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To: Thomas who wrote (1521)	5/12/1999 12:11:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5853

Thomas, Yours is an interesting perspective, and one that is both gaining in popularity each day, in certain camps, while being pushed back with a vengeance, in others: "You seem to be heading down a treacherous and slippery slope. Why do you think that the deployment of more (proprietary) intelligence into the core of the network is the way to "improve" the infrastructure? It seems to me that the more proprietary stuff you jam into the core of the network the less useful the network will become (as among the key drivers today are ubiquity and openness). Of course it is tempting for the equipment suppliers to move toward more proprietary equipment and protocols to build up and protect their own market position, but this is a real peril for the Internet. One of the reasons, as I see it, that suppliers would move towards not only proprietary designs, but legacy ones as well, is to curry favor from traditional carriers who would have transitions appear as non-disrputive as possible. And for good reasons, where those carriers are concerned. But their gains usually work at cross purposes to those of innovation, as we've found out time over time, and again. I posted something along similar lines to your post yesterday in one of my tomes on the ATHM thread, concerning future uptake of VoIP on always on cable and dsl access platforms. I offer the following excerpt from that piece for contrast, and to elicit additional comments from you and others on this board. Regards, Frank Coluccio ------------------------ from: Message 9474987 Excerpt begins: They will be dependent on internetworking protocols now being deployed by upstarts, at first, such as the ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers) and the CLECs, and then the cellular/pcs carriers, and finally the ILECs, themselves. Fortunately, the ILECs' participation in VoIP at the IP level is not considered a requirement in order for others to experience the benefits of a head start. These services will initially amount to nothing short of major disruptions for many of today's traditional carriers. It's actually resulting in the traditionals having to modify their own plans, some of them drastically, and changing their spending habits, as well. But in their attempt to preserve their dominance, they will wield their weight at the standards committee levels, in order for them to retain their dominant status, over time. Here's how that works. What the incumbents will do is introduce enough structural emulation of the legacy model directly into the new model. Many of the rules of the trade that are used to their advantage today through regulated revenue justifications will be preserved, and the old regs will thereby be ushered forward, along with the new technology. In other words, to the extent possible, they will work to preserve the old model through its emulation with new software. Hardware elements will take on a new form in the way of coded objects, in other words, and it's a matter of tracing the dotted lines from that point out. This is what they will do with VoIP. And if you owned BEL or any other ILEC, you wouldn't have it any other way. ---- There is another school of thought at play here, called Internet Telephony - which is fundamentally different in approach to that of VoIP. We'll talk about that some other time. Suffice it to say that Internet Telephony is a pure Internet protocol-driven technology, where VoIP is almost entirely based on emulating the intelligence that now resides in the PSTN. Right now, however, it appears that VoIP is winning out in the standards bodies, not surprisingly, so we'll focus on that one for the time being. ----excerpt ends

To: Thomas who wrote (1521)	5/14/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

Hello Thomas, > You seem to be heading down a treacherous and slippery slope. Why > do you think that the deployment of more (proprietary) intelligence > into the core of the network is the way to "improve" the > infrastructure? Hmmm ... I'm wondering which comment that I made indicated the association that you state above? I see these as to, inevitable, but unrelated things. First, all of the proxy/cache work, and object routing investigation and research, is based on industry standard research going on all over the world. The best place for links etc. is NLANR ( nlanr.net ). This is where much of the research is going on and the IETF specifications (RFCs) are being written. This is the work which will do the second part of what you state above ... "'improve' the infrastructure" ... As for the proprietary nature of vendors ... I don't know if there is anything we can do about this. Today if you connect a whole bunch of Cisco equipment together in a network, there are tricks and techniques that are used to optimize the data flow. As soon as you add a "third-party" router you have to let the Cisco know so that it will use more "standard" methods. So aren't these systems proprietary today? I believe that the evolutionary process is fed by the constant attempts by vendors to "one-up" each other, and that they will continue to accept the support of standards, but then look for "proprietary" way to gain an advantage. If they are successful, then others will look to support the new technique, and most probably the vendor (after a while) will release the specs as a proposed standard and run it through the IETF process ... the whole time selling their "proprietary" solution. I don't believe that I'm heading down any slope ... I'm simply stating what is already happening, and what is "inevitable" from my perspective. > It seems to me that the more proprietary stuff you jam into > the core of the network the less useful the network will become (as > among the key drivers today are ubiquity and openness). This is a common misunderstanding of layered architectures. If the overall architecture of the network is built properly, the "edges" are abstracted from anything happening in the "core". So just because the core of the network is doing sneaky things to optimize the transport of information, the edges don't realize it. Think of this like your home telephone. You plug your phone into the wall, and operate it using the same methods, voltages, and "protocols" that have been around since the first phones ... but the "infrastructure" or "core" of the telephone network has massively changed into digital switching and various means of moving the information (fiber, satellite, etc.) I guess that the issue that I see is that if some carrier decided to implement completely proprietary infrastructure "inside" their network that provide phenominal performance and value propositions then it's only at the edges of their network that they would have to be "compatible" and "standard". What's the difference between the backplane in a high-speed router which is routing between dozens of connected networks, and two routers which are connected over a high-speed fiber that are routing between dozens of connected networks? > Of course it is tempting for the equipment suppliers to move toward > more proprietary equipment and protocols to build up and protect > their own market position, but this is a real peril for the > Internet. This is another common discussion. I'm not sure where people think that standards in the Internet come from. They come from anyone that has a good "non-standard" idea that is proposed, discussed, edited, and "standardized". So yes, I agree that there is a group of vendors who use proprietary technologies to "lock-in" customers. But the rest of us struggle to find a "better solution" and then push these into standards so that we can interoperate. I think that if you step back and look at what is happening in the Internet it is this evolutionary process which builds standards. > I do believe that the caching and object routing will be big. I agree completely! ;-) > That will raise big issues, though. I would much prefer to have > more people thinking about the end-points (i.e. the edges). . . This is the reason that I believe that caches will help. They will start from the edges (near sources and destinations) and then grow into the infrastructure ... > Cheers, > Thomas Scott C. Lemon