First, thanks to both of you, George and Eric, for sharing your experiences and shedding some additional light on this topic.
[I'm reminded of the ISPs that did not want to use SONET any longer, so they purchased straight Ethernet. When they could no longer manage their networks due to the missing parts (operations support systems, provisioning, mainenance and surveillance overhead previously thought to be added 'baggage'), they began to mount on top of the Ethernet stack additional shims and applications, not to mention the new "appliances" that came out of a new cottage industry to satisfy these ends, here and there, until their current capabilities are just almost equal to what SONET gave them before. In the end, they are saving very little and must now use a disjointed approach to managing their nets. I've digressed here, but for the purpose of making, hopefully, an analogous point ...]
Based purely on the nature of this beast, I ask you if you see any possibility of a let-up in sight, or a point when the tide begins to flow significantly in the opposite direction, toward a more secure Internet? And while the latter question might be more rhetorical than genuine, if you actually do see this kind of reversal happening, then please elucidate by telling how and by when.
I don't see such signs, as the blackhats now have more incentives than ever to do evil not only for "fun" and "profit," but to effect political ends, as well.
It appears to be a self-perpetuating phenomenon, one that is escalating rather than receding, and the type of problem that almost begs for a walled garden to keep it at bay. To take it a step further, make that a walled garden that operates at a Layer1/2 switched level as opposed to a Layer3/4 routed one.
AOL and Earthlink appear to have done a good marketing job, if not having actually done the same in deed, with their respective subscriber groups in getting the point across that their data is safe as long as they subscribe to their services. I wouldn't know the true extent of their successes in these regards, so I'm merely using them as examples of an idea, instead, since they have been openly making the claim to be able to satisfy these requirements.
How effective can ISPs actually be in this respect, given their users' ability to hop off the proprietary sites that they maintain, and jump onto the open Internet? I ask this because the prospect of such walled-garden scenarios is very appealing to the average user, and would actually entice me if I thought there were any merit to it, and if it applied in all of the scenarios in which I use the 'Net.
Maybe the French had the right idea during the Early Eighties when they lauched and supported their screen based Minitel service, which was the most successful of all Eropean videotex services before then and after, until the advent of the Internet as we know it today. This, despite Minitel's functioning within a walled garden, but a nailed up telephony-like architecture, as well. A switched network, in other words, as opposed to one that uses go-anywhere and catch-anything form of routing and discovery process.
I'm just tossing a few thoughts at the wall to see what will stick, while wondering if anyone else here has had thoughts that were similar in recent times?
FAC
frank@fttx.org |
