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Re: the problem of regime change

2004-05-31 11:33:48
Mandag den 31. maj 2004 20:12 skrev Meng Weng Wong:
Putting an expiration date into an RFC is a pretty radical
move, though.  I don't know if it's been done before.

Very bad idea. You basically create something unstable - remember when 
Microsoft expired all ActiveX signatures? They basically killed 
ActiveX as the basic component of the internet, nobody dared to 
invest in it any more.

TCP/IP is not the best protocol around. If the best technology had 
won, we would all use ATM by now. TCP/IP just has this tiny little 
advantage of being there first. TCP/IP is awful from so many points 
of view, it's unbelievable. People are still struggling to do good 
telephony over TCP/IP, whereas realtime traffic is built into the ATM 
protocol just from its birth.

Many people believed, that ATM would take over the world, so until 
2001 or so, the largest internet provider around here were still 
deploying ATM network equipment everywhere, and IP was just a layer 
on top of ATM. At last they had to give up, and replaced ATM ADSL 
connections with the much more primitive Ethernet-based ADSL 
connections, and they probably even changed their backbone to not 
using ATM everywhere. What about X.400 and X.500?

SPF version 1 is very well designed as an addon to the existing 
infrastructure. It has most of the elements that made TCP/IP, SMTP, 
HTTP etc. win. The Microsoft approach, however, has a lot of elements 
that it shares with technologies that we have forgotten about for a 
long time - the XML approach is one of them. I still remember the 
discussions about whether to use X.400/X.500 or whether to use 
SMTP/internet e-mail. Let's see:

- X.400/X.500 were much better designed, much more extensible, better 
standardized.
- Internet e-mail/SMTP had easier to read e-mail addresses.

It's a tough choice... and many governments would not touch the 
internet e-mail system, because "readability" was irrelevant in 
context with electronic mail systems, and a good standard was needed 
(instead of this RFC crap).

My opinion is clear: If you like the path of the internet, TCP/IP, 
HTTP, SMTP, e-mail etc., SPF version 1 has the syntax we need.

If you believe in Microsoft Network, CompuServe, ATM, ActiveX, X.400, 
X.500, go for the XML syntax.

If we create a dual data format spec, allowing both XML and the old 
notation, we get both an easy notation (= popularity, deployment, 
easier to understand for newbies) and the ability to extend the data 
format later (XML notation only).

Lars.

-- 

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