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Re: Proposed IESG structure change

2014-10-10 07:53:26
This does seem to have strayed from the original topic.

I don't see any reason not to appoint an Apps area AD. There are three
possible outcomes from the process.

1) No change
2) The job of apps AD goes away and a new seat created
3) The job of apps AD goes away and is not replaced

Given the way this organization operates I think the chances of (3)
occurring within two years are not worth worrying about.


There is a broader issue though. Organizing around specialities does
not work when everything needs to have real time and security input.
There is a charter being circulated for DPRIVE (DNS Privacy). It took
me quite a while to work out it was being proposed in Internet area
and I don't think it fits there any better than security, transport or
applications. But I could make a case for it being RAI.

I have come to the conclusion that the OSI folk were right that there
is an intermediate layer between Transport and Applications. And that
is where TLS and DNS sit (and JSON). So call it Presentation because
its the familiar term. But its not the OSI presentation layer.

OSI were so very good at making the soup from the finest of
ingredients and then throwing an elephant turd in the pot before
serving.

Yes, the OSI model is junk. But not because models don't have any
value. The problem is that the model is describing what takes place in
the box rather than the interfaces between that box and the boxes it
connects to.

If we took an object oriented view [1] then we would define the system
in terms of the interfaces. And those are defined in terms of
identifiers and syntax (for the layers we deal with).

If we define the model this way the identifiers are:

Applications - Presentation :  DNS names
Presentation - Transport : IP Address, Port, TCP/UDP/wev
Transport - Internet : IP Address

Software defined networking and VPNs can fit very nicely into this
model and it illustrates the difference between them. If the upper and
lower interfaces are IP addresses then its a VPN. If only the upper
interface is IP Addresses then its SDN.



[1] Actually defining the interfaces is more characteristic of formal
specification languages such as Z/VDM.

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