[Chapter-delegates] Policy Development Process (PDP): The Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit

Tue Jul 21 08:18:38 PDT 2020

Thank you for this. I commend the effort to set forth a "soll" (what we
want) as opposed to an "ist" (what we actually have).  But I think that it
needs to be better anchored in reality as opposed to utopia. Here are some
comments on the paper  titled “Critical properties 
” that might help in
that respect. Please take these as items for discussion.

The Executive Summary states: "Other computer networks existed before the
Internet, but none of them have been embraced by so many people and in so
many different ways". Of course not, personal computers did not exist until
well after the Internet was developed and deployed. So it makes no sense to
compare the Internet to other computer networks. One of the features that
enable the use of the Internet by individuals was the emergence of personal
computers, and more recently smartphones. So it the Internet’s success is
not just due to its technology as a network, but also to the personal
computing devices used to access the network.

The first "critical property" is "An Accessible Infrastructure with a Common
Protocol".  This should be rephrased as "An Affordable Access Infrastructure
with a Common Protocol". Affordable is a key requirement. And this property
should refer only to the access infrastructure, and not to other things that
some might consider infrastructure, such as search engines, e-mail, etc.

The critical property "Decentralized Management and a Single Distributed
Routing System" must be split into several different bits. All current ICT
networks are decentralized, what distinguishes them is the type of
decentralization.  All have single naming and routing systems, but what
distinguishes them is the nature of those systems. For example, compared to
the telephone network, Internet has a naming system (the DNS) whose
management is more centralized; on the other hand it has a more distributed
routing system.

The critical property "Common Global Identifiers" is, as noted above, not
unique to the Internet. No global network can function without it.

The critical property "A General Purpose Network" is meaningless. I think
that what it meant here is something like "intelligence at the edges".

Under Critical Property 1, the paper states: Page 3: "You don’t need
permission to connect to the Internet."  That's not true at two levels:
first, in most countries you need some sort of permission (often just a
notification) to provide Internet services.  Second, as a user, you need
"permission" (usually in the form of payment) from an ISP to connect. It's
not like air, which you really can breathe without permission. It's more
like clean drinking water, which is readily available, but only against
payment.

Same section:  "There is no international policy on who can connect or what
they should pay." True if taken literally, but that's also true of today's
fixed and satellite telephone networks. But it is not true de facto. Many
users connect to Internet via mobile phones. The GSMA roaming guidelines
are, de facto, an international policy on who can interconnect.

Same section: ”An Internet user trying to use a new application doesn’t have
to ask questions like ’Are they running the same protocol I am?’”. True at
the protocol level, but not true at the application level. If you want to
connect to someone through, say, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, or Zoon, you
have to ask whether they are running the same application as you are.

Same section:  "The network is open to anyone willing to make an effort to
participate". This should read: "As discussed in more detail below, the
network is open to anyone able to pay for the necessary equipment and
bandwidth (where payment may take the form of personal data)".

Same section: Page 3: "Without a central authority dictating who, how, and
where connections are made". There isn't such a central authority for
telephony either, and never was.  More importantly, the Tier 1 provider are,
de facto, an authority (albeit not a single entity) that does determine who
connects where at what cost.

Under Critical Property 2: "permissionless innovation". We really should
stop using this meaningless term.  Footnote 4 explains well how innovation
is permitted (or not).

Same section: "An application designer does not have to start from first
principles and wonder how the underlying network will behave". Not always
true. Some application designers do have to worry about that, because the
packet-switching, best effort, nature of the infrastructure means that
latency, quality, etc. cannot be guaranteed. One solution is to increase
bandwidth, but that's something that the application designer definitely has
to worry about. For example, by acquiring enough bandwidth, and/or using
CDNs.

Same section: "the process of standardization is open to all members of the
Internet community". You mean "open at no cost". That's true only for IETF
and ICANN. Not for W3C, IEEE, ISO/IEC, etc. And GSMA (e.g. 3GPP) is not at
all open: it's only for GSM operators.

Same section: "the results of this standards process are deployed on a
voluntary basis."  That's true for all current ICT standards. It is not
unique to Internet.

Same section: "Experience has shown that trying to reinvent security rather
than use the defined TLS results in security compromises and breaches". I'm
not sure what is meant here. Surely not that there should be no security in
addition to TLS, because for sure non-TLS two-factor authentication is
needed for banking, and because non-TLS content encryption may be needed for
certain things.

Critical Property 3: As noted above, all current ICT networks are
decentralized, what distinguishes them is the type of decentralization.  All
have single naming and routing systems, but what distinguishes them is the
nature of those systems. In particular, I don’t know of any current global
ICT network in which there a central controller dictating how and where
connections are made.

Critical Property 4: As noted above, common global identifiers are not
unique to the Internet. No global network can function without it.

Footnote 10: First of all, E.164 numbers are names, not addresses, so they
are more comparable to Internet domain names than to IP addresses. Further,
the claim that people don’t know what to dial is unsubstantiated. If you
have a mobile phone, starting an international number with + will always
work. And starting with “00” will work almost everywhere except the USA.
Over 6 billion people use telephone numbers every day whereas very few
people use IP addresses directly. Almost 8 billion people use telephony
addresses that they never see (IMSIs and SANCs), whereas only some 4 billion
use Internet. So,  while it is correct that IP addresses are an amazing
success, so are telephony names and addresses.

Under Critical Property 5:: "the Internet was designed as a general purpose
network—not optimized for voice, or particular usage patterns, or special
traffic characteristics". Not entirely correct. The Internet was designed as
a special purpose data network to connect a small number of trusted
computers that did not require guaranteed latency. It was optimized for
that. It's amazing that it has been able to handle the very different
purposes for which it is used at present, including voice and TV.

Same section: "The Internet is completely agnostic about the content that
flows through it, neither guaranteeing quality nor connectivity." That's
entirely true. There is lots of traffic shaping (thankfully, otherwise
nothing would work).  And, if you consider that firewalls are part of the
Internet, then it is definitely not agnostic about the content that flows
(even if the firewall blocks on the basis of addresses and/or names and not
content).

Same section: "The benefit of a general purpose network is its ability to
continuously meet the requirements of a diverse, constantly evolving,
environment." It would be more useful to explain how the Internet, which was
designed for a particular purpose, has managed to evolve to meet many other
purposes.

Same section: "because the Internet is not attached to any particular
technology,".  This is not quite right: the Internet is is attached to
TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, HTTP, etc. It would be better to explain how those
particular technologies are sufficiently general/powerful to allow and
enable the evolution that we have seen. I think that the key point here is
that the basic technology should (must) be open and non-proprietary.

Same section: "If the Internet had been designed specifically for one type
of application or one type of traffic, it would not have been able to
support the other types of applications." Actually, as noted above, it WAS
designed for one type of application and one type of traffic. But the design
was good enough to allow evolution. The same is true of GSM: originally
designed for low-bandwidth voice, it is morphing to high-bandwidth data. It
seems to me that what is mean here is that, by its open nature, the Internet
has been able to evolve to support applications or traffic that it was not
necessarily designed for at the beginning.

Same section: " For example, the first digital telephone networks were
optimized for voice, delivering calls with high quality and more efficiently
than the Internet can. Yet, these networks had to be completely renovated to
deliver a new feature, say a video call, at great expense and considerable
difficulty." That is correct: bandwidth is subject to the laws of physics.
The infrastructure on which today's Internet runs (mostly fiber in developed
countries) was completely renovated at great expense and considerable
difficulty.

Same section:  "A long-lived general purpose Internet design lets innovators
pursue, without permission, their ideas knowing the network’s benefits and
drawbacks, enabling fast movement forward while in comparison the network
changes are small and gradual." Since it is difficult to predict the future,
it is difficult to design something for the future. I think that is mean
here is that the basic design should be sufficiently flexible to allow
change and innovation that will be needed to accommodate future, unforeseen,
needs. TCP/IP has been good from that point of view. The founding focus on
end-end security has not been good. The founding focus on no billing and
charging has had mixed effects. Some degree of introspection and
self-critique would make this part better.

In particular, the layered architecture surely is a key factor in enabling
innovation. Ideally, there should be standard interface points between each
layer and therefore make improvements on one layer without affecting the
others. The key is to design lower layers that do not restrict higher layer
openness, and TCP/IP has been excellent from that point of view.

Best,

Richard

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org]
On Behalf Of Katie Watson Jordan via Chapter-delegates
Sent: Monday, 20 July, 2020 17:12
To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Subject: [Chapter-delegates] Policy Development Process (PDP): The Internet
Impact Assessment Toolkit

Dear colleagues, 

As you know, the Internet Society launched a new project in 2020 -- the
Internet Way of Networking (IWN)
<http://www.internetsociety.org/issues/internet-way-of-networking/> . 

For the last six months, the team has worked to identify the critical
properties of the Internet Way of Networking, basically what makes the
Internet ...The Internet. The objective is to create a powerful narrative
that enables the Internet Society and its community of members to talk about
the Internet in a consistent and cohesive way, and to provide a baseline,
against which, new developments – from technology proposals to regulatory
interventions - can be analyzed. 

Based on these properties, the IWN team has developed a toolkit to promote a
positive vision for the Internet so it can keep evolving as an innovative
force for good and continue to be the incredible resource it is today. This
toolkit includes the following documents, and we recommend you read them in
this order:

*	Preamble and general introduction
*	White Paper on the Critical Properties of the Internet Way of
Networking
*	3 use-cases that illustrates how various trends and policies can be
assessed against the essential properties. For the PDP, the following
use-cases are included:

*	Intermediary liability
*	Data Localization
*	Interconnection and Routing

The toolkit will enter a Policy Development Process (PDP) today, July 20th,
and will be open for community feedback for three weeks (end date: August
10th). Ahead of this process the team also organized a webinar presentation
to provide further information and context. A recording is available for
your reference here: https://isoc.box.com/v/IWNpdpWebinar

Instructions:

*	The document is available in PDF for download here:
https://isoc.box.com/v/InternetWayNetworking
*	Please send your feedback via email to: IWNConsultation at isoc.org 
*	In particular we are looking for you view on the following
questions:

*	Do these properties make sense? Is something missing in their
description, and are all properties included?
*	Is it a helpful narrative for you and your community? Does the
toolkit make sense in your local/regional context?
*	Are the use-cases clear? Is something missing in the analysis, and
do they “do the job” of evaluating the impact on the properties?
*	Do you have suggestions for improvements, or ideas for how this
toolkit can be used by the Internet Society members and allies? 

We believe that this toolkit will provide an important foundation for the
Internet Society's future work, and strongly encourage all interested
members to review the documents, provide feedback and engage in this
process!

Best regards,

The IWN Team

About the Internet Society's Policy Development Process (PDP):

In 2018, ISOC established a Policy Development Process (PDP) to lead
consultation of Members (Chapter/SIG leaders, Organisation Members and
individual members) ahead of the publication of new policy positions. For
more information, please visit:
<https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/policy-development-p
rocess/>
https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/policy-development-pr
ocess/

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