On Sep 7, 2010, at 7:26 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:

> I think you should have shared the message from our public relations agency 
> that started this incident, Russ. Here's what it said:
> ------------------
> IETF Chair speaks on Paid Prioritization - Thursday, September 2, 2010 
> 
> "I note the recent discussion in the U.S. media in connection with 'paid 
> prioritization' of Internet traffic and the claim that RFC 2474 
> 'expressly contemplating paid prioritization.'  This characterization of 
> the IETF standard and the use of the term 'paid prioritization' by AT&T 
> is misleading.  The IETF's prioritization technologies allow users to 
> indicate how they would like their service providers to handle their 
> Internet traffic. The IETF does not imply any specific payment based on 
> prioritization as a separate service." 
> 
> Melissa Kahaly 
> Assistant Vice President 
>   <http://www.fd.com/> 
> 88 Pine Street, 32nd Floor 
> New York, NY, 10005 
> T +1 (212) 850-5709 
> F +1 (212) 850-5790 
> M +1 (732) 245-8491 
> www.fd.com <http://www.fd.com/> 
> 
> A member of FTI Consulting Inc. 
> -----------------
> 
> This clearly isn't Russ Housley speaking as an individual, this is the IETF 
> Chair making an official statement. 
> 

In the article at issue, it says

The current chair of the IETF, Russ Housley, disagrees with AT&T's assessment.

That seems pretty clearly like a personal (not official) statement to me. But 
that's just MHO.

Regards
Marshall 



> The statement is misleading as RFC 2474 neither implies any specific payment 
> nor denies any specific payment. RFC 2475, RFC 2638, and RFC 3006 are plenty 
> clear on the relationship of technical standards to commercial arrangements. 
> 
> And yes, the Architecture RFCs are classified as "Informational" but that 
> doesn't stop the Proposed Standards from referencing their "requirements" as 
> RFC 3246 does:
> 
> "In addition, traffic conditioning at the ingress to a DS-domain MUST ensure 
> that only packets having DSCPs that correspond to an EF PHB when they enter 
> the DS-domain are marked with a DSCP that corresponds to EF inside the 
> DS-domain. Such behavior is as required by the Differentiated Services 
> architecture [4]. It protects against denial-of-service and theft-of-service 
> attacks which exploit DSCPs that are not identified in any Traffic     
> Conditioning Specification provisioned at an ingress interface, but which map 
> to EF inside the DS-domain." 
> 
> [Footnote 4] Black, D., Blake, S., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z. and W. 
> Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated Services", RFC 2475, December 1998.
> 
> I don't have any desire to limit Russ Housley's free speech rights, but it's 
> clear from all the evidence that he approached the press as the Chairman of 
> IETF with a statement to make about the argument between AT&T and Free Press, 
> and it's the statement in the official capacity that bothers me. I wouldn't 
> take up the IETF's time with a personal disagreement between Russ' 
> interpretation of DiffServ and anyone else's, but this issue is clearly far 
> beyond that.
> 
> Finally, the term "paid-prioritization" wasn't coined by AT&T, it comes from 
> the statement by Free Press that AT&T was criticizing. In Free Press' usage 
> it means any departure from FIFO behavior for a fee.
> 
> RB
> 
> On 9/7/2010 3:52 PM, Russ Housley wrote:
>> Richard:
>> 
>> 
>>> Russ said to the press that he considers AT&T's belief that the RFCs
>>> envisioned payment for premium services implemented over DiffServ or
>>> MPLS to be "invalid."
>>> 
>> This is not what I said.  I said 'misleading.'
>> 
>> The letter from AT&T jumbles some things together.  AT&T makes many
>> correct points, but in my opinion, a reader will get a distorted
>> impression from the parts of the letter where things get jumbled.
>> 
>> Adding to this situation, it is clear to me that the term "paid
>> prioritization" does not have the same meaning to all readers.  If you
>> read the AT&T letter with one definition in your head, then you get one
>> overall message, and if you read the letter with the other in your head,
>> then you get a different overall message.  I tried to make this point.
>> 
>> This was captured pretty clearly in the article by Eliza Krigman:
>> | The feud boiled down to what it means to have "paid
>> | prioritization," ...
>> 
>> As I said on Friday, I made the point that DiffServ can be used to make
>> sure that traffic associated with applications that require timely
>> delivery, like voice and video, to give preference over traffic
>> associated with applications without those demands, like email.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, it is not simple, and I said so.  I used an example in my
>> discussion with Declan McCullagh.  I think that Declan captured this
>> point in his article, except that he said 'high priority', when I
>> actually said 'requiring timely delivery':
>> | The disagreement arises from what happens if Video Site No. 1 and
>> | Video Site No. 2 both mark their streams as high priority. "If two
>> | sources of video are marking their stuff the same, then that's where
>> | the ugliness of this debate begins," Housley says. "The RFC doesn't
>> | talk about that...If they put the same tags, they'd expect the same
>> | service from the same provider."
>> 
>> Clearly, if the two video sources have purchased different amounts of
>> bandwidth, then the example breaks down.  However, that is not the point
>> in this debate.
>> 
>> Russ
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Richard Bennett
> Senior Research Fellow
> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
> Washington, DC
> 
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