Re: How the IPnG effort was started

Dear Stephen,
there are two things necessary first to accept:

- that what we name "names" and "addresses" are two of the three main ways 
to identify objects. The way linked to the object, the way attached to the 
system, the way related to the users. And because this analysis is not 
worded clearly and there only two accepted levels there is a lot of 
confusion. This confusion is increased by the routing Internet system.
- a identification plan is something far more complex than a protocol which 
is not to be designed a minima, in a few mails but which calls for 
experience, studies, consensus of a lot of authorities, worldwide. For 
example, you cannot say that you treat all the countries in the world with 
"9" bits. There are scores of standards, study, needs,billions of daily 
affected usages, transactions, records, legal consequences, etc. etc ... to 
be taken into account. This is not something where a Government "can apply" 
for a /32 to some RIR. This is something where States sovereignty 
_decide_through a carefully designed treaty. This is why IPv6 does not 
fulfill the need the way it is proposed. Again, the problem is not the 
protocol, the problem is the lack of interest in the way the numbering is 
to be managed. Which makes it useless for most of the uses it could be also 
used for, and the world need to see addressed. Add to the resulting Vint/US 
centrric way it is perceived.
I accept that we did it quickly, and alone, 20 years ago for X.121. But we 
did because we were licensed to do it by the FCC, within an ITU (CCITT) 
consensus aggregating all the telecom monopolies which were our customers 
(delegating us) and partners for that (we were the leading public operator 
and the source/end of their international traffic and the manufacturer of 
their technology). We kept them informed and seek their direction in 
bi-yearly meeting we made _them_ to organize and chair. Also we only 
proposed a framework, we discussed it with every monopolies listening to 
and embodying their remarks, respecting the standard they had voted. We 
also only partly committed 20% of the numbering space (0-- and 9--) and 
make it easily reversible or mendable by them. We listen to the users and 
to their dealy changes and developments, we did not evangelize them with a 
15 years old theoretical gospel. I do not say this to criticize, but taking 
advantage from a positive experience may be useful and helpful when one are 
mudded in a problem. Obviously these are two different situations.
On 06:39 20/11/2004, Stephen Spunk said:
> 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.
Please do not confuse what is possible and what is mandatory. The rule is 
not what YOU decide, but what EACH USER decides for himself. This is not to 
be an obligation but a service.
> > 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.
This is your point of view as a technologist, who represent may be 
1/million of the people of this planet. What you mean when you say "many 
things would need to be changed" is that many things should be changed in 
your vision, but you may fail to see that for your approach to happen there 
would many things to change in the way the other billions people interact. 
This may be why IPv6, using that plan, does not catch.
> > - 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.
I am afraid you confuse what these two systems are doing. See below.

> 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.
Network identifiers are not absolute coordinates and identifiers. An 
address is an index in a table. What is important is that this index is 
fully controlled. The less transparent added layer is the additional 
'addressing DNS'  some propose (how to do it for mobiles other wise). You 
are right: this would be absurd and this is what a lack of addressing 
organization will necessarily call for, to compensate it. But let 
understand that addressing is not a directory. One want to access an 
address in a table, not to document a whois. A whois is only necessary when 
you sell host addresses to host owners. Please do not think in 1983 
Internet and IPv4 Host centric academic network terms. I know this legacy 
is difficult to overcome. But we are in a real demand world, not in RFC 
legacy.
Just refer to the basic Internet architecture principle of Brian 
Carptenter: there is only one principle that will never change : that 
everything may change. And changes do not occur because IETF technologists 
want them or the way they want, they occur because the users want them. The 
IETF is not to invent the Internet but to help users to make it to work.
> > 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.
You have to make allowance of roughly 1000 numbers by users, multiplied by 
1000 for management (you never know what is going to increase), multiplied 
by 1000 for innovation, multiplied by PI like in any project multiplied by 
an uncertain number which will decide of the duration of the plan. There 
are rules, experience, examples, obligations in that sort of game I never 
even seen discussed in here. To sell IPv6, is for us to make sure people 
concerned are getting involved and convinced that IPv6 can foot the bill.
My worry is that they already did just that in CCITT (ITU-T) in the mid-80 
and they decided that they will not use addresses longer than 32 digits. 
With the experience and development we known in 20 years I feel we should 
base our thinking on an _open_ /256 base. But the we can manage for a while 
with /128 if we provision future /256 expansions in new RFCs.
>   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.
I am afraid I was confusing. I was just saying that my personal nickname 
"jefsey" worked the same in the DNS under various TLD as my 280810001 
UserID would work the same in the 3110022 NY ISP and in my 280820087 French 
ISP.
If you consider the way famous names are treated in the DNS they do exactly 
that. Whatever the TLD, IBM or MERCEDES are like universal user names. This 
is not an IETF proposition. This is a WIPO decision.
The priority is easiness of  simple, stable, sure, secure fool proof use, 
not to do what is technically possible. For that everyone is ready to waste 
a lot of numbering space not to lose a lot of time and money in bug 
tracking and in calling user support. Even the well documented Jordi's site 
on IPv6 is a total darkness for 999.995 people out of a million in the world.
This has a cost that obviously no government (except may be the US DoD with 
cybersecurity), no organization (except research and some fancy minded 
corporation or academic institutes) or entrepeneurs betting on a 15 years 
old novelty has seemingly found an ROI for.
> > 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.
I am afraid you confuse DNS and IP addressing. I am not against the concept 
(less than 50% of the internet exchanges are using the DNS) but this will 
lead to confusion. Actually what you propose is OSI. The international US 
system during a time (mid-80s) supported OSI addresses in using numeric 
names. But our target was to introduce naming back into OSI, though usage 
(like in DNS today), not to replace it. The OSI problem was that confusion.
> > 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.
I am afraid that no Gov will ever came to IANA and ask... The same as when 
Stuart Lynn asked Gov to advise, or IAB asks Govs to finance, etc. the Govs 
say they are not that business, but in the business of deciding and to 
protect people when they trust their decisions. This is what is named 
"regalian duty" (what goes with regalia).
Govs have understood there is a problem. They started with names. Now they 
start considering numbers. Govs have signed a treaty nearly 140 years ago 
to jointly address their communications issues through a universal agency 
(it was the first one). For years this agency has been told inappropriate 
to manage the Internet - while it supported well the semi-private 
initiative of the first international network and erred in parts in 
specifying a too rigid, too monopoly oriented technology (OSI). They 
observed. Now they are trying to analyze what they should do, to make sure 
their digital infrastructure works properly.
As you may recall the IETF and the IANA owns nothing. People, Govs, 
Corporations owns the equipment. And they increasingly think the solutions 
proposed by IETF do not match the way they want to use them. So, ITU has 
started proposing resuming its role of center of reference. For names 
(ccTLD) and Numbers (DCC). These are not /32 but /16 with accepted rules in 
part of this /16.
> > 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.
This means that you can probably name all the people of the planet with 
unambiguous 8 characters names. So why not to change to an DNSv6 8 
characters system and see if it takes off.
The first rule of a numbering scheme (like in database indexing) is to keep 
as much as possible free space. That you ask to me instead of both of us 
referring to an ISO standard shows that out debate is out of scope. I am 
not arguing what should be done. I am telling what will not work.
> > 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_?
Sorry for the confusion. Please refer to my initial remark. There are three 
levels of identification. Only 2 are documented by IETF but the three are 
used by the users. We name "brainware" the way users collectively uses the 
network and think the network is. The point is not so much what the 
hardware and the software are, but what the people think the network is and 
the way it should react to them.
I used "eventually" with a French flavor. I mean both that this will happen 
(English meaning) and that it can also be used (French flavor). I say that 
necessarily numeric names will be used to support some addressing (because 
today the confusing IETF wording associates names with DNS and numeric with 
IP addresses). Because they already are (cf. use of numeric names by non 
roman character set users).
Please refer to my initial remark. As long as there are no _clear_ words to 
describe all the functions carried in a network system and possibly a clear 
model to describe where they fit, that can of misunderstanding and waste of 
time will happen. Sorry. All the words we use today are inherited from the 
way the function they correspond to was supported in 80s Internet.
Today, interfaces with some functions can only be carried with numeric 
names, how absurd it can be. Example: ENUM (a direct addressing relation 
would be far more efficient with a /xx-Numbering plan addressing.
> 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.
Sorry, this is not a move away from "numeric". This is a move towards 
simplification in aliasing the information used to called a telephone 
device which is identified by an address in a network. IP addresses are not 
to be good mnemonic, they need to be stable and globally consistent. There 
is much demand the other way around. To send mail to telephone number (if 
there was no spam). There is no mystery every information which is not in 
the address is to be in a table. Look at the difference of finding a place 
in NY, Paris and Tokyo. On the network it is the same. Please let stop 
considering DNS and IP addresses. There are object location and access 
routing information which can be aliased by users for usage simplification, 
increased control or added value reasons.
jfc


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