[ih] A revolution in Internet point-of-view - Was Re: Internet analyses (Was Re: IPv8...)

Wed Apr 29 16:44:29 PDT 2026

(I am one who holds state/federal issued licenses in another, 
non-technical, area.  Some of these are general licenses and some are 
specializations.  I have to partake of [and demonstrate] continuing 
education in these matters.  And I'm under a general, enforceable, 
constraint that I may not to engage in a matter on behalf of others 
unless I actually know what I am doing.)

The Internet has gotten really complex.  If one were to consider 
licensing or some sort of certification of expertise we would probably 
need some sort of overall (general knowledge) category as well as 
several specializations (such as routing, security, measurement, etc.

I've been somewhat noisy about my concern that our efforts to lock down 
and secure the net are having a negative effect on our ability to 
monitor, manage, diagnose, and repair the net.  I have a lot of concern 
that we may need some sort of professional certifications for people who 
are allowed to penetrate security barriers in order to do those 
measurement, diagnostic, and repair tasks.

I wrote about this a few years back...

Is The Internet At Risk From Too Much Security?

https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/netsecurity/

         --karl--

On 4/29/26 3:47 AM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> actually I was thinking about average users but your point about 
> professional licensing is an interesting avenue to explore.
>
> v
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 6:46 AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>     From what you say, are you referring to what the average user
>     should know or what the average engineer working in the
>     infrastructure?
>     For the latter, it seems there Certifications  for the really
>     vocational ‘license’ but for say researcher or developer it would
>     be quite different.
>
>     John
>
>>     On Apr 29, 2026, at 05:55, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
>>
>>     John D,
>>     your note made me wonder about what most people should know about
>>     the digital ecosystem. I've characterized this, sometimes, as
>>     studying for an Internet Driver's License. What should you know
>>     before navigating the Internet?
>>
>>     v
>>
>>
>>     On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 5:52 AM John Day via Internet-history
>>     <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>         Well said.
>>
>>         A combination of that and what you could convince others to
>>         do, given their corporate desires were different, comfort
>>         level, their experiences were different (or lack thereof). (I
>>         have found that if you have never seen certain kinds of
>>         solutions, it is not easy to see that they could exist or
>>         have further implications.)
>>
>>         I agree with your view of the users. Just yesterday, I told
>>         someone that I was working on the things that ’they shouldn’t
>>         have to know about.’ On the other hand, that infrastructure
>>         can have a profound effect of how the applications work. The
>>         ‘fragmentation’ you speak of also seems to be working on the
>>         infrastructure.  Isn’t the use of CDNs moving applications to
>>         the so-called ‘edge’ making the infrastructure as well more
>>         ‘regional’ in some sense?
>>
>>         But there is another issue here:  What do we teach those who
>>         are learning about that all of this?  Do we just teach them
>>         how it works (which I consider vocational)?  Or do we try to
>>         teach them what we learned? What not to do? How to do it
>>         better? IOW, do we teach them to do better or to repeat the
>>         same mistakes?
>>
>>         It has been awhile since I saw any of the ‘official' Chinese
>>         IP stuff. What I had seen was far from impressive. Nor have I
>>         heard how it is being received. Some of the academic work I
>>         have seen submitted to SGOs is pretty bad. If you know
>>         otherwise, I would like to see it.
>>
>>         Take care,
>>         John
>>
>>
>>         > On Apr 28, 2026, at 16:11, Karl Auerbach <karl at iwl.com> wrote:
>>         >
>>         > I don't think it is fruitful to try to assign any blame to
>>         what we and others did with the Internet or ISO/OSI ... we
>>         were all exploring a new world.  We, in the Internet
>>         community, tended to come from the "lets try new ideas and
>>         see if they work" point of view, while others, such is
>>         ISO/OSI came out of an older bureaucratic tradition.  And we
>>         all make mistakes - and I find it unfortunate that many of us
>>         (myself included) find it hard to say "oops, I goofed" or "I
>>         didn't fully understand what I was doing". Mistakes are the
>>         lampposts that illuminate the better paths we ought to have
>>         taken.
>>         >
>>         > What I want to mention is that on the Internet we are
>>         undergoing a revolution in perspective.
>>         >
>>         > And at the same time our 1960's/1970's sense of "a seamless
>>         network for all of us, for the world" seems to be being
>>         assaulted by a new sense of regionalism; nationalism;
>>         religious exclusion, isolation, and protection; and simple
>>         protection against criminals and intruders. This change is
>>         breaking our once seamless network into pieces.
>>         >
>>         > For most of us we think of the net as a means to move
>>         packets around, unvexed in their flow end-to-end, and for a
>>         few higher level protocols to assemble those packets into
>>         meaningful streams (often with security wrappings.)
>>         >
>>         > The revolution that I am mentioning is coming from users
>>         who view "the net" more as an assemblage of applications that
>>         work with one another - texting, social media, voice/video
>>         meetings, maps/navigation, etc.  These users really don't
>>         care much (or know much) about the things we think of as "the
>>         Internet": they really are not concerned with packets,
>>         transport protocols, TLS, routing, DNS, etc.
>>         >
>>         > Another way to put this is that in the minds of today's
>>         users the network has moved up a level of abstraction - where
>>         we were concerned with getting packets and protocols deployed
>>         they are thinking of the interoperation of their favorite
>>         applications.
>>         >
>>         > This means, at least to me it means, that the elegance of
>>         the underlying packet and transport plumbing - our Internet -
>>         has become not only something like a utility, but also opens
>>         the door to some radical changes deployed in local contexts -
>>         such as using things like China's IP proposals in parts of
>>         the net that are transport layer proxied from "our" Internet.
>>         >
>>         > (BTW, I am not aware of how well China's IP proposals are
>>         fairing.)
>>         >
>>         >         --karl--
>>         >
>>
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>>
>>     -- 
>>     Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
>>     Vint Cerf
>>     Google, LLC
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>>
>>
>>     until further notice
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>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> Vint Cerf
> Google, LLC
> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> Reston, VA 20190
> +1 (571) 213 1346
>
>
> until further notice
>
>
>