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

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 12/8/2014 7:10 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Joe Touch <[e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     > 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.
> 
> 
> If you believe in 'permissionless innovation' then everything is always
> on the table. 

That's called "anarchy", and the results only serve to increase entropy.

> The Internet architecture to date has been what survived a
> Darwinian process.

First, it's not Darwinian so much as mutation caused by high-energy
radiation, and no, it's not clear to me that "architecture" is
surviving. Sometimes the result is just glowing goo.

> I don't believe in in ancestor worship.

Nor do I; I do believe in deliberate, thoughtful changes to
architecture. That's not the same as the anarchist view, or post-facto
"let's figure out how to change the architecture to accommodate the
anarchy".

In good design, sometimes the answer has to be "NO". If that's not the
case, then you have no architecture.

Joe