Re: How the IPnG effort was started

Thus spake "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey(_at_)jefsey(_dot_)com>
> On 19:10 19/11/2004, Kurt Erik Lindqvist said:
> > I have long thought that the knowledge of having long (life-long)
> > persistent, well-spread unique personal identifiers are bad was general
> > knowledge. Then again, I guess the US biometric stuff has proven me
> > wrong on that already.
> I am not sure I understand the English of this remark. I suppose you mean 
> that you thought if everyone known a user 's persistent number the user 
> would be worried? If this is the case, it only makes my points that IETF 
> lacks market studies and reporting from the end-users. This a general 
> demand that Telephone companies hesitated to provide due to the complexity 
> until mobiles came in. Now it is a simple common demand to have on fixed 
> lines the same features as on mobiles (permanent and temporary numbers).
There is a huge difference between knowing someone's phone number and 
knowing their exact legal identity.  Phone numbers, even ones portable 
between carriers, are inherently temporary things.  And, let's not forget, 
many people pay their phone companies not to be listed in directories and 
pay again when too many people (or even a single ex) know their number.
MAC addresses were proposed for the lower 64 bits of IPv6 autoconfigured 
addresses, and privacy advocates threw an amazing tantrum about how that 
would lead to invasion of privacy -- and that just tied an address to the 
NIC of a particular computer, not to a publicly known legal identity.
> The real product is the addressing plan. And the reasons why no one is 
> excited are that:
> - these addresses are managed "a la IPv4", as a unique Vint Cerf's/ICANN 
> numbering area. This is what they want to correct with ITU. I submit there 
> is no conflict. IPv6 has 6 different numbering plans. Let say that 001 is 
> for the US Vint's legacy and 011 for international. That Vint can manage 
> the 001 area and the ITU the 011 area. This is status quo.
If the IP routing infrastructure were regulated (as the telephone one is) so 
that all US ISPs had to carry for non-US routes was a single prefix, this 
would work.  Currently, it doesn't work that way, and many things would need 
to be changed for that to happen.
> - the way the countries will manage their numbering space is up to them. 
> But if I refer to the telephone solutions, my guess is that many will 
> differentiate routing and addressing in a very simple way (and this is 
> certainly what the ART (French FCC) wants to hear about - because this is 
> what users want : IP addresses are to be independent from the ISP). This 
> means that they will allocate national IDs that you will be able to use as 
> a NetworkID or as a UserID. And you will probably get the UserID for free 
> at birth or creation, probably additional ones on a small fee and you will 
> pay for the routing to your NetworkID.
Why the heck should users care what their IP address is in the first place? 
They are not intended to be seen by users, and there is a user-friendly 
replacement called DNS that is manageable by end-users for their needs.
Addresses inherently represent position in the topology.  Any attempt to 
abstract addresses out of the topology will simply mean that a new, less 
transparent layer of addressing will be created underneath and a mapping 
mechanism will be added, increasing latency and decreasing reliability.
> How does that fit into a /128? Very simply. The final global network 
> address will result from the concatenation (probably described in 0-Z 
> numbering) of :
> - a numbering plan header (like 011) + may be one or two additional digits 
> to qualify plans, documentation, anycast, multicast, and he type of 
> service/network (like telephone, Internet, TV, Radio, Posts, etc. )
> - DCC+national number as a Network ID. Global routing is made at this 
> level.
> - DCC+national number as a UserID. Network local routing is made on that 
> one.
> - users interfaces.
>
> This means that when I subscribe to a network or another I will keep my 
> same UserID in each network, but my number starts with the NetworkID of 
> the access provider. So, if I concatenate the traffic of several ISP this 
> makes no problem. I can even pay these ISP on the basis of the datagrams 
> they carried. A mobile changing from network will be easily followed. The 
> /128 address of my French mobile when I travel in Korea will be will be 
> 011xx+KoreanISP+FrenchID.
We already have this in effect today; there is a numbering plan ID, a 
network ID, and a host ID.  It'd be trivial to assign EUI-64s to users 
instead of to NICs, except that we'd need to make allowances for multiple 
numbers per user.  Of course, since configuration is no longer automatic, 
we'd see billions of cases where users would type in this information 
incorrectly, and we'd need to figure out what to do when multiple users 
share a computer.  And then there's the privacy issues...
> No different from having jefsey.com, jefsey.org, jefsey.net.
My email address (stephen(_at_)sprunk(_dot_)org) would work just fine if I were to move 
to France or Korea; in fact I've used it from France myself and one of the 
other users in that domain has lived in Korea and Thailand.  Worked 
perfectly, and there was no need for government-issued IDs or mangling of IP 
addresses.
> This means that everyone has an address for his web/mail, for broadcasting 
> TV or cognitive radio, etc. You can discuss international agreements, 
> establish treaties on content, on address-back (feed back on an address?) 
> payment authentication, establish usage warranties and insurances, etc, 
> etc. We are in regalian (Government role) business.
We already have universal addresses for these functions; SMTP, SIP, etc. all 
have DNS-based addressing schemes that allow users to keep their 
identity(ies) with them when they change network-level providers.
> Obviously there are objections. And these objections are what has to be 
> worked on to sell "IPv6".
> 0. there is no more way to make money worldwide because I have been given 
> an Excel table to fill. IDs will be allocated by Govs the way they want. 
> What will be paid to RIR, NIR or LIR will be their real service with QoS 
> control. This calls probably for a new economic model.
I'm sure if a national govt came to IANA (or an RIR) and asked for a /32 to 
address everything in their country, and arranged for a national-level 
routing infrastructure to use those addresses exclusively and efficiently, 
it would happen.  They'd then have 96 bits to do whatever they wanted 
locally without interference.
> 1. there is no room enough in /64 as actually (if I understand well) /128 
> addresses are just /32 addresses extended to /64 with a user subaddress 
> payload. User addresses will probably requires /80 or /96. Less than half 
> in the routing tables. But structuring may permit clever thinking.
Enumerating all the humans on the planet only takes 33 bits today, and even 
with 9 bits for a country code and a few bits for multiple devices per user, 
we still have nearly two dozen bits left unused.  Please explain why you 
think /80 or /96 will _ever_ be needed to count people.
> 2. there are much more needs to address virtual objects than just computer 
> ports. So wee need to establish a numeric root of the numbering schemes 
> accessible through the network, to give them an addressing capacity (this 
> is what we called the Uninum proposition) of an unlimited size (their 
> purpose is not necessarily to number network entities, but to number 
> entities which can be reached through the network). They may eventually be 
> supported by numeric names. These addresses will become more and more 
> important as unique lingual and time independent references. But this is 
> another aspects of the changes we needs.
Why do you think people want numeric names for things?  We already have a 
textual naming system that meets all of your requirements of unlimited 
length, country (and often province) identification, use for multiple 
purposes, etc.  Even you state your theoretical numbering system will be 
conveyed in alphanumeric representation, so why not use the naming system 
_that already does that today_?
We're already seeing a move away from numeric (i.e. address) based phone 
systems towards textual (i.e. name) based communication systems; we're only 
a few years away from users not having phone numbers at all, but rather SIP 
URIs that look the same as email addresses.  Users don't like numbers, and 
they shouldn't be expected much less forced to remember tham, particularly 
long ones.
S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking 

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