commercial arrangements.
>>
>> And yes, the Architecture RFCs are classified as "Informational" but that
>> doesn't stop the Proposed Standards from referencing their "requirements" as RFC
>> 3246 does:
>>
>> "In addition, traffic conditioning at the ingress to a DS-domain MUST ensure
>> that only packets having DSCPs that correspond to an EF PHB when they enter the
>> DS-domain are marked with a DSCP that corresponds to EF inside the DS-domain.
>> *Such behavior is as required by the Differentiated Services architecture* [4
>> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3246#ref-4>]. It protects against
>> denial-of-service and theft-of-service attacks which exploit DSCPs that are not
>> identified in any Traffic Conditioning Specification provisioned at an ingress
>> interface, but which map to EF inside the DS-domain."
>>
>> [Footnote 4] Black, D., Blake, S., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z. and W.
>> Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated Services", RFC 2475
>> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2475>, December 1998.
>>
>> I don't have any desire to limit Russ Housley's free speech rights, but it's
>> clear from all the evidence that he approached the press as the Chairman of IETF
>> with a statement to make about the argument between AT&T and Free Press, and
>> it's the statement in the official capacity that bothers me. I wouldn't take up
>> the IETF's time with a personal disagreement between Russ' interpretation of
>> DiffServ and anyone else's, but this issue is clearly far beyond that.
>>
>> Finally, the term "paid-prioritization" wasn't coined by AT&T, it comes from the
>> statement by Free Press that AT&T was criticizing. In Free Press' usage it means
>> any departure from FIFO behavior for a fee.
>>
>> RB
>>
>> On 9/7/2010 3:52 PM, Russ Housley wrote:
>>> Richard:
>>>
>>>> Russ said to the press that he considers AT&T's belief that the RFCs
>>>> envisioned payment for premium services implemented over DiffServ or
>>>> MPLS to be "invalid."
>>> This is not what I said.  I said 'misleading.'
>>>
>>> The letter from AT&T jumbles some things together.  AT&T makes many
>>> correct points, but in my opinion, a reader will get a distorted
>>> impression from the parts of the letter where things get jumbled.
>>>
>>> Adding to this situation, it is clear to me that the term "paid
>>> prioritization" does not have the same meaning to all readers.  If you
>>> read the AT&T letter with one definition in your head, then you get one
>>> overall message, and if you read the letter with the other in your head,
>>> then you get a different overall message.  I tried to make this point.
>>>
>>> This was captured pretty clearly in the article by Eliza Krigman:
>>> | The feud boiled down to what it means to have "paid
>>> | prioritization," ...
>>>
>>> As I said on Friday, I made the point that DiffServ can be used to make
>>> sure that traffic associated with applications that require timely
>>> delivery, like voice and video, to give preference over traffic
>>> associated with applications without those demands, like email.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, it is not simple, and I said so.  I used an example in my
>>> discussion with Declan McCullagh.  I think that Declan captured this
>>> point in his article, except that he said 'high priority', when I
>>> actually said 'requiring timely delivery':
>>> | The disagreement arises from what happens if Video Site No. 1 and
>>> | Video Site No. 2 both mark their streams as high priority. "If two
>>> | sources of video are marking their stuff the same, then that's where
>>> | the ugliness of this debate begins," Housley says. "The RFC doesn't
>>> | talk about that...If they put the same tags, they'd expect the same
>>> | service from the same provider."
>>>
>>> Clearly, if the two video sources have purchased different amounts of
>>> bandwidth, then the example breaks down.  However, that is not the point
>>> in this debate.
>>>
>>> Russ
>>>
>> -- 
>> Richard Bennett
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ietf mailing list
>> [e-mail]
>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

-- 
Richard Bennett