[ih] Memories of Flag Day?

Fri Aug 11 06:53:23 PDT 2023

Jack,

If you have a smartphone, then you're using IPv6.

You may be using IPv6 in your home network as well. Try opening a terminal
and typing "ping 2001:4860:4860::8888". If that works, then you're using
IPv6.

Cheers,
Andy

On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 8:17 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 12:16 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > I've been wondering if the IETF is still effective today.   It's been
> > trying for decades to cajole the Internet into adopting IPV6.
> >
> > Instead we now live with a multi-protocol Internet, and the complexity
> > and problems that come with it.  In the 90s, the world embraced TCP and
> > got rid of all the other protocols.   As I understand it, the IETF now
> > "puts new technology on the shelf, where anyone is free to pick it up
> > and use it" - quite different from the management process that
> > orchestrated "Flag Day" and managed the evolution of the Internet
> > technology in the field.   Some people have "picked up" IPV6, but many
> > have not.   I can't tell if I have. I also have no idea how I would do
> > it.   Or why I should.
> >
> users should not have to care or notice.
>
> >
> > Perhaps someone can fill in the history of how the Internet got from
> > then to now?  I sent an email on this topic a week or so ago, but it
> > seems to have never come out of the elists.isoc.org system.   FYI, here
> > it is, in case you didn't get it:
> >
> > --------------------
> >
> > IIRC, the "Flag Day" was one piece of a larger plan.
> >
> > I don't recall the timing of the pieces - it was 40+- years ago. But
> > there was also a bureaucratic action in that same era to declare TCP a
> > "DoD Standard", and require its presence in DoD procurements - any
> > computer system in a DoD purchase using networking had to have TCP.
> > Also, there was a program created by NIST (or was it still NBS then?) to
> > provide a test suite for conformance to the TCP standard.   So any
> > contractor who wanted to sell something to DoD had to have TCP, and by
> > going through the NIST test suite they could get a certificate proving
> > that they had TCP implemented properly. I don't remember which of these
> > happened in what order or how it related to Flag Day (1/1/1983).   But
> > it all seems to me to be part of some larger plan to migrate the
> > admittedly small existing network to a new standard.
> >
> > At BBN, we went through the NIST process to become a certified testing
> > lab, so we could run the tests for anyone who needed it and issue
> > conformance certificates.  I'm not sure how many other such labs there
> > were.  We also provided consulting services to help people understand
> > TCP and figure out why their software didn't pass the tests.   This was
> > never seen as any kind of "money maker", but seemed important to do it,
> > since we had access to IMPs and such which made it easy to set up a
> > small test lab.
> >
> > I never saw "the plan", but it struck me that there was a lot going on
> > behind the scenes to make things like this happen, outside of the
> > research or Arpanet community or technology per se, in order to
> > facilitate the introduction of TCP to DoD.  Maybe someone else knows
> > more about who was involved in all that activity.   Somebody made those
> > things happen...
> >
> > In retrospect, it seems to me that such "soft technology" (conformance
> > certification etc.) was complementary to the technical work documented
> > in the stream of RFCs, and was important to making TCP "real", and
> > establishing a bit of regulation around its use "in the field" with
> > mechanisms such as "Flag Day" to enforce a migration from old to new.
> >
> > The Internet is now arguably world class "infrastructure".   But, IMHO,
> > it still lacks a lot of the mechanisms that surround other, older,
> > infrastructures that move things from point A to point B - e.g.,
> > highways, electrical service, railroads, airplanes, etc.   The early
> > work on things like Flag Day, TCP Conformance Tests, DoD
> > Standardization, and such were the beginning of adding a management
> > structure around the Internet technology.
> >
> > As near as I can tell, no such effort continues today.   It may have
> > faded away back in the 1980s, before TCP became the dominant
> > technology.   Perhaps the Internet is just too new for such machinery to
> > be created?
> >
> > Other infrastructures have gone through stages as rules, regulations,
> > and practices congeal.  In the early days of electricity it was common
> > for accidents to occur, causing fires, deaths, or other disasters.
> > Electrical Codes, safety mechanisms, licensing, rules and practices have
> > made using electricity much less dangerous.  The same is true of
> > highways, railroads, etc.
> >
> > I've always wondered what happened to that "management framework" that
> > started in the 1980s around the Internet infrastructure, and why it
> > hasn't resulted in mechanisms today to make the Internet "safer".   I
> > suspect all infrastructures need things like electrical codes, UL
> > testing, development of fuses, circuit breakers, GFIs, etc., that are
> > used in the electrical infrastructure.   But nobody seems to be doing
> > that for the Internet?
> >
> > There's lots of such mechanisms I know about in the US to manage
> > infrastructures.  My car occasionally gets a government-mandated
> > recall.  Airplanes get grounded by FAA.  Train crashes are investigated
> > by the Department of Transportation.   Other governments have similar
> > mechanisms to manage infrastructure.
> >
> > Has any Internet component, hardware or software, ever been
> > recalled...?   "Flag Day" was the last enforcement action I can remember.
> >
> > Jack Haverty
> >
> >
> > --------------------
> >
> > On 8/9/23 18:50, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> > > I had a "tourist" account at the MIT-AI system running ITS, back in the
> > > NCP days.  I used to log in to it over a TIP that had RS232 cables
> > > quietly connecting it to a Telenet node.  I'd dial in to a local
> Telenet
> > > access point, connect to the cross-connect's node and port, and be
> > > talking to a TIP, where I'd "@o 134" to get to MIT-AI.
> > >
> > > When NCP was turned off on the Flag Day, that stopped working.  At MIT,
> > > as I understand it, they decided not to implement TCP/IP for ITS.  The
> > > workaround for tourists like me was to borrow someone's account at
> > > MIT-OZ, which had TCP support and could also talk to ITS (over
> > > Chaosnet?).  So I'd connect from the TIP using TCP to MIT-OZ, and then
> > > connect to MIT-AI.  It worked OK, though I had to remember when (and
> how
> > > many times) to double the escape characters.  My access was via a
> dialup
> > > modem, which was probably the slowest part of the whole system.
> > >
> > > Moving to the present day...
> > >
> > > I continue to see Internet old-timers who long nostalgicly for
> somebody,
> > > somewhere, to force a "flag day" to shut down IPv4.  The IETF has
> > > unfortunately been captured by these folks, who object to making even
> > > tiny improvements to IPv4 protocols on the grounds that "we shouldn't
> > > make it easier to use IPv4 because that would reduce the urgency of
> > > switching to IPv6".  It is taken for granted in much of IETF that "IPv4
> > > is dead, or it should be" even though it carries far more global daily
> > > traffic, to a far broader range of locations, than IPv6 does.  There
> was
> > > even a move to "declare IPv4 Historic" which would officially recommend
> > > that nobody use it any more.  That draft RFC was approved in 2017 by
> the
> > > Sunset4 working group on a vote of three zealots, but it got killed
> once
> > > saner heads looked at the implications.  For a discussion of that
> > > history, and pointers to the source materials, see section 4 of:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-schoen-intarea-ietf-maintaining-ipv4-01.txt
> > >
> > > (The IETF, predictably, declined to support the publication of an RFC
> > > describing this history or succinctly stating that IETF would continue
> > > maintaining IPv4.)
> > >
> > >       John
> > >
> >
> > --
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> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
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