Re: [Spud] Bare-minimum PLUS (was Re: Thoughts on the privacy concerns expressed at the BoF)

[Kyle Rose <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Brian Trammell <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Some of it is stability of the API, some of it is the stability of the
> what i'll call the "wire image": what the headers and behaviors look like
> to an on-path device.
>
> I agree with Eliot that what we're trying to do here is re-ossify the wire
> image *on purpose*, given the things we've learned since the 1980s from the
> less intentional ossification that's happened since then. There is a
> careful line to draw when doing this. It should be generic enough that all
> the transport innovation we think we might want to do between now and 2040
> fits inside it. It should be restrictive enough that it presents an
> improvement on the present state of the world with respect to the types of
> shenanigans described in
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-trammell-privsec-defeating-tcpip-meta-00.
> But if it's too restrictive, people will just find other ways to implement
> the kinds of in-network functions they want to: cf. using the QUIC version
> number as a QUIC magic number, for instance.
>

Agreed. I think we're saying basically the same thing. I was merely
suggesting that "ossification" as we've been using it applies to what you
call the network image, not to the API for the protocols: those APIs are
under the full control of each endpoint independently, so long as the
underlying protocol can be expressed in terms of that API. (Extreme
counterexample: trying to use sigaction/kill as an API to TCP. Maybe it
could be done, but it sure would be limiting and pointless.)

> No one is going to break the sockets API anytime soon
>
> *ahem* https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-taps-2.pdf
> *cough* -- I'm not saying we're going to be successful in breaking it, but
> it *is* the other half of the problem we have today.
>

This isn't breaking it: this is offering an alternative. I'm all for that,
as long as telnet continues to work without source changes.

Kyle