Subject: Re: SACRED Protocol (long!)

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 19:46:44 -0800

Folks,

>To: "Magnus Nystrom" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: SACRED Protocol (long!)
>From: "Marshall T. Rose" <[email-masked]>
>
> > Actually Marshall, I think it is a good thing to run SACRED on top of
> > BEEP. However, I also do believe that it should be possible to run
> > SACRED on top of other protocols as well,
>
>everything has a cost. by mandating

It is possible that the import of Marshall's response does not adequately 
register with some participants.  So it occurred to me that we should 
consider this proposal for infinite portability, and apply it to other venues.

For example, I have traveled to a few different countries and I find all 
those plug adapters and voltage differences to be quite irritating.

So I think we should mandate that every electrical device must a) work on 
all the different global voltages and b) have a plug that works in all the 
different global sockets.  Nevermind the increased cost.  Just the idea of 
one of those bulbous plugs on every device is delightful to consider.

In fact, this seemed like such an appealing solution that it occurred to me 
we should go further.

We should mandate that every automobile be made legal for every driving 
situation in the world.  I have no idea what this will mean under the hood, 
but am most intrigued at the idea of having the driver's steering wheel and 
other driving controls able to move from one side of the car to the other.

So,

I hope, like me, everyone is shaking their head by now, because that really 
is the nature of the proposal that has been put forward.  It is 
well-intentioned, but it carries unacceptable costs, for the specification 
effort, for the development effort, and for the poor end-user.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:[email-masked]>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.273.6464

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 04:33:26 +1300 (NZDT)

Magnus Nystrom <[email-masked]> writes:
>On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Marshall Rose wrote:
>>>Honestly, I don't think that work will be too onerous. C.f. with other
>>>security-related protocols that runs over http.
>>
>>hi. i think we live in different realities because i can't think of
>>any "security-related protocols that runs over http" that were done in
>>the ietf or signed-off by the iesg. in my reality, anything involving
>>any  "protocol that runs over http" gets to run the brickbat gauntlet
>>in the ietf/iesg. and speaking from experience, it's not fun...
>
>CMP, 

Every implementation I've ever seen uses that binary wrapper kludge, not HTTP.

>OCSP, 

Yup, HTTP everywhere to tunnel it through firewalls.

>CMC, S/MIME,...

That's SMTP, not HTTP :-).

The only other place I've seen which uses some HTTP transport is TSP, and even
then it's usually raw rather than with HTTP encapsulation.

Peter.