[ih] technical evolution [was: On queueing from len]

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 06-Oct-22 05:38, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:

...

> I've often wondered how such technical evolution happens now in The
> Internet.

Oh dear. I could spend the rest of the day trying to answer that
and even then, probably nobody would agree. It isn't a managed
process with a single locus of control. You could do a case study
of QUIC and a case study of SRV6 and get quite different answers,
for example. There's academia where the main focus is probably
still SIGCOMM. A lot of useful measurement results come from
academia. There's the world of operators where (IMHO) the main
foci are RIPE and APNIC; the other regional registries seem
less involved in operational issues. There are the *big* service
providers who are proactive in solving their own problems.
There's the IRTF. There's the IETF. And then there are the
hardware and software vendors who decide what will actually
be available for deployment. Not to mention open source
programmers - what happens to end up in the Linux distros
is determinant in many cases.

Here's another possible case study: making using of IPv6
extension headers. Right now the nearest thing to a focal
point is indeed in the IETF. But who's in charge? Nobody,
except the people who design, configure and operate
firewalls, because they decide which extension headers
survive a trip across the Internet.

    Brian