Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Stefs comments on the state of "USG commerce dept vs.
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 16:12:50 -0500
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 00:12:54 -0800 From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () nma com> Sender: stef () nma com Subject: Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet ------- Blind-Carbon-Copy To: ietf () ns ietf org From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () nma com> I am responding to all the prior correspondence in this IETF thread. 02/01 02:23+01 Sascha Ignjatovic USG commerce dept vs. internet 01/31 18:34PST Karl Auerbach Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 02/01 04:51+01 Sascha Ignjatovic Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 01/31 22:59EST John Curran Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 02/01 05:39+01 Sascha Ignjatovic Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 01/31 23:53EST Gordon Cook Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 02/01 00:37EST Bob Allisat On Internet Governance 02/01 00:36EST Bob Allisat New TLD BOF @ LA IETF '98 02/01 00:51EST Bob Allisat Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet 02/01 01:16EST Timothy Glenn Sto Re: USG commerce dept vs. internet FIRST: It is no mystery as to how the USGovt came to be so involved in working toward a new form of Internet Administration. The facts are that IANA has always been a US Government contracted activity, and as such, it is the duty (to the Internet and to US Citizens) for the US Government to clean up the mess that has been created (or allowed to create itself) before casting the Internet Community adrift in the cosmos to fend for itself. A smooth casting off would be very nice! This is what I see the Green Paper initiating. At this point, it is a draft intended to draw comments. It already reflects a great deal of careful listening to a great many voices, many of which have been engaged in vociferous infighting over who is going to control things, such as: (1) the Authoritative DNS ROOT ZONE, and (2) IP Address allocations, and (3) who is going to administer protocol registries and assigned numbers -- All things that IANA has been doing since we can remember. (By the way, the IETF and IAB are not as I understand it, part of what the Green Paper addresses. Perhaps we should ask for a clarification) It should be relatively easy to see that IANA has achieved a Peter Principle promotion to its level of incompetence, in that many of the transition things that it has tried to achieve of late have not turned out terribly well. Certainly not as planned by IANA or anyone else. So, there really is a need for some responsible party to step in and help us as a self organizing community to do our self organizing thing. This is a rather difficult thing to do if the responsible party (Our US Govt) must step in as a newbie and apply the wisdom of Solomon while learning what the internet is all about in the first place. I have been watching this process for a long time now, and I must say that Ira Magaziner has done a very responsible job of doing his homework, and figuring out what the Internet is really all about. Of course, he has the resources of the White House at his disposal to help him become educated, and he has some rather interesting past experience with past attempts as consensus building from his White House position, which appear to have taught him some really important lessons about consensus building processes. He has done a good job. SECOND: What we need now that we have been given protective cover for the next two years (more or less) for a transition, is to find ways to cooperate with each other within the fast growing Internet Community to find the right ways to manage our own administrative and allocation and registry problems. What we do not need is to engage in bashing each other (or the old guard) as though this is a zero sum game where-in "whatever you get must be my loss". We are staring into a vast non-zero-sum opportunity with room for all of us, if we can just quit fighting over who is going to control whom, and how. Our fighting is our only crisis! The very essence of the Internet's power is drawn from the cooperation of all the people on the edges that make their own decisions about where they want to buy their ISP service, and what quality of service they want to buy, and how they are going to configure their systems to InterOperate across the Internet, and how they configure their end-user applications to InterWork with other end-user' Applications at some other edge site. It is clear that it is not possible for anyone to do anything in the Internet by themselves. Every action on the Internet requires some kind of cooperative protocol interaction with some other end. So, as people who use the Internet, we need to take a lesson from all this and settle down into a cooperative effort to resolve our differences and get along without conceding Czar Power to anyone. This is the opportunity that the USGovt, through Ira Magaziner's guidance, and his support from an interagency working group, is now giving to the Internet Community. I, for one, am pledging myself to constructive cooperation with whomever else is involved with trying to work out good solutions for the problems that face us. I am also working with a group of diverse Internet people who are similarly committed, and I hope that this idea will turn out to be very contagious. It is clear that the Green Paper needs some changes, and it is our assignment to constructively work on making them. Cheers...\Stef
Current thread:
- IP: Stefs comments on the state of "USG commerce dept vs. Dave Farber (Feb 01)