Subject: RE: [midcom] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-midcom-framework-02.txt

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 14:49:41 -0700

> I don't really have the perspective to comment on what midcom was
> "intended
> for".   Obviously, the charter is focused on firewall and NAT
middleboxes.
> However the promise of midcom seems to be to allow middleboxes of many
> sorts to do whatever their particular purpose in life is, while
offloading
> from them the need to understand every application in order to be
aware of
> which flows are for which apps.  This is certainly attractive from the
> perspective of classifying packets by *application* (and not just by
> protocol and port numbers).

Please register a violent disagreement. Many of us see allowing
"middleboxes of any sort" as a license to break the Internet in whatever
ways may fit someone's business model. While the IETF has no business
validating business models, its goal is certainly to develop a better
Internet, not to break it. If the group had proposed a charter to
"develop any kind of transparency breaking box in the middle of the
network", then the charter would most probably not have been approved.

-- Christian Huitema

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From: Andrew Molitor <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 17:36:45 -0500 (CDT)

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Christian Huitema wrote:

> While the IETF has no business

	Isn't "fits a lot of business models really well" at least
one measure of "a better Internet?" Or did you mean specifically the
business models of equipment vendors?

	I'm certainly not in favor of wiring standards to sell weird
networking boxes. I am in favor of wiring standards to make the Internet
more useful, regardless of the personal feelings and design dogma of any
particular individual (and no, I refer to nobody in particular -- I too
possess personal feelings and design dogma which I expect to be trampled
in the pragmatic interests of the greater good from time to time.)

		Andrew

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From: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 08:11:00 -0400

> From: Andrew Molitor <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 6:36 PM
> Subject: RE: [midcom] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-midcom-framework-02.txt

> one measure of "a better Internet?" 

No, actually (unless your definition of "better Internet"
diverges from existing architecture).  A lot of business models
assume (or require) that the edge of the network is visible.
Midcom is premised on the assumption that the means to make
the edge visible will continue to be used but that we can
restore some end-to-end function by allowing applications to
explicitly influence the behavior of the middlebox.

Melinda