Subject: [arch-d] IAB Adoption of draft-nottingham-for-the-users

From: IAB Executive Administrative Manager <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2019 10:37:58 -0700

The IAB will discuss adoption of draft-nottingham-for-the-users at its meeting on 2019-06-12.

The draft can be found here: 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-for-the-users/

The agenda for the meeting will be posted 48 hours ahead of the meeting 
here: https://www.iab.org/wiki/index.php/Agenda

Feedback about this draft can be sent in response to this mail on 
[email-masked], or to the IAB directly at [email-masked].

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From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2019 16:26:56 +0200 (CEST)

> Il 4 giugno 2019 19:37 IAB Executive Administrative Manager <[email-masked]> ha scritto:
> 
>  

I am not necessarily against the adoption of this draft, but I would like to restate some concerns that I already exposed the last time it was discussed on this list.

First of all, as the draft is definitely a policy statement and not a technical standard, it should align with the terminology which has been developed by the other I* institutions during the last twenty years. Specifically, the term "end users" is customarily adopted to refer to the individual final users of the Internet, separate from "private sector" or "business" (commercial users, operators and service providers), "governments" (and public entities), "civil society" (NGOs), and sometimes "academia" and "the technical community". See for example ICANN's classification at https://www.icann.org/community .

The draft uses the term in a completely different meaning, declaring that anyone sitting at the edge of the network is an "end user". I assume this is not the author's intention, but to Internet policy people, "the Internet is for end users" looks at first like a welcome statement of prioritizing the general public interest over the interest of Internet-related businesses... until you read the definition in section 2 and you feel misled, as you discover that the draft redefines the term to include a part of the Internet industry.

This leads me to the major, substantial problem of this draft. Through this draft, the IETF would openly announce its commitment to prioritize the interests of a part of the Internet industry (the one operating at the edges of the network) over those of another part of the Internet industry (the one operating within the network), at a point in time where the two parts actively compete for the provision of a number of services to the (actual) end users. From a policy standpoint, this is nothing less than an anti-competitive stance - using the technical standardization process to influence the market.

So, if I were the IAB, I would be extremely cautious before taking such a stance, especially at a time when both the US and the EU are launching anti-trust investigations on some of the major "edge" Internet companies. First, the IETF should be absolutely sure of which interests it wants to prioritize, and whether it really wants to include any commercial entities among its priority stakeholders; and second, it should be sure that whatever it does is in line with all the rest of the Internet governance and regulation framework.

As a more general note, if the IETF wants to elaborate policy objectives for the Internet, it should make sure it is equipped with an appropriately diverse and balanced representation of all the relevant stakeholder groups, plus adequate gender and geographical balance, as this is considered a basic requirement for legitimacy in any global policy-making organization(*). Otherwise, it would do better to involve the existing Internet policy organizations and broaden the discussion that way.

(*) As an example, see the diversity considerations that are being made when renewing the Internet Governance Forum's leadership: https://intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/mag-renewal-2020-general-guidance
-- 
 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[email-masked] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2019 10:53:16 +1200

Vittorio,

>  Specifically, the term "end users" is customarily adopted to refer to the individual final users of the Internet, separate from "private sector" or "business" (commercial users, operators and service providers), "governments" (and public entities), "civil society" (NGOs), and sometimes "academia" and "the technical community".

As far as I am concerned that is revisionism. Ever since I can remember, "end user" meant a person sitting at the edge of the network, quite regardless of their role. An employee sitting at her workstation in a private sector business office is an end user. A network operator sitting in the NOC is an end user as far as some protocols are concerned. An academic or a grad student working on a research project in their university lab is an end user.

To me this usage is perfectly clear; see its use in RFC1123 and RFC1958 for example. I am not in least impressed by ICANN's 

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2019 10:55:59 +1200

(Sorry, accidentally pressed Send, being just a stupid end user.)

Vittorio,

>  anyone sitting at the edge of the network is an "end user"

Exactly right. And if the document so defines it, that is fine. To me this usage is perfectly clear; see its use in RFC1123 and RFC1958 for example. I am not in least impressed by ICANN's revisionism.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

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From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2019 20:02:05 -0400

+1

> On Jun 6, 2019, at 18:53, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Vittorio,
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Architecture-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/architecture-discuss

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2019 23:53:57 -0400

+1

> On Jun 6, 2019, at 8:02 PM, John Day <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> +1
> 
>

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From: Christian de Larrinaga <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2019 10:11:44 +0200

This!
What Brian Carpenter said! - > ++1

-- 
Christian de Larrinaga

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From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2019 11:22:45 +0200 (CEST)

> Il 7 giugno 2019 00:55 Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> ha scritto:
> 
>  

And I'm entirely fine with this, these are all individual users of the Internet. But the draft says:

"An end user could be an individual, or it could be a collection of them; whether that be a social movement, a business, or a government that represents a large number of people."

Would you say that companies and governments are also "end users"? Even those that regulate/build/make money from the Internet? A governmental employee that uses the Internet to look for information for his job is an end user, but the government in itself, having regulatory power over the Internet in the country, is not just a "user" - it is an entity that has a special power to influence the Internet and pursue interests which may conflict with those of the individuals. Even more so for businesses that have significant roles in the provision of Internet connectivity, applications and services, as commercial interests often tend to conflict with those of their customers.

I had a chat over this with Stephen Farrell yesterday, and as I told him, if this is a principle statement to prioritize individual users, I'm all with it (though it's then a non sequitur that this is necessarily always obtained by prioritizing the endpoints). But the draft should be very clear in not conflating other stakeholder groups with them.

Ciao,
--

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From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2019 10:48:25 +0100

In the network layer, and in particular the routing system, we tend to
consider that the network layer traffic is more important than the user 
traffic. That is because if we cannot keep up the network, we cannot 
provide a service to the user traffic. For example, we discard user 
traffic in preference to network layer traffic.

I hope that nothing in this draft in any way explicitly or implicitly 
modifies that position, because prioritizing the network over the users 
is fundamental to network stability.

- Stewart

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2019 10:02:46 -0400

Hi

I've looked through this document and, while I'm sympathetic to
several of the concerns that have been raised (both recently and
in March), I see a far more fundamental, quasi-procedural,
problem.

An important part of the IAB's role is to give architectural
advice to the IETF and the Internet community more generally.
The value and acceptance of that advice rests solely on its
quality, the quality of the explanations given for it, and, to
some degree, on the professional reputations of IAB members.
The main thrust of the post-Kobe POISED reforms was to deprive
the IAB of any procedural authority for its architectural advice
and to more clearly shift responsibility for determining IETF
consensus to the IESG.

This document explains what the IETF does and how it makes (and
should make) decisions.  Such a statement should represent, and
will be assumed to represent, IETF Consensus ... at least unless
we have reached the point where IETF strategy is dictated
top-down (and, even then, the IAB has not been the "top" for
descriptions of the IETF since the IETF was merely an IAB Task
Force).  In recent years, the IAB has published various
documents, workshop reports, and other positions with precisely
the justification that it is not a consensus body and need new
restrict itself to areas were IETF consensus has been, or could
easily be, demonstrated.  I believe that it a correct position:
if the IAB is going to offer forward-looking architectural
advice, it must be able to get ahead of the community and then
persuade others to adopt its positions.   But the IAB cannot
have it both ways, both asserting that it can publish documents
without IETF consensus and publishing documents that describe
the beliefs of, or set strategy for, the IETF.

This document should not be adopted by the IAB in its present
form.  It should either be rewritten to clearly be a description
of the IAB's opinion about how the IETF should behave (in which
case there is the risk that no one will care), or the IAB should
propose an IRTF BOF and then a WG to consider these issues,
possibly with the intention of revising or updating RFC 3935.  

Various questions, including those about the definition of "end
user", aside, I am basically in favor of the point this I-D is
trying to make.  But my opinion is nor more (or less) a
guarantee of IETF consensus than Mark's opinion or that of the
IAB.  I do have to confess that I'm a bit surprised that the
IESG --which, after all, has two representatives on the IAB--
has not raised this issue.

    best,
      john

p.s. We seem to have a mini-trend of late that involves using
Informational documents to clarify, supplement, or implicitly
update IETF Standards and BCPs without being extremely clear
about their status and relationship to authoritative IETF
consensus statements and documents.  I think it is very
troublesome and that the community should start pushing back
against it even if our leadership bodies are unwilling to do so
(er even facilitating such documents).

---

From: JFC Morfin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2019 18:07:59 +0200

>in March), I see a far more fundamental, quasi-procedural,

John,

I've also looked through your response and, while I'm sympathetic to
the concern you have raised that (as I understand it) might affect the
pertinence of an IAB document on the matter, I am concerned in a far
more fundamental, quasi-architectonical, problem I don't know if it
could not, in turn, affect your concern.

>advice to the IETF and the Internet community more generally.

My concern is architectonical, i.e., before any architectural issue
but at the same time post-architectural. I explain: since October 1st,
2016 I consider the cyberspace to be freed from what I perceived as
its 1986 de-facto innovation "internet-moratorium" that out-lawed my
job, as Director, Tymnet/Extended Services.

----

Note:

Extended services are network services extending data transport to
data processing on the fly (what [networked] OPESes could partly do).
They were in opposition to the deregulation pre-requisite that
transport and treatment would be separated businesses. That was to
prevent cross-subsidization: at that pre-Mama Bell divestiture time,
Telcos feared that Tymshare, GE, and their likes, could use
cloud/time-sharing revenues to competitively cross-subsidize data transport).
In addition XS can also involve the "mneme" (i.e. the present network
of past traces that make the possible of something into its future, an
Ampère concept that delineates the person, the impact of an event, a
culture, an active repository, the contexture of the context).

Customers were Visa, Banks, TWA and airlines, etc.

Please note the term "customers" that, in turn, could service internal
and external users, processes and stand-alone operations. The
"end-user" in Mark Nottingham's vision can be an autonomous bot. The
European Parliament has voted a demand to the Government Council to
come with a legislation on this issue. In 1986 they were not ready to
do so, but my deparment (and "my" PTTs) were :-) !.

---

Since 2016 I came back to the less internet constrained cyberspace, I
tried to protect the/our future at the IETF (e.g., the langtag issue –
that categorize linguistic agoras (open user classes and host groups)).

To better illustrate/make understand this, I found a deeply discussed
clear explanation in the XVIIe century debate over sovereignty and
state, something that rules our lives, and we are actually resuming here.

The fundamental thinkers are Machiavelli (identified multitude), Bodin
(identified sovereignty) and Hobbes (identified people and the modern
state we still current leave under). The Hobbes' perspective (1642) is
that humanity was able to copy the art of God in creating a huge
artificial and fictive man: State. Whose soul is sovereignty. That
artificially fictive man/state was, in turn, able to create "the
people" from the multitude of people.

Quotes detailing the reasons why are:
* "one can not say that an action made in a multitude of assembled
people is the action of the multitude."
* "It turns out that the multitude is not unity and remains a
summation of atomic units while the people are the retroactive outcome
of the establishment of sovereignty-one."
* "The citizens, when they rebel against the State, are the multitude
against the people."

This means that Lincoln's "Government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the Earth" is something Mark
Nottingham does not rule out but want to update.

For a very simple reason: up to now we only knew a hierarchical way to
build peoples, in assembling bottom-people/end-users. Now we have to
introduce and document a new horizontal one: networking. And because
the IETF is documenting concepts that "have little to do with the
technology that's possible, and much to do with the technology that we
choose to create" (RFC 3539) that  "allow new networking technology to
be introduced into the existing catenet while remaining functionally
compatible with existing systems" (IEN 48).

And what the network technology introduce in human organigrams is
people to people, pair to pair relations; and multistakeholdership.
For a bunch of reasons because "the Internet is a global phenomenon.
The people interested in its evolution are from every culture
(including not geeks) under the sun and from all walks of life." (RFC
3935). There are no more end-users; everyone is a "core-user" of his
own networking. None may know the expertise of all the others in their
various networking perspectives: some bring their knowledge about
technology, others about UX, others about SX (social expertise),
others about semiotic multilinguistic, others about what their
discipline or their surviving, or their strategy or their art expect
from their networking. The internet is about ID (interdisciplinarity).

This is what the internet designers of a "large, heterogeneous
collection of interconnected systems that can be used for
communication [and processings from my extended services pov.] of many
different types between any interested parties connected to it" (RFC
3935) must first consider. This is what the IAB has to discover for
them, document to them and make sure they accept; because the
inter-global community technical compatibility has to be dealt through the IAB.

>and to more clearly shift responsibility for determining IETF

Correct. But read what Brian Carpenter and others say. They refer to
their time vision of the end to end internet, so this is correct for
them to speak about end-users the way they do. OSI designers (Louis
Pouzin's team) were about the network to networks since 1974 (as was
Vint Cerf since 1978, who was calling for an end to end able to
evoluate, what the "status-quo" 1986 freeze prevented). Myself, as
Tymnet, I am about agoras to agoras (whatever how many CPUs they may
count from one to billions).

>the beliefs of, or set strategy for, the IETF

RFC 6852 get rid of that. The IETF is part of a broad standardization
collusion embracing "a modern paradigm for standards where the
economics of global markets, fueled by technological advancements,
drive global deployment of standards regardless of their formal
status.  In this paradigm, standards support interoperability, foster
global competition, are developed through an open participatory
process, and are voluntarily adopted globally. These voluntary
standards serve as building blocks for products and services targeted
at meeting the needs of the market and consumer, thereby driving
innovation. Innovation, in turn, contributes to the creation of new
markets and the growth and expansion of existing markets."

Except that this collusion does not make sense if it does not extends
to every market and therefore to every consumer who in turn is a
producer. This is why there only are core-users co-standardizers of
"every venue under the sun."

>and to more clearly shift responsibility for determining IETF

Except that, IMHO, it has not fully understood the impact of RFC 6852,
if I judge from its responses to my appeals and this debate. This is
why I explained that I would only consider the "catenet" layers that
the internet infrastructure was able to provide me as an
interconnected user ("IUser") and build my own "global community"
technology over it.

As such, I am considering "sets of agoras of agoras" using the
no-presentation layer "network of network". Either the IETF is neutral
or favorable to me when it does help or does not endanger my informed
use of its layers. It is a pain when it plans otherwise. The solution
I found was the [email-masked] mailing list, not for the internet
users, but for the IETF users (also IUsers). Unfortunately, this list
is not much active, but I would be glad transferring it to Mark
Nottingham as I have much sympathy as an involved user ("IUser") is
many of his points.

>I believe that it a correct position:

Correct!!!
The IAB in this situation is in the position to offer forward-looking
architectural advice about the way 2020 reading of IETF previous
engagements means (so they might amend them).

>has not raised this issue.

IMHO the real question is ontological. What is the internet for who? 
That has become a matter that spans the entire philosophical, 
technological, political, economical, etc. spectrum. Because these 
disciplines are discussing points, they first qualify as 
philosophical objects, technological issues, political subjects, 
economic matters, etc. and that diktyological (diktyology is the name 
of the network discipline) spans them all.

>(er even facilitating such documents).

IMHO again - this is a matter I work on for 40 years since introducing
the INTLFILE that grandfathered the root file  - we are dealing here
with interlinked ("everything is interconnected") issues from a too
limited point of view. The IAB comes from the four layers of TCP/IP.
Even CCITT's OSI 7 layers did not fulfill the job (but dramatically
simplifies it with layer six, presentation). The "Tymnet/Extended
Systems" with its 12+ layers helped better, But the "+" (presentation
layer uniform space) is the field of interdisciplinary investigation.

Now, is everything blocked?

No. Because of Brian Carpenter RFC 1958 architectural PLUS (not the
same +, the one I started check during the WG/IDNA98 - "plugged layers
on the user side", continuing the network model on the receiving
fringe) solution.

The RFC 3935 states: "The network's job is to transmit datagrams as
efficiently and flexibly as possible. Everything else should be done
at the fringes."

* This is what everyone expects from IETF and what IAB should help it
to achieve.
* The fringe to fringe IUser can then take over and use the internet
end to end datagrams as his intersem fringe to fringe intelligrams.

This is OK with me so far. Except that I am working on low civil
society no-budget and I am slow at developing my intersem architecture
over the internet catenet.

I hope this may help.
Best
jfc