From: Markus Stumpf <maex-lists-ietf-general(_at_)Space(_dot_)Net>
If you want to buy a car and ask if it has air bags and nobody can
give you a definite answer, would you buy the car if it is important to
you to have an air bag?
Buging a car with a feature with well defined characteristics is quite
different from buying Internet services which don't even have common
names. Air bags, at least in the U.S., must do exactly what they do
even if that is known to kill people who are short. Your "private
use" Internet service is basically whatever you feel like selling.
That you apparently call it "private use" instead of one of the more
common names is yet another symptom of the problem.
If the ISP can't answer the question about improtant product details,
why do you sign a contract with that provider? Because he is cheaper
than others? Now what would most probably be the reason?
I'm in the insignificant minority that can ask the right questions
about IP service and recognize when I'm not getting answers, but I can
neither ask good questions about air bags, nor recognize nonsense
answers. I don't know much about air bags except that they are bombs
in bags, which is as much as most sales people. Still, I can buy a
car with an air bag and know I'm getting something that might do some
good (unless I'm short or sit too far forward) and meets a standard.
Without the standardization of "air bag," I could not.
We have a classic standardization problem that is affecting
interoperability. The market has gotten ahead of the IETF and is
buying and selling a many quite different things all called "Internet
service." It is more the job of the IETF to define standards
including a taxomony in this area than to define yet another MIB.
It is not the job of the IETF to try to stop anyone from selling
services that differ from what we used to get via NSF any more than
it is the job of the IETF to prevent the sales of NAT boxes and PPPoE,
no matter how nasty and evil NAT, PPPoE, and slum IP services are. It
is right, proper, and necessary that the IETF has NAT and PPPoE
standards. We should also have standards for your "private use Internet
service" as distinct from the services I bought 20 years ago, even if
you agree with me that "slum IP service sold by virtual slumlords to
fools" is as accurate and more clear than "client only, private address."
Since there are always providers, you can't sue simply because you
bought an account with limits you failed to clarify.
This is the important part: "you failed to clarify".
Unless you are among the insignificant minority who knows the difference
between an ICMP Port-Unreachable and an ICMP Administrative-Prohibited,
you are incapable of clarifying. Worse, unless you know more than all
available employees at many Internet services providers, you are
incapable of knowing whether you're being told nonsense.
Standards for the various flavors of "Internet service" would solve
those problems for both users and service providers.
- which of the classes in
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-02.txt
is closest to a "DSL Surf Accounts"?
It is probably something like "Web connectivity" or "Client connectivity
only", but I find the terms in the draft *very* fuzzy and overlapping.
And no I haven't yet thought about it long enough to make suggestions ;-)
What about adding explicit lists of the packets that are (not) filtered,
frequency of DHCP reassignment, DSL PPP disconnections, and whatever?
The draft currently gives the equivalents of "driver's side", "passenger,"
"side impact air bags," for consumers but does not include the technical
stuff equivalent to the rules for air bags. Something like the "Client
connectivity only" now in the draft is needed by consumers and front
line technical support people, but it is not sufficent for a provider
(or a government) to determine compliance.
Maybe this needs a WG.
In general I support all what you said to some extent.
In that case it would be nice if you would not write as if you vehimently
opposed the notion of standardizing terms for classes or kinds of
Internet service. Except for that single sentence, I have the impression
that you agree with the individual from Japan that the whole idea of
the draft is entirely wrong and destructive.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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