From: Elwyn Davies [mailto:elwynd(_at_)dial(_dot_)pipex(_dot_)com]
I hope not, but I fear you are correct. IMO Much of this
stems from the ossification and 'lowest common denominator'
nature of the deployed network, Arguably, the
network/protocol suite is senile and truly novel,
architecturally valid improvements are close to impossible
because the network cannot adapt to them. The IETF is trying
to prevent death rather than enhance life.
The ossification is not necessary. There are technical reasons and political
reasons but both are fixable.
The technical issue is that we lack a network policy layer so there is no way
to code the statement 'I support legacy SMTP and Multi-media messaging protocol
2.3' or statements of the form 'all SMTP mail from this address is signed using
S/MIME'.
That is what domain centric is all about addressing in the general case.
The political issue is that changing the infrastructure takes a lot of buy in
and has to be driven by a deployment plan that addresses the pain points
recognized by the people being asked to buy in. NAT and IPv6 are not recognized
as critical pain points by any people I know of outside the IETF. I don't think
you will find anyone else who puts them in their top five list of things they
need to get done.
That is an unfortunate situation but not an impossible one. What we need to do
is to devise a technical infrastructure which addresses at least one of the top
two pain points that specific parties recognise and also addresses the issues
that we think need to be addressed.
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