more on Worth reading Wall Street Journal on fragmentation of the Internet

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Date: January 19, 2006 4:44:05 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Worth reading Wall Street Journal on  
fragmentation of the Internet
Reply-To: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>


On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, David Farber wrote:

> From: Fred Baker <fred () cisco com>

> What would concern me more is balkanization at the network layer.

Fred's right - fragmentation at the IP layer would have rather  
greater consequences than the existance of competing, but essentially  
consistent, systems of DNS roots.

Two points: As for DNS the issue is that of *consistency* not of  
*singularity*.  The US government seems not to comprehend this simple  
distinction.

First, We know that we can do name-to-phone-number lookups using any  
number of phone books from different providers, CD-ROM databases,  
websites, PDA's, etc.  The issue for competing DNS roots is exactly  
the same - what matters is consistency of the answers not the source  
of the answers.

That leaves the question of what is "consistency".

Some believe that consistency requires that there be only one set of  
top level domains that are provided identically by all systems of roots.

Some of us believe that consistency is to be measured not by an  
absolute degree of perfect equivalency but rather by there being a  
core of names and TLDs that are perfectly identical surrounded by an  
additional set of boutique TLDs that are not seen by every internet  
user via every root. These boutique TLDs are the newcomers that are  
aspiring for greater visibility and greater market share.

In other words the real difference of thought is between centrally  
allocated TLDs versus a more distributed entrapreanural approach to  
TLDs.

Two: The potential for IP address/IP-layer fragmention is very real.   
The use of NATs has already made IP address space re-use and  
translation a routine fact of life for many, if not most, residential  
and small business users of the net.  A super-NAT, one that could map  
the traffic load of a small country, is not inconceivable.

We are already having a head-to-head collision between NAT unfriendly  
protocols, such as SIP+RTP/RTCP (VOIP), and uniformity of address  
space. As those issues are worked out there will be less and less  
reason for countries to carve off their own IPv4 /8's and NAT their  
way to the outside.  And, from the point of view of a repressive  
government, having a NAT-ed country makes it harder for dissident  
voices to communicate without going through the government-approved  
filters.

        --karl--









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