Re: NATs as firewalls and the NEA

For better or worse, the "centralized means of control" you mention  
may well come in the form of
the latest IPTV networks being built by large telco providers.  As  
telco battles cable for couch
potatoes, they've realized that mucking with television reception is  
perhaps the best way to overload
their customer service call centers.  As such, the demarc between  
ISP* and customer is moving
inside the home.  There may still be a Linksys or Netgear wirless  
device attached to these
networks but there will be an IP "router" that is partially  
controlled by the ISP on site.
Depending on your stomach for getting involved there will be,  
according to predictions, ~40
million households worldwide on some type of IPTV in the next few  
years alone.  We may not
have the opportunity to replace existing hardware, but there is the  
opportunity to influence
what goes in-line before it.

* the term "ISP" has morphed so many times I have trouble following  
but in the modern day
progression of UUnet/iMCI >> AOL/Earthlink >> AT&T/Verizon I'm  
referring to the latter example.
jy
On Mar 6, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Douglas Otis wrote:

> On Mar 5, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
>
> > Quite, the technical part of my proposal is essentially a  
> > generalization of the emergent principle of port 25 blocking.  
> > While people were doing this before SUBMIT was proposed the SUBMIT  
> > proposal made it possible to do so without negative impact on  
> > legitimate users.
> > How do we establish the political coalition necessary to act?  
> > There is clearly additional discussion necessary within the IETF  
> > community to achieve a measure of consensus. I agree that the IETF  
> > list is not the place for that.
> > We need more than just consensus in the IETF though. We need to  
> > convince the ISPs to act who in turn must persuade the vendors of  
> > SOHO routers. The ISPs have leverage, they write RFPs. The ISPs  
> > and others discuss this type of issue in forums such as MAAWG. The  
> > institutional issue is how to present an IETF consensus to such fora.
> > This need does not seem to be anticipated in the IETF  
> > constitution. The body with the closest mandate would appear to be  
> > the IAB.
> While outbound controls in low cost SOHO routers, NATs, DSL or  
> cable modems could prove useful, there is a significant hardware  
> installation base that will not be replaced anytime soon.  Unless  
> ISPs are willing to invest in a centralized means of control within  
> their networks and then endure the resulting support, the problem  
> will persist.  Such an investment is likely to be seen as in  
> conflict with maximizing revenues.
> Guidelines for ISP best practices might include a recommendation  
> for access device features, however it seems unlikely anything that  
> requires additional support, especially those that instruct users  
> to disable some feature, as being a lost cause.  It seems unlikely  
> any ISP will wish to embrace this effort, regardless of need.
> The scope for the NEA effort could have been broader.  The NEA  
> control mechanism is lacking, and this effort will not consider  
> compatibility with the Internet as a whole.  This seems like a  
> missed opportunity for improving protections where ISPs could also  
> stand to benefit.
> -Doug
>
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