"Jefsey" == Jefsey Morfin <jefsey(_at_)jefsey(_dot_)com> writes:
Jefsey> At 05:52 06/09/2006, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> I want to be able to give you a URL and have you resolve it.
>> That only works if we speak the same transport protocol.
>>
>> I want people to be able to reference HTTP and get
>> interoperability, not to have to write a profile of http.
Jefsey> Sam, there are several ways to understand your exact
Jefsey> concern.
Jefsey> Let me keep considering the network ecology. This is the
Jefsey> real issue we have with interoperability , i.e. the inner
Jefsey> structure.
Jefsey> - either you consider the Internet as Harald Alvestrand
Jefsey> considers it in RFC 3935: something the IETF leaders
Jefsey> influence the building along their values. This vision is
Jefsey> OK with me as long as this Internet is one system among
Jefsey> others. Ex. TCP/IP vs. OSI. You can decide to constrain it
Jefsey> to force the inner interoperability its unique governance
Jefsey> wants. As does Harald with languages and you would with
Jefsey> HTTP. Every time you give an URL you are to reach the same
Jefsey> site. As also the IGF still considers the things: every
Jefsey> time you give an URL you hope you reach the same site.
Jefsey> - or you consider the digital system as it is: a living
Jefsey> global mess with many technologies, bugs, conflicts, etc.,
Jefsey> with its own ecology (the way it usually reacts to
Jefsey> something). Every time you give an URL you do not know if
Jefsey> you will reach the same site. So you organise yourself to
Jefsey> preserve and develop interoperability and increase your
Jefsey> chances, depending on your contexts.
[Apologies to Harald. I realize you don't run the Internet any more
and realize I'm taking your name in veighn:-)]
I want something in the middle.
If I fully embrace your vision, I end up with something far more
complicated than is necessary, although I will admit that it has
significant intellectual appeal. There's actually a lot of
interesting science fiction written about network models similar to
what you are looking at. I'm not intending to be pejorative by saying
that people are writing science fiction about it. However I don't
think we understand how to engineer a network like that today and I
think that if we tried to design such a network we'd make a mess.
However, if we try and design the Internet that you think harald wants
but we do so with our eyes open, I think we can get somewhere in the
middle, somewhere that balances complexity against functionality. We
use the ecological forces. As we see specific problems that people
actually want to solve, we make changes to Harald's Internet to solve
them. We try to be moderately ecologically focused in our thinking.
For example, when we see NAT issues in one network management
application, we ask ourselves whether the same problem will pop up
elsewhere (Hi, Eliot). We make sure that things are extensible so
that we can change them.
I understand you're trying to get us to do this. I think though, you
are too forward thinking and your work is not motivated enough by
specific real-world problems. Let's take your language tags work. If
you had come to us with a specific application that was well enough
thought out that we could understand how it works even with users
menting their own languages, we would have considered your needs more
seriously. But as your problem was presented, it was very much a pure
research problem not an engineering problem. This is the IETF not the
IRTF and so we will make the valid engineering decision to limit
complexity rather than enable research.
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