IP: Montreal Diary

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

For the past week, GG and I were in Montreal at the ISOC Board meeting and
at INet 96. First some general comments:


1. If I had 25 Motorola Startacs along I would have sold them all. They were
the hit of INet. I was afraid someone would make off with mine.


2. Montreal is a magnificent city to eat in. Every meal I had in restaurants
was excellent, well served and well valued if the two dollars were the same.
With Canadian at 1.3 to the US$ they were bargains.


3. The Quebec situation re language makes life difficult for tourists,. Road
signs and parking restrictions are only in french. Keynote speakers at INet
(which was largely english attendees) spoke in French with no warning thus
ignoring a large part of the audience.


4. Everyday Quebecers were uniformly friendly and helpful as a people.


As for the technical part:


1. INet is not a heavily technical conference. It focuses on issues dealing
with the global internet. The Developing Country Workshop was another
spectacular success with over 100 countries represented. The attendees spent
a week learning how to establish networks in their nations. It was a
inspirering thing to talk with them and watch their excitement.


2. the joint venue of the IETF / ISOC meeting created some culture clashes
but in general, in my opinion, some valuable interactions. Very few INets
went to IETF sessions but some did and visa versa.


2. The hottest thing I saw and heard (that I can talk about :-) ) was the
Internet Fax machine Panasonic will soon sell (most of their future high end
machines will have this capability). It communicates to others like it and
to email systems by creating email with image attachments. It will be
available soon and allows email to fax and fax to email etc. Talking with
the folks there, Panasonic plans to use RSA encryption but when I asked key
length etc they said " that is a most difficult matter".  Again back to the
Puzzle Palace to see what the impact on the Intelligence community of a
really secure fax would be. BTW, it looks easy to pull the Epson PC card
that powers the fax and reprogram it. The IETF has just started a Internet
Fax working group.


As usual lots of good people at INet including a remarkable number of "Old
People" of the Internet. The Halls were excellent. Total IETF/ISOC
attendance looks about 3000.