Cerf Says Symmetry is Beautiful
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Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:49:25 -0800
Subject: Cerf Says Symmetry is Beautiful
Cerf Says Symmetry is Beautiful
The father of the internet gave an after dinner speech at F2C,
persevering through thunderous applause and the occasional comment to
describe the next step in the process of evolution of his baby.
by Alex Goldman
ISP-Planet Managing Editor
[March 31, 2005]
<http://www.isp-planet.com/news/2005/cerf_f2c.html>
Vint Cerf's Wednesday evening at the Freedom to Connect dinner
concerned where the Internet should go in the future. Having designed
TCP/IP, the protocol that ties it all together, he is the person to ask
about the Internet's future.
"My initial job was getting IP on everything," Cerf said. That's been
done by now. IP is on every device from the smallest handheld to the
largest supercomputer.
"Now we need IP under everything," he added. By this he meant that now
that the computers are all connected, we need to make sure that every
device can use and access any service or product available to any one
device.
He admitted that some services may require special priority for
latency, but promised to get back to that later in his speech.
A more immediate problem, he noted, is regulation. Regulation is
focused on verticals, such as television, wireline, and cable. A more
important distinction, he said, is between the different layers. "We
want to allow competition at each layer. Also, transparency is an
important principal. We do not want one layer controlling another.
That's a layer violation."
A member of the audience suggested that layer violators be condemned
to the "stacks."
P2P is fundamental
Persevering, Cerf said, "the concept of P2P was part of the original
design of the protocol. It was not part of the protocol that preceded
it, NCP, which was built on a client server architecture."
The P2P principal is key to the Internet's success. "P2P was built in
on purpose. Although you need flow control to connect a handheld device
on a GPRS connection to a supercomputer running on gigabit lines, they
connect to each other."
"The innovation of P2P program designers is that they use a private
protocol. They can choose any port number for any protocol," he added.
"I'm ambivalent about this."
"Port 80 is kept open for HTTP on most firewalls. Skype uses a
technique that looks like an attack on a firewall, looking for open
ports, and it usually finds port 80 open. It's clever and it works, but
it essentially trashes standards. On the other hand, it's an example of
the end to end creativity that the protocol allows."
Creativity and innovation are the success of the internet. "People
need to be able to innovate without the permission of ISPs," he said.
"Skype, IM, Bit Torrent, *ster, they were not invented by the ISPs."
ISPs, he noted, probably do not want control over any layer, because
with control comes responsibility. "I do not want to the editor or
policeman responsible for what users send over the network, but I am
interested in how users are using the Internet."
It's symmetric
Cerf then talked about what's really traveling over internet pipes,
referring to a study by Cambridge, UK-based CacheLogic (for more on
this report, see our story, Company Releases Real World Data on File
Sharing).
"Half of the traffic is Bit Torrent, and a lot of that may be video.
It's symmetric. As a user downloads a piece of a file, that piece is
made available to others. The effect is that a user is pushing as much
traffic as they pull. This does a funny thing to companies that offer
'broadband service.' Cable modems are asymmetric. DSL is the same."
Legacy providers do not want to offer true, symmetric broadband.
"Symmetric service is competing with higher priced DS-3 and T-1
service. There's a built in disincentive to create symmetric services,
but as fiber capacities reach residential users, we will all want to
push as much information as we pull. I'm not talking about people doing
anything illegal. There's a pressure from the edge for symmetry in the
internet."
Think big
Cerf urged attendees to think broadly. "We are accustomed, as
Americans, to talking about the Freedom of Speech. But there's another
important freedom, the freedom to hear. Speakers need listeners.
Listening should not be prevented by legislation, regulation, or bad
business practices."
In the Q&A session, Cerf noted that MCI is looking at QoS and debating
whether the cost of charging for services and examining traffic would
be more expensive than simply building more bandwidth. He noted that
the call data records (CDRs) for MCI require 90 TB.
[snip]
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