From dot at dotat.at Fri Mar 2 04:10:13 2012 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 12:10:13 +0000 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure Message-ID: There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now remember where I got this idea from. Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight: Variable 3 or 4, becoming south or southeast 5 or 6, occasionally 7, perhaps gale 8 later in Fisher. Slight or moderate, occasionally rough later in Dogger, Fisher and German Bight. Fog patches, occasional rain later. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor. From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Mar 2 05:24:30 2012 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 08:24:30 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't think one could say "protocol" does and I don't see how a mapping that preserves some invariance would have any effect on it, but architecture certainly does and has been used for this and well understood for decades. Since the mid-70s, we have talked about how the PTTs used the "beads-on-a-string" model to define market boundaries. It is hard to say who first pointed this out. But by 1975, Pouzin was giving talks along this line and creating quite a stir. I remember a session at a conference in Toronto in probably 77, when Louis was doing one of these talks (complete with slides of the User hanging from a gallows on the parapet of the PTT castle) ;-), the session was running over time and people were collecting at the edges of this very large room. The session chair stopped Louis to say we were over time and Louis said what would you like me to do? And the *audience* en masse said "GO ON!, GO ON!" ;-) Meanwhile the PTTs people in the front row were furiously taking notes. I don't think I have seen an audience react like that before or since! It was this criticism of the PTTs that got CYCLADES shut down and Louis essentially black-listed in France for 30 years. I started drawing pictures and using them in lectures back then to illustrate it. It was amusing that one could take the same picture of a terminal connected to a small host connected to switches connected to a host could be labeled asymmetrically for the X.25/PAD environment the PTTs were pushing and the same picture could be labeled symmetrically to illustrate terminals connected to TIPs and hosts on the ARPANET. (I think I used this in an article in a special issue of Computer in the late 70s or early 80s.) The whole reason for difference in labeling and the beads-on-a-string model in general was to define who got to sell what. In my talks on this subject, I often point out that the impact of the CYCLADES model, i.e. a layered model with a reliable end-to-end transport over a datagram network, relegated the PTTs to a commodity business. They couldn't claim that the "value-added services" on hosts belong "in the network." Both catch phrases of the day. (It has been amusing to watch the more gullible audience today swallow the PTT argument dressed up as "cloud computing." Different players, same game.) This of course was the primary cause of the connection/connectionless debate (that and the shift from a deterministic model to a stochastic one, but money always speaks louder). But I highly doubt this originates with me. Similarly, I point out that IBM's SNA was a hierarchical architecture and the emerging new layered model of peers were incompatible. One can always take a peer architecture and subset it to be hierarchical (and we have, e.g. client server), but it is impossible to take a hierarchical architecture and make a peer architecture. I discuss some of this in my book (Chap 3 and 10), but this far from the first nor original with me. I learned to watch the money from Pouzin and others! ;-) There are ways that protocols do effect the market too. But normally, that is more tactical than strategic. Usually in the form of someone has an implementation or a product and getting their approach or something close to it accepted as the standard gives them an advantage. The IETF's requirement for two implementations plays to this game very nicely. Although I am sure there are counter examples. I really doubt that anyone was first. Anyone in business knew this and was acting on it. (Or they didn't stay in business long.) The technical arguments and their proponents were merely pawns and ammunition tin the battle over where the market share went. There is much more one could say but I have rambled enough. Take care, John Day At 12:10 +0000 2012/03/02, Tony Finch wrote: >There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied >by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure >of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now >remember where I got this idea from. > >Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this >idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? > >Tony. >-- >f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ >Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight: Variable 3 or 4, becoming south or >southeast 5 or 6, occasionally 7, perhaps gale 8 later in Fisher. Slight or >moderate, occasionally rough later in Dogger, Fisher and German Bight. Fog >patches, occasional rain later. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor. From bill.n1vux at gmail.com Fri Mar 2 05:59:17 2012 From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 08:59:17 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied > by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure > of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now > remember where I got this idea from. > > Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this > idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? I don't have a cite for your distributed form, but 6hat's a variation (corollary? inversion!) of Conway's Law, the origin of which is known. (odd coincidence, Mel Conway was a fellow-type guru at Wang Labs when I was there, and then a few years later, I was with the group Symantec built around his much earlier Think C product.) -- Bill @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Mar 2 06:11:14 2012 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:11:14 -0800 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F50D502.3040301@dcrocker.net> On 3/2/2012 4:10 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied > by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure > of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now > remember where I got this idea from. FWIW, I remember hearing of this, too, but also can't remember when/where. A very simple point is that architectures which place more functionality into a distinct infrastructure's core probably encourage specialized providers. Unfortunately, that seems to be the design trend in the IETF these days. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Mar 2 06:12:44 2012 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:12:44 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F50D55C.7080406@meetinghouse.net> At 12:10 +0000 2012/03/02, Tony Finch wrote: > There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied > by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic > structure > of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now > remember where I got this idea from. to which, John Day wrote: > I don't think one could say "protocol" does and I don't see how a > mapping that preserves some invariance would have any effect on it, > but architecture certainly does and has been used for this and well > understood for decades. > Not to be pedantic, but does not "the topology implied by the protocol" imply "architecture"? :-) Also, it's probably worth noting that the broader notion of a protocol - as in "legal protocol" or "diplomatic protocol" - can very much impact the structure of an industry, market, society. These days, a lot of legal, business, and diplomatic protocols are "embedded in code" as Larry Lessig would say (stock markets, airline reservations, DRM, ....). Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From scott.brim at gmail.com Fri Mar 2 08:30:12 2012 From: scott.brim at gmail.com (Scott Brim) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 11:30:12 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 07:10, Tony Finch wrote: > There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied > by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure > of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now > remember where I got this idea from. > > Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this > idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? > > Tony. I can only think of one case where this has been demonstrated to be true, which is "end-to-end" (or "peer-to-peer") versus "client-server" (intermediaries required). In all other cases I can think of, another level of abstraction covered over any problems presented by lower layer protocols. Scott From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Mar 2 09:03:36 2012 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:03:36 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: <4F50D502.3040301@dcrocker.net> References: <4F50D502.3040301@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <4F50FD68.7060503@meetinghouse.net> > On 3/2/2012 4:10 AM, Tony Finch wrote: >> There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology >> implied >> by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic >> structure >> of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now >> remember where I got this idea from. Are you perhaps thinking of "Code" by Larry Lessig (talking about software, rather than protocols, but a very similar arguement)? Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From dave.walden.family at gmail.com Fri Mar 2 09:17:52 2012 From: dave.walden.family at gmail.com (Dave Walden) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:17:52 -0500 Subject: [ih] a book in which some of you may be interested Message-ID: <4f5100c6.8513440a.0e66.ffff9670@mx.google.com> Several of the book's chapters touch on various bits of Internet history: http://walden-family.com/bbn/ (Please forgive me if this is a misuse of this list, but I'd like our writing and publishing efforts to be read by a few people.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blair.brewin at gmail.com Fri Mar 2 09:24:26 2012 From: blair.brewin at gmail.com (Blair Brewin) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 10:24:26 -0700 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Economists use the term the "Network Effect" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect On 2012-03-02, at 9:30 AM, Scott Brim wrote: > On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 07:10, Tony Finch wrote: >> There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied >> by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure >> of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now >> remember where I got this idea from. >> >> Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this >> idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? >> >> Tony. > > I can only think of one case where this has been demonstrated to be > true, which is "end-to-end" (or "peer-to-peer") versus "client-server" > (intermediaries required). In all other cases I can think of, another > level of abstraction covered over any problems presented by lower > layer protocols. > > Scott From LarrySheldon at cox.net Fri Mar 2 10:25:15 2012 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:25:15 -0600 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: <4F50D55C.7080406@meetinghouse.net> References: <4F50D55C.7080406@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <4F51108B.1070508@cox.net> On 3/2/2012 8:12 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Not to be pedantic, but does not "the topology implied by the protocol" > imply "architecture"? :-) Yeahbut you destroy more trees and use more ink.. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. ICBM Data: http://g.co/maps/e5gmy (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From arussell at jhu.edu Fri Mar 2 11:46:48 2012 From: arussell at jhu.edu (Andrew Russell) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 14:46:48 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <94485FED-F22E-4AB5-B5A8-85E870CD193B@jhu.edu> On Mar 2, 2012, at 8:59 AM, Bill Ricker wrote: > On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Tony Finch wrote: >> There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied >> by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure >> of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now >> remember where I got this idea from. >> >> Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this >> idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? > > I don't have a cite for your distributed form, but 6hat's a variation > (corollary? inversion!) of Conway's Law, the origin of which is known. > > (odd coincidence, Mel Conway was a fellow-type guru at Wang Labs when > I was there, and then a few years later, I was with the group Symantec > built around his much earlier Think C product.) I also thought the initial question sounded like a variation of Conway's Law: ?There is a very close relationship between the structure of a system and the structure of the organization which designed it.? See M.E. Conway, ?How Do Committees Invent?? Datamation, vol. 14, no. 4, 1968; The hacker jargon file emphasizes that Conway's Law deals with intra-organizational communication: "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.? ?Conway?s Law,? at http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/Conways-Law.html. I seem to remember Tracy Kidder using this notion in _The Soul of a New Machine_, but I don't have a copy nearby. I can follow up on Monday if there's any interest. Finally, As I was poking around in my notes about Conway's Law I also found a related quote from a 1994 article by Dave Crocker: ?In general, the IETF is applying its own technical design philosophy to its own operation.? Cite: D. Crocker, ?Making Standards the IETF Way,? StandardView, vol. 1, no. 1, 1993, p. 54. HTH Andy ----------------------------------------------------------- Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D Assistant Professor, College of Arts & Letters Stevens Institute of Technology From craig at aland.bbn.com Fri Mar 2 12:42:59 2012 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:42:59 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure Message-ID: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> > There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied > by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure > of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now > remember where I got this idea from. > > Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this > idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? Dave Clark has been giving speeches for about a decade on this issue. He has a 2002 paper entitled "Tussle in Cyberspace" and the term "tussle space" has some traction for discussions about the implications of particular protocol designs. Craig From richard at bennett.com Mon Mar 5 21:12:10 2012 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:12:10 -0800 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <4F559CAA.6010302@bennett.com> I think the tussle space concept is an attempt to move the inevitable conflicts that occur within and around networks and the enterprises they spawn and facilitate into well-defined arenas rather than an attempt to define conflicts out of existence. The idea that architecture determines economic structure remains an unproved conjecture, made especially vexing by the refusal of parties to stick to one and only one layer of the OSI model. Comcast buys NBC Universal and whole thing melts down. There is a similar hope that specific network architectures have some influence on the political structure of societies in which they're deployed, naively put as the belief that the Internet is a "democracy machine." I suppose the corollaries would be that the PSTN is a fascism machine or that the telegraph network was an imperialism machine. Believers in the "democracy machine" doctrine tout of the role of network-based systems in organizing the Arab Spring and the Rose and Orange Revolutions before it. These notions don't fare so well when we look at the election outcomes in Egypt that followed the uprising. Far right religious-based parties took something like 75% of the vote, and the status quo is that the unelected military is the most progressive force in Egyptian society. Gulp. The Rose and Orange uprisings went the same way, serving preludes to more organized repression and surveillance. Can we trick people in developing countries into adopting the values of Western liberal democracies by providing them with e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts? It doesn't look all that promising at this point, but the battle continues. RB On 3/2/2012 12:42 PM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> There's an idea that the structure of a protocol (or the topology implied >> by the protocol or that emerges from it) determines the economic structure >> of the service providers and users of that protocol. Sadly I can't now >> remember where I got this idea from. >> >> Does anyone here have pointers to literature mentioning or describing this >> idea? Is anyone acknowledged as its originator? Does it have a snappy name? > Dave Clark has been giving speeches for about a decade on this issue. > He has a 2002 paper entitled "Tussle in Cyberspace" and the term > "tussle space" has some traction for discussions about the implications > of particular protocol designs. > > Craig -- Richard Bennett From dot at dotat.at Tue Mar 6 03:43:00 2012 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 11:43:00 +0000 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: Craig Partridge wrote: > > Dave Clark has been giving speeches for about a decade on this issue. > He has a 2002 paper entitled "Tussle in Cyberspace" and the term > "tussle space" has some traction for discussions about the implications > of particular protocol designs. I think that's probably the paper I was struggling to remember, thanks! I've read John Day's book as well, though more recently. I think After a quick look to remind myself about Clark's paper, it's very much a manifesto for the future internet architecture projects, and about designing architectures to fit economics and politics. The reason I failed to find the word "architecture" when writing my original message was that last week I had been thinking in the opposite direction. That is, given a (set of) protocol(s), what is the implied architecture? What economic structures are likely to arise? For instance, the DNS's multi-component names are (in the protocol) always given as rooted, absolute paths, which implies a tree structure and therefore a hierarchial organization, and paternalistic / authoritarian politics. But if you make the names relative, that implies a rootless graph structure, a flatter organization, and a more libertarian / anarchist politics. But note! The politics has more effect on who the architecture appeals to than the influence it has on society. I think we have a habit of attributing the culture of the early adopters of a communications medium to the medium itself, when in fact communications tools are much more neutral. Perhaps I'm taking this analogy too far. Another example (much more grounded in reality) was Dave Crocker's description of the Internet Mail architecture. Email has not been without architecture (the 821/822 split; X.400 but it has also been shaped a lot by external forces such as interop difficulties (late 1980s / early 1990s) and spam (which drove people to implement the architectural distinction between message submission and relay, amongst other things). So I suppose it would be informative to ask to what extent tussles moulded email, and to what extent email shaped those tussles. Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ West Forties, Cromarty, Forth: Westerly or northwesterly 4 or 5, but northerly 5 or 6 until later in west Forties, becoming variable 3 or less. Slight or moderate. Rain at first in west Forties, otherwise fair. Good, occasionally moderate in west Forties. From jeanjour at comcast.net Tue Mar 6 05:12:39 2012 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 08:12:39 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: <20120302204259.C963A28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: At 11:43 +0000 2012/03/06, Tony Finch wrote: >Craig Partridge wrote: >> >> Dave Clark has been giving speeches for about a decade on this issue. >> He has a 2002 paper entitled "Tussle in Cyberspace" and the term >> "tussle space" has some traction for discussions about the implications >> of particular protocol designs. > >I think that's probably the paper I was struggling to remember, thanks! >I've read John Day's book as well, though more recently. I think > >After a quick look to remind myself about Clark's paper, it's very much a >manifesto for the future internet architecture projects, and about >designing architectures to fit economics and politics. The reason I failed >to find the word "architecture" when writing my original message was that >last week I had been thinking in the opposite direction. That is, given >a (set of) protocol(s), what is the implied architecture? What economic >structures are likely to arise? Having been involved in a lot of these economic wars, some how I always found "tussle" to be a bit wimpy for describing them. ;-) What I witnessed was a whole lot more intense and had a whole lot more at stake (at least the participants thought so) than a mere tussle. ;-) > >For instance, the DNS's multi-component names are (in the protocol) always >given as rooted, absolute paths, which implies a tree structure and >therefore a hierarchial organization, and paternalistic / authoritarian >politics. But if you make the names relative, that implies a rootless >graph structure, a flatter organization, and a more libertarian / >anarchist politics. Interesting, not my interpretation at all. Since duplicate assignment of names must be avoided, I always saw a hierarchical name space as the minimal organization to meet the requirement: Give an organization a branch and let them do whatever they want. And a deeper tree allows more local uses of a name to have a common usage, e.g. more than one JoesPlumbing in different part of the tree. Remember with computers, relative names just means you have established a context in which you can ignore the whole absolute name. As Utah Phillips defined it, "An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do!" ;-) Or my personal favorite, when asked by an interviewer, Karl Hess, a founder of the Libertarian Party who lived on barter for 30+ years (long story there) and a friend said "An anarchist is a good friend, a good neighbor and a good lover." The interviewer asked, is that all? Karl said, "What do you want?! Rules!?" Self-organization requires a minimum of rules. Hierarchy allows that. Now that said, ICANN seems to have found a way to make it a whole lot more shall we say "interesting." ;-) > >But note! The politics has more effect on who the architecture appeals to >than the influence it has on society. I think we have a habit of >attributing the culture of the early adopters of a communications medium >to the medium itself, when in fact communications tools are much more >neutral. I would agree that the communication tools should be neutral. In what we have been pursuing, we have been looking very carefully at the structure of the problem, rather than the economic or political environment. Interestingly enough, concentrating on the nature of the problem leads to some interesting implications. For example, a realization that a global name space is in fact relative. It has been interesting to see how our habits of thought have lead us to assume things that were not the case. The interesting thing I have found is that when attempts are made to turn "architecture" to economic and political ends that cross the invariances inherent in the problem, things get very messy. We see this with the "beads-on-a-string" model, we saw this in the OSI model. (The problems in the Internet model (as much as it can be discerned) have more to do with not recognizing fundamental concepts than trying to impose political solutions.) The original topic I thought was economic impact. That is very clear. Early on in the ARPANET we often talked about the political impact. (It was the time!) ;-) However, if anything the impact has not been quite what we expected. If anything it has lead to balkinzation more than anything. Although, it is not alone in doing that. > >Perhaps I'm taking this analogy too far. Another example (much more >grounded in reality) was Dave Crocker's description of the Internet Mail >architecture. Email has not been without architecture (the 821/822 split; >X.400 but it has also been shaped a lot by external forces such as interop >difficulties (late 1980s / early 1990s) and spam (which drove people to >implement the architectural distinction between message submission and >relay, amongst other things). So I suppose it would be informative to ask >to what extent tussles moulded email, and to what extent email shaped >those tussles. First one would expect application protocols to tread more into this realm than the pure networking, or what I would call IPC. The application protocols that interact with humans should reflect this more than others. As for the email example, the distinction between submission and relaying was not in response to spam but much much earlier, once we had hosts (PCs and workstations) that were not connected all the time. (There were also networks in this category, but I will distinguish them.) I do not consider email "relaying" to be relaying in the same sense as relaying IP packets. Relaying as an IPC mechanism is constrained (as all IPC is) by the requirement that MPL be bounded. (Maximum Packet Lifetime) This is an impiication of Watson's results. This is not the case with email. Email is remote storage. This is one of those interesting cases, where how it appears to the observer and how it appears to the organism (in this case the network) are quite different. Another case where science disproves our intuitions Which of course why we do science. Take care, John From craig at aland.bbn.com Tue Mar 6 05:19:36 2012 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 08:19:36 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure Message-ID: <20120306131936.07EDD28E137@aland.bbn.com> > Craig Partridge wrote: > > > > Dave Clark has been giving speeches for about a decade on this issue. > > He has a 2002 paper entitled "Tussle in Cyberspace" and the term > > "tussle space" has some traction for discussions about the implications > > of particular protocol designs. > > I think that's probably the paper I was struggling to remember, thanks! > I've read John Day's book as well, though more recently. I think > > After a quick look to remind myself about Clark's paper, it's very much a > manifesto for the future internet architecture projects, and about > designing architectures to fit economics and politics. The reason I failed > to find the word "architecture" when writing my original message was that > last week I had been thinking in the opposite direction. That is, given > a (set of) protocol(s), what is the implied architecture? What economic > structures are likely to arise? An excellent question and one DDC raises when he talks about tussles. > For instance, the DNS's multi-component names are (in the protocol) always > given as rooted, absolute paths, which implies a tree structure and > therefore a hierarchial organization, and paternalistic / authoritarian > politics. But if you make the names relative, that implies a rootless > graph structure, a flatter organization, and a more libertarian / > anarchist politics. So DNS is an interesting example of unintended consequences. DNS was a response to a scaling problem (a flat namespace administered and controlled by one entity) and an attempt to distribute and decentralize the namespace management (so the reverse of the hierarchical result you describe). The problem was, at the time, we didn't know how to build scalable, root-free namespaces. Grapevine showed that root-free namespaces were possible but it had tremendous update costs. So DNS had to have a root -- but the expectation was that there would not be a lot of TLDS and by giving each entity its own chunk of domain space, we'd achieved decentralization. > Perhaps I'm taking this analogy too far. Another example (much more > grounded in reality) was Dave Crocker's description of the Internet Mail > architecture. Email has not been without architecture (the 821/822 split; > X.400 but it has also been shaped a lot by external forces such as interop > difficulties (late 1980s / early 1990s) and spam (which drove people to > implement the architectural distinction between message submission and > relay, amongst other things). So I suppose it would be informative to ask > to what extent tussles moulded email, and to what extent email shaped > those tussles. An excellent question and not at all clear to me how to address it -- and I wrote a history of email's technical development a few years ago (?!). Thanks! Craig From scott.brim at gmail.com Tue Mar 6 07:22:57 2012 From: scott.brim at gmail.com (Scott Brim) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 10:22:57 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: <20120306131936.07EDD28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20120306131936.07EDD28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 08:19, Craig Partridge wrote: > The problem was, at the time, we didn't know how to build scalable, root-free > namespaces. ?Grapevine showed that root-free namespaces were possible but > it had tremendous update costs. ?So DNS had to have a root -- but the > expectation was that there would not be a lot of TLDS and by giving each > entity its own chunk of domain space, we'd achieved decentralization. Craig, would that not also reflect the operational orientation of the time? It was important to have something that worked, relatively robustly? swb From craig at aland.bbn.com Tue Mar 6 07:30:43 2012 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:30:43 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure Message-ID: <20120306153043.108C028E137@aland.bbn.com> > On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 08:19, Craig Partridge wrote: > > The problem was, at the time, we didn't know how to build scalable, root-= > free > > namespaces. =A0Grapevine showed that root-free namespaces were possible b= > ut > > it had tremendous update costs. =A0So DNS had to have a root -- but the > > expectation was that there would not be a lot of TLDS and by giving each > > entity its own chunk of domain space, we'd achieved decentralization. > > Craig, would that not also reflect the operational orientation of the > time? It was important to have something that worked, relatively > robustly? Hi Scott: Yes, certainly operational issues were foremost in Paul's mind. He talked about using the hierarchy to localize DNS operator error to the organization the errors would likely most impact. Thanks! Craig From louie at transsys.com Tue Mar 6 08:14:42 2012 From: louie at transsys.com (Louis Mamakos) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 11:14:42 -0500 Subject: [ih] protocol structure -> economic structure In-Reply-To: References: <20120306131936.07EDD28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <4DE5400B-D971-4CA4-BAA7-EBBC45C30D15@transsys.com> On Mar 6, 2012, at 10:22 AM, Scott Brim wrote: > On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 08:19, Craig Partridge wrote: >> The problem was, at the time, we didn't know how to build scalable, root-free >> namespaces. Grapevine showed that root-free namespaces were possible but >> it had tremendous update costs. So DNS had to have a root -- but the >> expectation was that there would not be a lot of TLDS and by giving each >> entity its own chunk of domain space, we'd achieved decentralization. > > Craig, would that not also reflect the operational orientation of the > time? It was important to have something that worked, relatively > robustly? > > swb > During this same time, the routing infrastructure was also evolving from the simpler tools we had (RIP, EGP) to BGP with explicit policy machinery. Like the DNS, there was now explicit structure and policy boundaries which enabled building larger networks and gave us the operational tools to manage within subsets of the global whole. This was "hard" before; I remember trying to interconnect disparate networks with RIP and trying to puzzle over controlling route propagation in the presence of a bunch of ad hoc interconnects. It required very careful coordination between all the parties. The introduction of these inter-domain (not DNS) partitioning tools made all sorts of things possible operationally. This became very important when the NSFNET backbone appeared as an alternative "root" transit network alternative to the ARPANET. louie From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Wed Mar 7 18:16:27 2012 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 18:16:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers In-Reply-To: <836AE854-8F99-49E7-9101-7CAA919CE284@duke.poly.edu> References: <836AE854-8F99-49E7-9101-7CAA919CE284@duke.poly.edu> Message-ID: <1331172987.47617.YahooMailNeo@web160206.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> I received this request, but I know nothing at all about the sf-lovers mailing list.? If any of you can help please reply directly to Christopher Leslie. ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Christopher Leslie To: Alex McKenzie Sent: Wednesday, March 7, 2012 5:28 PM Subject: sf-lovers Dear Mr. McKenzie,? I am trying to find out a little bit about the ARPANET mailing list sf-lovers and because of your work on the network around the time it was formed, I am hoping that you could tell me a little bit about it. I am writing a book on science fiction and I think this list demonstrates an interesting connection between science fiction and engineering. It's sometimes said that sf-lovers and human-nets were two of the mailing lists that were not directly related to defense research. I cannot get a hard date on when sf-lovers started, and which college it originated from, but in asking around I have heard that 1976 might be the right date. Do you know any of these details? Can you describe how similar sf-lovers was to what we think of a mailing list today? I have also heard that using ARPANET came under scrutiny from Congress because of sf-lovers, and for a while the message group was banned. In Janet Abbate's book, she refers to your idea that the list was allowed to continue because it was generating useful traffic to test the network. I cannot find any news reports, and I also contacted holders of Senator Proxmire's papers to see if ARPANET was given one of his infamous awards, but I am coming up empty. Do you have any details about this incident? There is quite a bit of information about sf-lovers when it is ported over to Usenet, but I am more interested in this early part of the story. If you have any information, or if you could direct me to someone who might know, I would greatly appreciate it. Sincerely, Chris Leslie Christopher S. Leslie, Ph.D. Instructor of Media and Technology Studies Polytechnic Institute of New York University 6 MetroTech Center, RH 213h Brooklyn, NY 11201 (718) 260-3130 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Mar 7 22:05:25 2012 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2012 01:05:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers Message-ID: <20120308060525.2A7D818C108@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Alex McKenzie > I received this request, but I know nothing at all about the sf-lovers > mailing list. If any of you can help please reply directly to > Christopher Leslie. Well, I'm not an _authoritative_ source on SF-LOVERS, but I have a few useful bits for Dr. Leslie - and with those to start with, I found a great deal more. (I'm CC'ing the list, however, both in case this trips any memories for someone else, and to put the results of my researches online.) > From: Christopher Leslie > I am trying to find out a little bit about the ARPANET mailing list > sf-lovers SF-Lovers was apparently originally hosted on the timesharing computer at MIT named MIT-AI (a PDP-10 running the Incompatible Timesharing System); and at some point (possibly?) on the similar MIT-MC machine. I say this because while looking around for online data I found a (possibly complete?) archive of early SF-Lovers list traffic at: http://keithlynch.net/sfl/ starting in September, 1979. The earliest messages in the archive clearly indicate the list was at MIT-AI at that point. However, I also have a copy of the mailing alias database from the MIT-ML ITS machine from sometime considerably later (I think, as it mentions Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machines - it does not have an exact date, alas), which indicates that mail for "SF-Lovers" on that machine is to be sent to "SF-Lovers at MIT-MC". But... The archive maintained by Mr. Lynch indicates that in November, 1981 it moved to SU-SCORE (a machine at Stanford), and then later to Rutgers. However, as of the last message in that archive (December, 1988) it was still at Rutgers. So I'm not sure what the "SF-Lovers at MIT-MC" was all about. Possibly later still it moved there? Note that the early archive is not necessarily complete; it may just contain a few odd messages that people had saved, and were found and corralled into the arvhive. But it might be all of them - I just don't know. Those early machines were very short on disk space. (The MIT-AI machine had 8 50MB hard drives, for a total of 400MB - shared between roughly a hundred users!) So, we weren't able to archive a lot of what went on - although those os us interested in the history now sure wish we had been able to! > I cannot get a hard date on when sf-lovers started, and which college > it originated from, but in asking around I have heard that 1976 might > be the right date. According to this message: Date: 14 JAN 1980 0451-EST From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II) Subject: Here I am, and here I remain To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC SF-LOVERS has exhibited a phenomenal growth in both the number of subscribers and the volume of mail handled since it began in September. from the first archive: http://keithlynch.net/sfl/sflv1 it seems to have been started in September 1979 (which is also the date on the earliest messages in that archive). Given that this is a contemporaneous record, I'm inclined to believe it, unless some strong proof (e.g. an earlier message) can be found. There is also some dicussion of SF-Lovers here: http://memex.org/community-memory.html and this message: From: Richard Brodie Subject: CM> Mailing lists: SF-LOVERS. Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 23:29:32 -0700 I started the SF-LOVERS mailing list in September 1979 by telneting from my Alto at Xerox my first week on the job. It started as a public list on the MIT-ITS systems in this archive: http://memex.org/cm-archive4.html also gives September, 1979. So I'd say that's pretty definitive.. :-) > Can you describe how similar sf-lovers was to what we think of a > mailing list today? It was exactly like a mailing list today, except that when digesting came in, it was done manually (as was all the subscription maintainence, etc). The archive maintained by Mr. Lynch seems to indicate that in January 1980, the traffic volume was so high it was changed from a direct distribution list to a digest (see message of 14 JAN 1980). > I have also heard that using ARPANET came under scrutiny from Congress > because of sf-lovers, and for a while the message group was banned. > ... I cannot find any news reports, and I also contacted holders of > Senator Proxmire's papers to see if ARPANET was given one of his > infamous awards, but I am coming upq empty. Do you have any details > about this incident? I can't say for sure, but perhaps this message: Date: Fri, 1 Apr 88 08:59:51 EST From: sfl at elbereth.rutgers.edu (SF-LOVERS) Subject: LAST ISSUE Well folks, as Ralph Kramden has often said: "I've got a BIIIIIIIG MOUTH!!" It seems that in the last year, there has been so much media attention in magazines like Omni, Locus, IEEE Potentials, ACM Communications, Time, Newsweek and others about SF-LOVERS, that it has attracted the attention of "The Powers that Be" in Washington. which can be found in this archive: http://keithlynch.net/sfl/sflv13 is the source of this? Note the date.... I do recall these were some problems with an early non-technical mailing list (wine lovers, I think?), but someone else will have to look into this issue - I've used my quota of time on this! > There is quite a bit of information about sf-lovers when it is ported > over to Usenet, but I am more interested in this early part of the story. You're quite lucky to have this much! Not only was a lot not saved (as I explained above), but much of what was saved has suffered 'bit rot' in the years since. At one point, the ITS machines' file systems were online (at its.os.org), but they don't seem to be there anymore. I started out tonight by looking high and low on the network for them (since I was pretty sure SF-Lovers started on an ITS machine, and I expected I'd be able to find a lot by looking on them), but I couldn't find any remnants. It was pure luck that I stumbled over the copy of the SF-Lovers archive at Keith Lynch's site. Alas, a lot of the time when we look for early material, it's just not there any more... :-( > If you have any information, or if you could direct me to someone who > might know, I would greatly appreciate it. Hope this was useful. If you read the complete archive, it should prove a rich mine (both for the SF-related content, and the administrivia about how the list was run, etc, etc). You can also try doing web searches for the string '"SF-Lovers" "MIT-AI"' - that's how I turned up the archives above, but there might be more I didn't get to. And you might want to make a copy of the archive, and make it available on your website, just in case the copy maintained by Mr. Lynch goes away - it seems to be the only copy around at this point. Noel From ronda.netizen at gmail.com Thu Mar 8 05:56:16 2012 From: ronda.netizen at gmail.com (Ronda Hauben) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2012 08:56:16 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers In-Reply-To: <1331172987.47617.YahooMailNeo@web160206.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <836AE854-8F99-49E7-9101-7CAA919CE284@duke.poly.edu> <1331172987.47617.YahooMailNeo@web160206.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Chris and Alex I have a section on sf-lovers mailing list in a paper I did on early usenet a while ago. The url is below: http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/usenet_early_days.txt Here''s a quote from the paper about the beginning of the mailing list by Richard Brodie in 1979: "SF-LOVERS was another of the important mailing lists on the ARPANET which was also available on early Usenet as FA.sf-lovers. It was for the discussion of science fiction and related topics. In May, 1981, Jim McGrath, the new moderator of the mailing list, posted a farewell to Richard Brodie, the originator of the mailing list. He described how Brodie had been "the person responsible for the first version of this mailing list almost two years ago." (20) In his farewell to those on the list, Brodie describes how he started the mailing list. He took a leave from Harvard and went to Xerox-Parc in June 1979. Shortly afterwards, he sent out his first SF-Lovers message. He writes: "Over a year and a half have gone by since the first SF- Lovers message went out (It was a list of the Hugo Awards from the 1979 Worldcom in Brighton, England). They've been a good one and a half years; they've shown me clearly that electronic communication will change the shape of our world, and that we'll see its effects in our lifetimes." "The list," he explained, "has grown enormously -- far beyond my expectations -- and has reached the point where many hundreds of people read the daily Digest." (21) Describing how SF-lovers began, Brodie explained, "I started SF-LOVERS by logging into one of the public-access MIT "Incompatible Time Sharing" (ITS) systems - probably MIT-DMS, although it might have been MIT-AI - and editing a text file that contained the names of all the distribution lists. I then inserted a system announcement onto the same system announcing the availability of the list." (22) "Early Usenet(1981-2):Creating the Broadsides for Our Day" by Ronda Hauben Best wishes, Ronda On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > I received this request, but I know nothing at all about the sf-lovers > mailing list. If any of you can help please reply directly to Christopher > Leslie. > > ----- Forwarded Message ----- > *From:* Christopher Leslie > *To:* Alex McKenzie > *Sent:* Wednesday, March 7, 2012 5:28 PM > *Subject:* sf-lovers > > Dear Mr. McKenzie, > > I am trying to find out a little bit about the ARPANET mailing list > sf-lovers and because of your work on the network around the time it was > formed, I am hoping that you could tell me a little bit about it. I am > writing a book on science fiction and I think this list demonstrates an > interesting connection between science fiction and engineering. > > It's sometimes said that sf-lovers and human-nets were two of the mailing > lists that were not directly related to defense research. I cannot get a > hard date on when sf-lovers started, and which college it originated from, > but in asking around I have heard that 1976 might be the right date. Do you > know any of these details? Can you describe how similar sf-lovers was to > what we think of a mailing list today? > > I have also heard that using ARPANET came under scrutiny from Congress > because of sf-lovers, and for a while the message group was banned. In > Janet Abbate's book, she refers to your idea that the list was allowed to > continue because it was generating useful traffic to test the network. I > cannot find any news reports, and I also contacted holders of Senator > Proxmire's papers to see if ARPANET was given one of his infamous awards, > but I am coming up empty. Do you have any details about this incident? > > There is quite a bit of information about sf-lovers when it is ported over > to Usenet, but I am more interested in this early part of the story. If you > have any information, or if you could direct me to someone who might know, > I would greatly appreciate it. > > Sincerely, > > Chris Leslie > > > Christopher S. Leslie, Ph.D. > Instructor of Media and Technology Studies > Polytechnic Institute of New York University > 6 MetroTech Center, RH 213h > Brooklyn, NY 11201 > (718) 260-3130 > > > > -- Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bill.n1vux at gmail.com Sat Mar 10 10:05:51 2012 From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:05:51 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers // Malts Lovers list MALTS-L and non-tech lists Message-ID: On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:05 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > I do recall these were some problems with an early non-technical mailing > list > (wine lovers, I think?), but someone else will have to look into this > issue - > I've used my quota of time on this! > I don't know about Wine Lovers, but the Single Malt Scotch Whisky list MALTS-L was hosted at BBN initially, moved to U Edinburgh dcs.ed.ac.uk(1995Q1 - 1998Q4), then to U Karlsruhe, and finally to a private server lists.grsnet.net under the auspices of The Malt Maniancs as MM-MALTS-L, where it has revived again after a hiatus. As custodian of Mike Padlpsky's works, I am interested in the early history of MALTS-L. I have full archives for Karlsruhe and MM periods, but only Subject Indices for Edinburgh and nothing for the BBN period. I am hoping as I dig through MAP's harddrives I'll find more. If anyone has anything on BBN history of Malts-L or archives from BBN/Edinburgh periods, I would appreciate ! (I do have a few notes on BBN period, if they'd be of use to the SFL history.) -- Bill @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Mar 10 13:23:39 2012 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:23:39 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers // Malts Lovers list MALTS-L and non-tech lists In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F5BC65B.8090607@meetinghouse.net> Bill Ricker wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:05 AM, Noel Chiappa > wrote: > > I do recall these were some problems with an early non-technical > mailing list > (wine lovers, I think?), but someone else will have to look into > this issue - > I've used my quota of time on this! > > > I don't know about Wine Lovers, but the Single Malt Scotch Whisky list > MALTS-L was hosted at BBN initially, moved to U Edinburgh dcs.ed.ac.uk > (1995Q1 - 1998Q4), then to U Karlsruhe, and > finally to a private server lists.grsnet.net > under the auspices of The Malt Maniancs as MM-MALTS-L, where it has > revived again after a hiatus. > > As custodian of Mike Padlpsky's works, I am interested in the early > history of MALTS-L. Do you happen to have the detailed guide that Mike prepared, detailing 100s of different Scotch whiskeys? :-) Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Mar 10 13:26:12 2012 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:26:12 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fw: sf-lovers // Malts Lovers list MALTS-L and non-tech lists In-Reply-To: <4F5BC65B.8090607@meetinghouse.net> References: <4F5BC65B.8090607@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <4F5BC6F4.2090608@meetinghouse.net> Miles Fidelman wrote: >> As custodian of Mike Padlpsky's works, I am interested in the early >> history of MALTS-L. > > > Do you happen to have the detailed guide that Mike prepared, detailing > 100s of different Scotch whiskeys? :-) > Whoops. Typed to quickly. A quick google search turned up this: http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jhb/whisky/padlip.html -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From landreu at gmail.com Fri Mar 30 15:43:51 2012 From: landreu at gmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Andreu_Ve=E0_i_Bar=F3?=) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:43:51 +0200 Subject: [ih] Jerry Estrin In-Reply-To: References: <6ADB9A2590493B44947256FEAAB8658306D326FC@mcsm-xch01.matchcraft.com> Message-ID: <003e01cd0ec6$94dbd200$be937600$@gmail.com> I forward this message from Deborah Estrin. Rest in Peace. Andreu : > Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 > From: Deborah Estrin > > Subject: my father > > I wanted to let you know that your colleague and my father, Jerry > Estrin, passed away this morning just after midnight. He had a very > difficult last couple of months, but a truely remarkable 90 years, all > in all. > He died at home next to my mother, Thelma. All three of us daughters > were able to spend a lot of time with him toward the end and we are so > relieved that he can now rest peacefully. > > I will send a more formal obituary sometime later today. > > D.