Re: The ecosystem is moving

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 5/13/2016 11:20 AM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 1:56 PM, Dave Crocker <[e-mail]
>     To date, we really only have two services that demonstrate open (ie,
>     multi-administration) interoperability at Internet scale:  email and
>     DNS.
>
>
> TCP, IP, UDP, NFS, DHCP, TLS, SSH, FTP, HTTP, NNTP, SIP, ...


So, yes, I did intend my comment to be provocative and did suspect I was 
missing one or another service.  But I also messed up, by not making 
clear I was targeting open, /distributed/, /applications-level/ 
services. (And yes, for this kind of discussion, DNS is an application.)

That is, I meant the qualifying test to be that there often is casual 
interoperability across a /sequence/ of independent administrations, and 
use by a very large fraction of the Internet.

Alia's BGP reference was the biggest surprise -- thank you, Alia! -- 
because I think it /does/ qualify and it hadn't occurred to me.

The problem with all of the others cited above is that they aren't at 
used at scale or aren't really used with open, multi-hop 
interoperability.  Much of the list, above, is for lower-layer protocols.

FTP and HTTP are simple, single-hop client/server mechanisms.  The 
latter is, of course, widely used, but it's a one-hop service.  (In 
reality, of course, the web has all sorts of additional hops, if one 
looks at content distribution, and other mechanisms, but they are behind 
the scenes and under tight control.)

NNTP is a very nicely distributed service, but it is not used at scale.

As I understand SIP use, the multi-hop mechanisms are another example of 
tightly-control operational prior arrangement, behind the scenes.  So it 
might qualify for "at scale" (though it might not) but it's operation 
isn't sufficiently open -- ie, permitting /casual/ interoperation.

I'm a fan of xmpp/jabber, but it, too, simply hasn't attained sufficient 
'at scale' use.

Hence my slightly-modified claim that, other than email and DNS (and, 
yes, BGP), we have been strikingly unsuccessful at deploying new 
distributed application services and getting them to be successful at scale.



d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net