Re: Call for Papers: IAB Workshop on Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet (SEMI)

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 11/26/2014 8:22 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 4:43 AM, Masataka Ohta
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> Dear IAB (CC to IETF list);
>>
>> I wrote a position paper for SEMI workshop and it was rejected
>> with a surprising review comment, all of the point of which
>> is wrong.
> 
> That is because it is a workshop on how the Internet can evolve to
> realize the architecture of the stack, not a workshop on how the
> architecture of the stack can evolve to address the way people use it.

I had thought that part of the meeting would be to address the tension
between these two issues, but I have also since learned it has become
"how do we evolve the Internet to accept whatever middleboxes want to
do" - i.e., precisely the latter of your examples.

> The only end points that can be fixed end to end on a network are
> cryptographic keys and data bound to cryptographic keys. Ports and IP
> addresses are ephemera.

Not according to the current Internet architecture, but that's back to
my point above.

An architecture is defined as much by what it is not as what it is. If
everything is on the table as changeable, then there is NO architecture
anymore.

Joe