<nettime> Comments submitted to National Academy of Science on DNS Study Comm

[ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

Following are the comments I submitted to the National Academy of 
Science about the provisional members they appointed to study the 
Internet's Domain Name System and write a report to the US Congress.

Ronda


>Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 23:48:30 -0400 (EDT)
>From: <ronda@panix.com>
>Message-Id: <200104060348.XAA02951@panix2.panix.com>
>To: nrcisdns@nas.edu
>Subject: Comments Submitted to NAS on the provisional committee appointments
>Status: R

Comments on the Provisional Appointments of the NAS to the 
Committee on Internet Searching and the Domain Name System:
Technical Alternatives and Policy Implications

I am requesting that the National Academy of Science reconsider
the appointments of those you have chosen as members of 
this committee, with the exception of those members who
are technical experts in the areas that the committee will consider.

The other members are not appropriate for the problems and study
this committee will need to undertake in order to be able
to make a step forward in advising the US government on a 
difficult technical and policy issue. I am proposing that
you redo the committee composition process. That the new
process be done in an open fashion with more input as to
the criteria needed for determining who are the people with
the needed expertise to be on the committee and how to make
that decision. I propose that this process be done in an 
open process which is discussed online and both the criteria
and who is determining the criteria be openly discussed,
with contributions invited from the online community.

As can be seen with regard to the problems that the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has demonstrated,
the choice of who will constitute a committee or board is of 
critical importance to whether there is any possibility that the 
public interest will be served.

It seems that the criteria governing who you have appointed 
to this committee are an inappropriate set of criteria.

Since the Internet is a global metasystem with millions of users
around the world who are part of very different networks under
dissimilar administrative and political authority and with dissimilar
technical requirements, it is crucial that those appointed to this
committee have a broad public interest perspective and that they
be knowledgeable in the history and development of the Internet.

How is it that it has been possible to create such a broad and 
international metasystem of communicating networks?

A part of the answer is that the principles of open architecture
were identified and guided the creation of the tcp/ip protocol
which has served as an architectural framework for internetwork 
communication.

The principle of open architecture is identified and described
in a paper "The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural
Conception for Solving the Multiple Network Problem" 
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt

Also these principles are explained in a paper by Barry Leiner
"A Brief History of the Internet" 
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.html

Following is an excerpt from the paper which explains the 
nature and the implementation of open architecture as the 
architecture guiding the development of the current Internet.

                    
     "By 1972, the impact of computer networking was creating a 
    new challenge for those interested in computer communications. 
    This was the problem that Kahn called the Multiple Network 
    Problem. A number of researchers around the world, like Louis 
    Pouzin in France and Donald Davies in Great Britain were already
    exploring how to build packet switching networks that would 
    conform to their national and local needs. The problem of how to 
    communicate across the boundaries of dissimilar networks was 
    on the horizon.
 
     In the article, "Resource-Sharing Computer Communications 
    Networks" published in the "Proceedings of the IEEE" in November, 
    1972, Kahn considered adjustments at the planning stage of the 
    networks to make interconnection possible. (pg. 1407) This would 
    require agreements at the design stage of the networks and could 
    exclude those networks that had already been developed. The 
    ARPANET, for example, had not been designed with the aim of 
    communicating with other networks. The conception that gave birth 
    to the ARPANET was a conception requiring all those interested in 
    computer networking to become a component part of the ARPANET.
          
     The development of Cyclades in France or NPL in Great 
    Britain, however, demonstrated that those designing packet 
    switching networks had their own technical, administrative and 
    political needs and goals to serve. It wasn't feasible for them 
    to either become part of the ARPANET nor to wait till a common 
    plan for interconnection was decided upon to develop their 
    networks. It was becoming ever more urgent that those designing 
    packet switching networks determine how to solve the problem of 
    the interconnection of dissimilar networks. 
 
     Since it was not appropriate to require all networks to await 
    a common decision of what design parameters they should adopt to 
    be able to connect with other networks, nor that all new networks 
    should become a component part of the ARPANET, a different 
    approach was needed. Recognizing the nature of the problem, 
    Kahn proposed a technical solution.
 
     Shortly after the successful ICCC'72 ARPANET demonstration, 
    Kahn left BBN and went to work at the Information Processing 
    Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA. Joining the IPT office as 
    a program manager, Kahn set out to develop certain projects and
    also took over responsibility for one that had already been funded. 
    A new initiative was to create a ground-based packet radio
    network. An existing initiative was to create a satellite-based 
    packet switching network. (12)
 
     Focusing on radio broadcasting technology, Kahn led an effort
    to create a ground packet radio network. This kind of packet 
    communications network was of particular interest to the Department 
    of Defense with their need for mobile communications. 
 
     Kahn planned to build on the experience gained by researchers 
    at the University of Hawaii who created AlohaNet. AlohaNet had 
    demonstrated that packet radio technology was feasible for a 
    one-hop system. (13) Kahn's objective was to create a multinode 
    ground packet radio network (PRNET) where each node could be mobile. 
    In parallel, he sought to create a packet satellite network (SATNET) 
    utilizing Intelsat satellites.
 
     Thinking about how to create a ground packet radio network, 
    (PRNET) Kahn realized that it would be desirable (indeed necessary)
    for users on PRNET to be able to access the computational resources 
    on ARPANET. The packet satellite network was mainly intended for 
    transiting to European sites, but there was still the problem of
    connecting (in both directions) to computer resources over there
    as well. How then to link up these three packet networks, two that 
    would be based on utilizing radio transmission and the other which 
    used shared point to point leased lines from the telephone company? 
    At first, Kahn considered creating a local protocol for PRNET to make 
    it possible to use the ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol NCP (Network 
    Control Protocol). However, the limitations of NCP meant that would 
    not be an option. These problems included:
 
     1) NCP addressing did not have a way of addressing Hosts on 
     other networks.
 
     2) NCP required a reliable IMP subnetwork to transmit packets to 
     their destination. But other networks were not always likely to 
     have reliable end-end communication.
 
     3) Error control was essential on an end-end basis, but did not
     exist for NCP.

     Thus dissimilar and possibly unreliable networks required a different 
    architecture and different protocol design from the architecture and 
    protocol design creating the ARPANET.
 
     Once there are other networks, the challenge becomes: How to
    provide for their interconnection and how to insure end-end 
    communication for the attached host computers? Is there a new 
    architecture and protocol design which can support resource sharing 
    across the boundaries of dissimilar networks? Simplifying the problem 
    leads to the question: How to transmit computer data messages on 
    dissimilar networks without requiring changes to the participating 
    networks? What protocol design will allow for the diversity that will 
    exist in administrative, political, and technical aspects of dissimilar 
    packet switching networks?

    (...)

     The ARPANET solved the difficult problem of communication in 
    a network with dissimilar computers and dissimilar operating 
    systems. However, when the objective is to share resources across 
    the boundaries of dissimilar networks, the problems to be solved 
    are compounded. Different networks mean that there can be 
    different packet sizes to accommodate, different network 
    parameters such as different communication media rates, different 
    buffering and signaling strategies, different ways of routing 
    packets, and different propagation delays. Also dissimilar 
    networks can have different error control techniques and 
    different ways of determining the status of network components.(16) 
 
     Though Kahn originally considered the possibility of seeking 
    changes to each of the constituent networks to solve the Multiple
    Network Problem, he soon recognized the advantage of an architecture 
    that would directly accommodate the diversity of networks. (17) To 
    do so he conceived of a meta-level architecture independent of the 
    underlying network technology. The means of achieving this was to 
    design a protocol to be embedded in the operating system of Host 
    computers on each participating network. The protocol would also 
    specify how black boxes or "gateways" would interface between 
    networks and how they would participate in routing packets through 
    dissimilar networks.
 
     Describing the thinking that went into solving the Multiple 
    Network Problem, "A Brief History of the Internet" outlines the 
    origin of the conception that Kahn would call the open 
    architecture networking environment. The article explains:
 
     The Internet was based on the idea that there would be 
     multiple independent networks of rather arbitrary design, 
     beginning with the ARPANET as the pioneering packet 
     switching network, but soon to include packet satellite 
     networks, ground-based packet radio networks and other 
     networks. The Internet as we now know it embodies a key 
     underlying technical idea, namely that of open architecture 
     networking. In this approach, the choice of any individual 
     network technology was not dictated by a particular network 
     architecture but rather could be selected freely by a 
     provider and made to interwork with the other networks 
     through a meta-level "Internetwork Architecture." Up until 
     that time there was only one general method for federating 
     networks. This was the traditional circuit switching method 
     where networks would interconnect at the circuit level, 
     passing individual bits on a synchronous basis along a 
     portion of an end-to-end circuit between a pair of end 
     locations. Recall that Kleinrock had shown in 1961 that 
     packet switching was a more efficient switching method. 
     Along with packet switching, special purpose interconnection 
     arrangements between networks were another possibility. 
     While there were other limited ways to interconnect 
     different networks, they required that one be used as a 
     component of the other, rather than acting as a "peer" of 
     the other in offering end-to-end service.
                    Barry M. Leiner. Vinton G. Cerf, David D. 
                    Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, 
                    Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. 
                    Roberts, and Stephen Wolff
                    A Brief History of the Internet, pg. 4.
                    http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.html
 
     To create an environment where the networks would be peers 
    of each other, rather than where one would have to be a component 
    of the other, there was the need to design a protocol to embody 
    this open architecture concept. Such a protocol would make it 
    possible to communicate across the boundaries of dissimilar 
    packet switching networks. 
 
     The challenge in accommodating dissimilar networks is at once
    a conceptual and architectural problem. Kahn recognized the 
    need for a communications protocol to transmit packets from one 
    network, and reformat them as needed for transmission through 
    successive networks. This would require that there be black boxes 
    or gateway computers and software that would provide the interfaces 
    between the dissimilar networks and which would route the packets 
    to their destination. (18) Also there would need to be software 
    to carry out the functions required by the protocol. Appropriate 
    software modules, and perhaps other modifications to allow efficient
    performance, would then have to be embedded in the operating systems 
    of the host computers in each of the participating networks and 
    gateways would have to be introduced between them. The design for such 
    a protocol would be a guide to create the specification standard 
    for the software and hardware that each network would agree to 
    implement to become part of an internetwork communications system. 
    The standards or agreements to cooperate would be set out in the 
    protocol.
 
     The research creating the ARPANET had developed the 
    conception of networking protocols and the need for such 
    protocols. Robert Metcalfe is the inventor of the Ethernet, the 
    most widespread technology used for local area networking. In 
    his PhD thesis, he reviews the technical experience gained from 
    developing the ARPANET and ALOHANET. Metcalfe describes the role 
    of protocols in developing computer networking. He writes:
 
     The ways in which processes organize their (local and 
     remote) cooperation are called "protocols". We use the word 
     to refer to a set of agreements among communicating 
     processes relating to (1) rendezvous (who and where), (2) 
     format (what and how), and (3) timing (when) of data and 
     control exchanges.
                         Robert M. Metcalfe, "Packet 
                         Communication", Peer-to-Peer 
                         Communication, Inc., San Jose, 1996,
                         pg. 100.
 
     Metcalfe notes what these areas include:
 
     (...) at least four problem areas in which protocol 
     agreements must be made: (1) routing, (2) flow, (3) 
     congestion, and (4) security.
                         Ibid.
 
     An internetworking protocol would need to be a 
    communications protocol. As such it would specify the software and 
    hardware to do flow control, error checking, to break a message 
    into packets in the sending Host computers, and to provide for 
    packet reassembly in the destination Host computers, to provide a 
    means of addressing computers on other packet networks and other 
    needed functions. The protocol would specify the role and 
    software for the gateways. 
 
     Metcalfe enumerates some of the issues that Kahn had 
    identified to create the architecture for the Internet and for the 
    protocol that would make an Internet possible. Metcalfe writes: 
 
     Among these issues were optimal packet and message size, 
     message fragmentation and reassembly, flow and congestion 
     control, naming, addressing, and routing, store-and-forward 
     delay, error control, and the texture of interprocess 
     communication.
                              Metcalfe, pg. xx
 
     Before he left BBN in 1972, Kahn had written a memo about his 
    thinking about a communications-oriented set of operating system 
    principles titled "Communications Principles for Operating 
    Systems".(19) Metcalfe refers to the memo as influential in his 
    thinking about protocol development.
               
     Elaborating the notion of open architecture, the authors 
    of "A Brief History of the Internet" write:
 
     In an open architecture network, the individual networks may 
     be separately designed and developed and each may have its 
     own unique interface which it may offer to users and/or 
     other providers, including other Internet providers. Each 
     network can be designed in accordance with the specific 
     environment and user requirements of that network. There are 
     generally no constraints on the types of network that can be 
     included or on their geographic scope, although certain 
     pragmatic considerations will dictate what makes sense to 
     offer.
                    Leiner et al, pg. 4
 
     The ground rules Kahn worked out to guide the creation and 
    design of an open architecture environment include:
 
     o Each distinct network would have to stand on its own and no 
     internal changes could be required to any such network to 
     connect it to the Internet.
 
     o Communication would be on a best effort basis. If a packet 
     didn't make it to the final destination, it would shortly be 
     retransmitted from the source.
 
     o Black boxes would be used to connect the networks; these 
     would later be called gateways and routers. There would be 
     no information retained by the gateways about the individual 
     flows of packets passing through them, thereby keeping them 
     simple and avoiding complicated adaptation and recovery from 
     various failure nodes.
 
     o There would be no global control at the operations level.
                              
                    Leiner et al.
 
      
     All of these ground rules are a significantly different 
    conceptual approach from that used on the ARPANET. The ARPANET 
    required any computer system sharing resources with other 
    computers on its network to become a component part of it. 
    Communications on the IMP subnetwork were via dedicated logical 
    links and once a packet was sent to the IMP subnetwork its 
    transmission was guaranteed via an error free transmission 
    system. The IMPS carried out the interface function with the 
    communication subnetwork and the Host computers. The IMP 
    subnetwork was a complex rather than a simple system. 
 
     The ground rules for an open architecture network 
    environment are such that all networks are welcome to join in 
    the interconnection on a peer basis, rather than one as a 
    component of the other. Messages are to be broken into packets, and 
    the packets retransmitted until there is an acknowledgement of their 
    successful transmission. This simplifies the error detection 
    process and provides for a beginning flow control mechanism. 
    Black boxes are to be used as gateways but their functions are to 
    be limited so they can be kept simple. No one entity is to be 
    allowed to establish control at the operational level of the 
    participating networks."     
 
              from Ronda Hauben, "The Birth of the Internet: An 
              Architectural Conception for Solving the Multiple Network 
              Problem" http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt

                

Also Robert Kahn and Barry Leiner have an understanding of open
architecture and the role open architecture has played in making 
the Internet the metasystem that can welcome such a diversity of 
dissimilar networks into a complex human-computer communications 
system.

Kahn and Leiner are the kind of scientists with relevant expertise
who it is important to have on the committee. Instead those who have 
irrelevant and inappropriate expertise were chosen, like one member 
whose expertise is in corporate governance.  These two people I have 
suggested as members for the committee also understand the issues 
involved in the need to create an adequate directory structure 
for the Internet to help solve the problem that has been caused 
by trying to make the current DNS system become a directory structure, 
a function it was not created to serve and it cannot serve.

Also it was important to include someone with knowledge of the history
and development of the Internet. Unfortunately the NSF is not 
supporting the needed research so that the important advances
represented by the Internet can be recognized and built on.

I have a number of papers on the history which it would be crucial
for any committee to consider and to find a way to further the
study of. 

For example, the basic nature of the Internet as a complex system
relying on feedback to adjust to a changing environment is 
clarified if one understands some of the background of JCR Licklider
who has been called the grandfather of the Internet. The goal
that he identified for the developing network has served as
a vision inspiring the engineers and programmers who have worked
on Internet development over the past number of years.

I recently submitted a proposal to the NSF describing the importance
of this study. The proposal is at 
http://www.colubmia.edu/~rh120/other/nsfprop.txt

I have offered to contribute to the committee and thus far such
an offer has been ignored.

In a situation like this where there is a significant 
public interest at stake, it is crucial that there be an open
process and an open means to encourage online discussion of the
issues being considered by the committee. In this regard it 
would be a minimum requirement that the committee have a 
newsgroup that was open for all to post to and to discuss as part
of, and that supported collaborative discussion of the issues
under consideration by the committee.

To begin with it would be appropriate to reconstitute the committee
by asking for public discussion and comments on the draft statement
of scope and rewriting that statement based on the discussion that
ensued. There has been some important and interesting discussion
on at least one mailing list, the Netizens mailing list,
and it would be good to see much more such online discussion.
This is the process needed to identify the key issues to be
determined by this committee in order to provide a useful report
to the US Congress.

Please also see the article I wrote that is in Telepolis on the 
creation of this committee.
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/7248/1.html

Ronda Hauben
ronda@panix.com
(212)787-9361

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net