--On 18. februar 2004 18:06 +0000 Tom Petch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I find your definition of the Internet delightfully ambiguous. I was taught that the Internet (as opposed to an internet or the internet) was the public network accessible through public IPv4 addresses (this predates IPv6) ie the Internet ceased at a firewall or other such IP level gateway.
I certainly agree on the "ambiguous", but not with the "delightful" :-)
Reading your definition, I cannot tell where you stand; are firewalls and networks behind them included in IETF mission or not?
Here, I feel that I stand firmly on the quicksand left by those who have gone before... if you read Dave Crocker's 1995 RFC 'To be "on" the Internet' (RFC 1775), you will see that the problem is not a new one.
Luckily for us, "mediated access" and "messaging access" are mostly things of the past - but in my opinion, the Internet extends to the applications run by the people who have "client access" to the Internet.
After all, the Internet model is an end-to-end service; if the Internet stopped at the gateway/NAT box/firewall, it would be an end-to-firewall service for >90% of today's Internet traffic - and that doesn't make sense to me.
So in my opinion, firewalls and the networks behind them are part of the Internet, because we have to design for the Internet that is there, even as we labor to make it more like the Internet we want to have.
(now, is that sufficient straddling of the NAT debate? :-)
Harald
