Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? (FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt)
At 23:22 06/07/04, John C Klensin wrote: Vendors who are going to do these things will -- based on the fact that they are being done already -- do them, with or without this document. And that includes providers who are doing very little that we would recognize as internet service characterizing themselves as ISPs. If this document can accomplish anything, it is, as several people have pointed out, provide a definitional basis for claiming that a vendor is lying about what is being provided. Put differently, the theory behind it is to give operators/providers an opportunity to disclose what they are doing in a more or less clear way. If they choose to exaggerate what they are offering, or to lie about their services, that is a problem that this document cannot solve and is not intended to try. John, This is quite ambitious to say lying. Let say that it permits to say that a word is not used in John Klensin's way - may be not in an IETF ways. This permits to understand why, what is different, what are the con and pros. To have a reference is always a good point. We are starting AFRAC as an experimental national Common Reference Center. The target is to understand how such center may support interapplications, contain metastructural risks, support dedicated governance and intergovernance relations, etc. Masataka Otha's remark is quite interesting, since it shows that he doubts that non-IETF community members, while members of the Internet Gobal community may not use some words in the same way, or should not ne encouraged to use them. Obviously not sharing the same referential creates confusion. (IMHO we are at the core of the networking notion - thank you for the initaitive I called for for years). I am going to use your draft as an IETF reference lexicon. We will see if someone wants to translate it as several concept may differ in French or in other latin languages (I do not know about other langages). Is that label agreeable to you? Are you interested in continuing building on it when new words are questionned? jfc ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? (FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt)
--On Wednesday, 07 July, 2004 21:47 +0200 JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 23:22 06/07/04, John C Klensin wrote: Vendors who are going to do these things will -- based on the fact that they are being done already -- do them, with or without this document. And that includes providers who are doing very little that we would recognize as internet service characterizing themselves as ISPs. If this document can accomplish anything, it is, as several people have pointed out, provide a definitional basis for claiming that a vendor is lying about what is being provided. Put differently, the theory behind it is to give operators/providers an opportunity to disclose what they are doing in a more or less clear way. If they choose to exaggerate what they are offering, or to lie about their services, that is a problem that this document cannot solve and is not intended to try. John, This is quite ambitious to say lying. Let say that it permits to say that a word is not used in John Klensin's way - may be not in an IETF ways. No, I actually had a different case in mind, and the clarification may be useful. I used lying above to described an intentional act, e.g., we know the definitions say we a doing 'A', but we will advertise 'B' in the hope of tricking people. Those who are not aware of the definitions, or decide to ignore them entirely, are in other categories. As I have said before, only a government --typically a regulator or legislature-- can make _any_ terminology mandatory, so there is no question here of forcing (to repeat Ohta-san's term) anyone to do (or not do) anything. Definitions can also be written into contracts by saying things like X will be supplied, where 'X' is as defined in...; such definitions may be more or less useful depending on circumstances that are of more interest to lawyers than to an engineering group. This permits to understand why, what is different, what are the con and pros. To have a reference is always a good point. If I correctly understand your comment, we are in agreement. We are starting AFRAC as an experimental national Common Reference Center. The target is to understand how such center may support interapplications, contain metastructural risks, support dedicated governance and intergovernance relations, etc. Masataka Otha's remark is quite interesting, since it shows that he doubts that non-IETF community members, while members of the Internet Gobal community may not use some words in the same way, or should not ne encouraged to use them. Obviously not sharing the same referential creates confusion. (IMHO we are at the core of the networking notion - thank you for the initaitive I called for for years). I am going to use your draft as an IETF reference lexicon. Please do not. While you are welcome to use it, it is, at the moment, only _my_ reference lexicon. Not even the people who contributed significantly to the document are responsible for it. And, indeed, I'm not completely happy with all of the definitions and categorizations: they are just the best I could do with a limited amount of time and effort. Characterizing it as an IETF reference anything requires some evidence of IETF community consensus. That may or may not exist, but, under IETF principles, only the IESG can reach a conclusion on that subject. We will see if someone wants to translate it as several concept may differ in French or in other latin languages (I do not know about other langages). This might be very useful. Is that label agreeable to you? See above. Are you interested in continuing building on it when new words are questionned? To an extremely limited extent, yes. The limits are imposed by my conviction that something like this is not going to be useful unless it is quite stable. So addition or modification of basic terms should be completed quickly or not at all. One could even make a case for trimming everything but the basic categories out of this document and then producing a second, more informational one, that identified the two collections of additional terms. Personally, I don't think that is worth the effort and the added confusion it would cause -- anyone actually using these definitions can divide them up as they find useful. regards, john ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? (FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt)
For those who have been interested in this discussion, a new version of the draft has been posted. It incorporates, to the extent to which I could figure out how to do so, comments on the list and some very specific suggestions from a few people (see acknowledgements). As the document indicates, and as has been said on this list, it is pretty easy to slice and dice this along a whole series of dimensions and by differentiating among issues that, while potentially important, are comprehensible only to experts. So, if you are going to read it and comment, I suggest (and request) that you try to adopt the perspective of an end-user, regulator, or legislator who is easily confused by, and impatient of, details. If we have managed to design (or back into) a network design with sufficiently many combinations of options that the knowledge level of the readers of this list are required to understand a service offering, that is probably a problem. But it is not a problem that any document like this can solve. john ---BeginMessage--- A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories. Title : Terminology for Describing Internet Connectivivy Author(s) : J. Klensin Filename: draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt Pages : 11 Date: 2004-7-2 As the Internet has evolved, many types of arrangements have been advertised and sold as 'Internet connectivity'. Because these may differ significantly in the capabilities they offer, the range of options, and the lack of any standard terminology, has cause considerable consumer confusion. This document provides a list of terms and definitions that may be helpful to providers, consumers, and, potentially, regulators in clarifying the type and character of services being offered. A URL for this Internet-Draft is: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt To remove yourself from the I-D Announcement list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the body of the message. You can also visit https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/I-D-announce to change your subscription settings. Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP. Login with the username anonymous and a password of your e-mail address. After logging in, type cd internet-drafts and then get draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt. A list of Internet-Drafts directories can be found in http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt Internet-Drafts can also be obtained by e-mail. Send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body type: FILE /internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt. NOTE: The mail server at ietf.org can return the document in MIME-encoded form by using the mpack utility. To use this feature, insert the command ENCODING mime before the FILE command. To decode the response(s), you will need munpack or a MIME-compliant mail reader. Different MIME-compliant mail readers exhibit different behavior, especially when dealing with multipart MIME messages (i.e. documents which have been split up into multiple messages), so check your local documentation on how to manipulate these messages. Below is the data which will enable a MIME compliant mail reader implementation to automatically retrieve the ASCII version of the Internet-Draft. ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt ___ I-D-Announce mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce ---End Message--- ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? (FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt)
John C Klensin; You made, at least, two mistakes, minor and major ones. A minor mistake is that you think you can let people outside of IETF use your terminology, if you give loose enough terminlogy. As you introduce Web connectivity, such people (including mobile operators in Japan) claim that they are ISPs, because they are offering web connectivity over X.25 without IP. That is, The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if service providers and vendors are not willing to adopt them. is applicable to your draft. A major mistake is that you are forcing people within IETF use your terminology even though you are fully aware that some members of the IETF community that some of these connectively models are simply broken or not really an Internet service. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? (FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-03.txt)
Ohta-san, We have been through this before. There is no issue of forcing - this is being proposed because some people think they would find it useful. Everyone else will presumably ignore it. If it turns out that there are, in practice, none of the former, then the document will presumably go the way of many other ideas that didn't get any traction. Vendors who are going to do these things will -- based on the fact that they are being done already -- do them, with or without this document. And that includes providers who are doing very little that we would recognize as internet service characterizing themselves as ISPs. If this document can accomplish anything, it is, as several people have pointed out, provide a definitional basis for claiming that a vendor is lying about what is being provided. Put differently, the theory behind it is to give operators/providers an opportunity to disclose what they are doing in a more or less clear way. If they choose to exaggerate what they are offering, or to lie about their services, that is a problem that this document cannot solve and is not intended to try. regards, john --On Wednesday, 07 July, 2004 06:15 +0900 Masataka Ohta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John C Klensin; You made, at least, two mistakes, minor and major ones. A minor mistake is that you think you can let people outside of IETF use your terminology, if you give loose enough terminlogy. As you introduce Web connectivity, such people (including mobile operators in Japan) claim that they are ISPs, because they are offering web connectivity over X.25 without IP. That is, The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if service providers and vendors are not willing to adopt them. is applicable to your draft. A major mistake is that you are forcing people within IETF use your terminology even though you are fully aware that some members of the IETF community that some of these connectively models are simply broken or not really an Internet service. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On 22-jun-04, at 21:57, Vernon Schryver wrote: If you want to buy a car and ask if it has air bags and nobody can give you a definite answer, would you buy the car if it is important to you to have an air bag? Buging a car with a feature with well defined characteristics is quite different from buying Internet services which don't even have common names. But that's just a detail. The real difference is that you can buy a car anywhere on the landmass of your choice and then bring it to whereever you want to use it on that same landmass. With IP service, you're limited to whatever is available in a certain place. Usually the choice is between too expensive and/or too slow (dial-up and GPRS and the like) and broken (most hotel broadband and wifi hotspots). It is not the job of the IETF to try to stop anyone from selling services that differ from what we used to get via NSF any more than it is the job of the IETF to prevent the sales of NAT boxes and PPPoE, I disagree. If the IETF were in the position to influence people, it should certainly do so. What good is it to standardize protocols that can't be deployed because network operators build networks that can't support them? Unfortunately, there are usually reasons for implementing breakage, and wisdom from the IETF isn't going to remove those reasons, so we shouldn't expect miracles. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:39:07 +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum said: But that's just a detail. The real difference is that you can buy a car anywhere on the landmass of your choice and then bring it to whereever you want to use it on that same landmass. With IP service, you're limited to whatever is available in a certain place. Usually the choice is between too expensive and/or too slow (dial-up and GPRS and the like) and broken (most hotel broadband and wifi hotspots). The analogy gets much more interesting if you posit the existence of cars that run on diesel, or ethanol, or hydrogen fuel cell, or other energy sources not as widespread as 89-octane gasoline pgprAuvjUVcB6.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
John C Klensin; With your motivation explained and with your three new categories, all of which are unrelated to telecommunication providers but related to hotels, I think I can understand your fundamental mistake. That is, your draft should have been titled: Terminologies on Telecommunication Service Categories of Accomodation Service Providers Given that your stay is temporary, permanent addresses are of little value. Moreover, as most, if not all, hotels use NAT, it is of little value to mention global addresses. So, in the new draft, you should avoid the word ISP. Instead, you can, for example, say ASAP (Application Service Access Provider). Mobile operators in Japan does provide access to web services, though not over IP, that they are WSAP. Or, do you like better calling them Web Access Service Providers? Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 11:11:25 +0900, Masataka Ohta said: With your motivation explained and with your three new categories, all of which are unrelated to telecommunication providers but related to hotels, I think I can understand your fundamental mistake. More generally, Internet access is of 4 basic time-base categories: 1) Access at the location(s) you usually are (home, office, dorm, etc) - these are traditional ISPs. The timeframe for (business) associations here is weeks to years. 2) Access when you're semi-stationary while not where you usually are (hotels, extended stays with friends/relatives, and so on). Timeframe for associations is one to several days. Note *carefully* that this has some corner-case implications - if I'm visiting my brother in New England, I'm a semi-long-term (a week or so) transient on his home Ethernet and thence to his cablemodem provider, while *he* is a long-term user of the *exact same connection*. As a result, *his* expectations and *mine* regarding the same service may be quite different (for example, he may be quite OK with the concept that all SMTP gets redirected to the provider because he uses their mail relay by default anyhow, but that may be totally unacceptable to me) 3) Very short term access while stationary long enough to consume 1 beverage - the kiosk/cafe model. Associations on the order of 15 minutes to a very small number of hours. 4) Roaming access while *not* stationary - citywide wifi networks and the like, where the timescales are seconds to minutes... Note that the types of services provided is generally orthogonal to the timescale of the business model - a provider can (for instance) provide WebTV-style captive access at all 4 timescales. As a result, we probably end up with a 2-D matrix... That is, your draft should have been titled: Terminologies on Telecommunication Service Categories of Accomodation Service Providers Given that your stay is temporary, permanent addresses are of little value. Moreover, as most, if not all, hotels use NAT, it is of little value to mention global addresses. Note that the fact that I'm there for only several days does *not* imply that permanent (at least for the duration of the stay) addresses are of little value. Also, note that there's a distinction between permanent and routable in this context. There's a wide range of things where I don't *care* what my current IP address is as long as it's routable - in those cases, I can easily deal with a DHCP-assigned routable address, but not with a NAT'ed address, whether the NAT'ed address is dynamic or static. I can be 192.168.10.10 from last year till the next Winter Olympics - that address Simply Will Not Work for many things. In particular, the fact that most hotels use NAT is quite likely one of the big stumbling blocks for commercial deployment of any application protocol that has trouble playing nice with NAT (See Keith Moore's list - all of those are basically not doable in your organization if you have frequent road warriors who might be participating from a hotel room). So, in the new draft, you should avoid the word ISP. Instead, you can, for example, say ASAP (Application Service Access Provider). Providing a common list of such things is the intent of the draft, I believe. Mobile operators in Japan does provide access to web services, though not over IP, that they are WSAP. Or, do you like better calling them Web Access Service Providers? Oh my... A can of worms indeed. John - it's your call if you want to expand the scope to include that class of access or not pgprWHZNsO8lY.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
From: Markus Stumpf [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you want to buy a car and ask if it has air bags and nobody can give you a definite answer, would you buy the car if it is important to you to have an air bag? Buging a car with a feature with well defined characteristics is quite different from buying Internet services which don't even have common names. Air bags, at least in the U.S., must do exactly what they do even if that is known to kill people who are short. Your private use Internet service is basically whatever you feel like selling. That you apparently call it private use instead of one of the more common names is yet another symptom of the problem. If the ISP can't answer the question about improtant product details, why do you sign a contract with that provider? Because he is cheaper than others? Now what would most probably be the reason? I'm in the insignificant minority that can ask the right questions about IP service and recognize when I'm not getting answers, but I can neither ask good questions about air bags, nor recognize nonsense answers. I don't know much about air bags except that they are bombs in bags, which is as much as most sales people. Still, I can buy a car with an air bag and know I'm getting something that might do some good (unless I'm short or sit too far forward) and meets a standard. Without the standardization of air bag, I could not. We have a classic standardization problem that is affecting interoperability. The market has gotten ahead of the IETF and is buying and selling a many quite different things all called Internet service. It is more the job of the IETF to define standards including a taxomony in this area than to define yet another MIB. It is not the job of the IETF to try to stop anyone from selling services that differ from what we used to get via NSF any more than it is the job of the IETF to prevent the sales of NAT boxes and PPPoE, no matter how nasty and evil NAT, PPPoE, and slum IP services are. It is right, proper, and necessary that the IETF has NAT and PPPoE standards. We should also have standards for your private use Internet service as distinct from the services I bought 20 years ago, even if you agree with me that slum IP service sold by virtual slumlords to fools is as accurate and more clear than client only, private address. Since there are always providers, you can't sue simply because you bought an account with limits you failed to clarify. This is the important part: you failed to clarify. Unless you are among the insignificant minority who knows the difference between an ICMP Port-Unreachable and an ICMP Administrative-Prohibited, you are incapable of clarifying. Worse, unless you know more than all available employees at many Internet services providers, you are incapable of knowing whether you're being told nonsense. Standards for the various flavors of Internet service would solve those problems for both users and service providers. - which of the classes in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-02.txt is closest to a DSL Surf Accounts? It is probably something like Web connectivity or Client connectivity only, but I find the terms in the draft *very* fuzzy and overlapping. And no I haven't yet thought about it long enough to make suggestions ;-) What about adding explicit lists of the packets that are (not) filtered, frequency of DHCP reassignment, DSL PPP disconnections, and whatever? The draft currently gives the equivalents of driver's side, passenger, side impact air bags, for consumers but does not include the technical stuff equivalent to the rules for air bags. Something like the Client connectivity only now in the draft is needed by consumers and front line technical support people, but it is not sufficent for a provider (or a government) to determine compliance. Maybe this needs a WG. In general I support all what you said to some extent. In that case it would be nice if you would not write as if you vehimently opposed the notion of standardizing terms for classes or kinds of Internet service. Except for that single sentence, I have the impression that you agree with the individual from Japan that the whole idea of the draft is entirely wrong and destructive. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
* Hadmut Danisch: at least here in Germany Internet providers tend to do and not to do what they want. - Some cut off their clients every 24 hours (DSL) This happens on the sub-IP layer and hasn't got to do much with ISPs. - Some block or slowdown particular tcp ports to get rid of peer-to-peer file sharing You get what you pay for. - Some redirect the first web access to any site to their own to force you to read their ads Same here. - Very few support multicast. When I asked my own provider, they didn't even know what this is. (They said 'no, because they don't support Linux'.) You can't get reliable multicast service anywhere in the world. People tend to switch it off if it threatens to impact unicast traffic. It's not possible to run production services over multicast across the Internet at the moment, at least not without a fallback to unicast. - IPv6? Huh? What's that? It's not a real problem to get native IPv6 over ADSL or SDSL. - At least one large provider blocks port 25 to certain IP addresses in order to force you to use the provider's mail relay Which one is that? The case you are writing about does *not* block 25/TCP on the TCP/IP layer. It's true that certain extremely cheap products don't offer that much Internet or Service. These products are marketed aggressively and are usually sold at a loss. Nobody forces you to buy them. -- Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com, jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com, tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
* Hadmut Danisch: That's currently a consequence of the shortage of IP addresses. There's no shortage of IPv4 addresses. Today, it's not a problem to get IP addresses if you have determined that NAT is not an option. -- Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com, jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com, tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 15:51:47 -0700 (PDT) Ole Jacobsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If by IPSec you mean what the marketing folks call VPN, then so far it has worked just fine. Muticast, VOIP and the rest of stuff you mention probably does NOT work, but my point was that this is NOT what most business travellers want. A retorical question. How do business travellers know that they don't want them, if they've never seen them demonstrated, because NAT limited the availablility of them to the point where their availability couldn't be relied upon. Not only may the next killer app not be the next killer app because it doesn't work with NAT, the next killer app may have already been invented a year ago, but wasn't able to be deployed because of the prevalance of NAT. Not only don't we know, we also don't know what we may be missing. This is the problem with NAT - it appears to be a nice easy solution, until you realise that the devil is in the details. Keith Moore has put together a good list of the things NAT breaks at http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/what-nats-break.html a related document, also by Keith, which also addresses some issues influenced by NAT is Dubious Assumptions about IPv6 http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/opinions/ipv6/dubious-assumptions.html Regards, Mark. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 09:21:44AM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote: ... This happens on the sub-IP layer and hasn't got to do much with ISPs. ... You get what you pay for. ... Same here. ... You can't get reliable multicast service anywhere in the world. ... It's not a real problem to get native IPv6 over ADSL or SDSL. ... Which one is that? The case you are writing about does *not* block 25/TCP on the TCP/IP layer. It's true that certain extremely cheap products don't offer that much Internet or Service. These products are marketed aggressively and are usually sold at a loss. Nobody forces you to buy them. You missed the point. This is not about complaining that I don't get enough for the money. This is that I don't know in advance what I do get for my money. Nobody forces you to buy them is true only as long as I do know what exactly they offer and as it is my decision to buy it or not. But if I buy Internet and don't see what I'm buying, then I don't have the choice. I do not want to blame anyone for selling NAT access. I want him to give a clear statement about what he is selling. regards Hadmut (And, btw, some of the statements are incorrect. - Some providers intentionally cut their customers off after 24 hours in order to force them to have a new IP address. - It is a real problem to get native IPv6 over DSL in Germany. Some providers simply don't want to provide IPv6, because they say Internet is IPv4. ) ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Again we run into the thorny old policy issue of viewing the user as merely a captive consumer. But what happens when it turns out that to consume you need to run an application not supported by the intervening network? This is clearly a break of the principle of end to end application transparency that the IP layer provides. This does necessarily break the semantic description of Internet Service Provider. But there is little to be done arguing that point now. The problem as a travelling user (or as a housebound German it seems) is you don't know what you are going to be able to do until you try and as a hotel or end node provider you may legally have an obligation to try to protect your network from being a source of abuse by transients. A traveller cannot change ISP easily so either will just have to accept some things cannot be done or will find a way. As it happens one can preplan and setup a proxy service or a tunnel broker etc that can get round many of these issues. Perhaps the IETF would be wiser to give a warning about the futility of trying to break application transparency. The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms Christian Christian de Larrinaga -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ole Jacobsen Sent: 20 June 2004 23:52 To: Hadmut Danisch Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? If by IPSec you mean what the marketing folks call VPN, then so far it has worked just fine. Muticast, VOIP and the rest of stuff you mention probably does NOT work, but my point was that this is NOT what most business travellers want. And, yes, I agree they should provide a matrix of what is available for what cost. Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Academic Research and Technology Initiatives, Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 GSM: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Hadmut Danisch wrote: On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 02:23:51PM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote: We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what - How would you do a Voice-over-IP phone call with someone else if both of you are in such a NAT-hotel-room? - How do you join a multicast session (actually this is not a matter of NAT, but of different levels of Internet services). - I and some friends use a UDP based protocol to exchange status messages with a central server. The next version will allow to send notifications if mail has arrived to avoid polling continuously. How would you do that? (I'm sometimes using IP over GRPS with my cellphone, where I receive a RFC1918 address, which is NATed. When I am awaiting an important e-mail, I have to poll every few minutes. Polling over GPRS is expensive. The provider which seems to be the cheaper could turn out to be more expensive.) - How would you do IP-address based authorization (e.g. RMX/SPF/CallerID) if other people can have the same IP address at the same time? - IPSec through NAT (if not UDP-encapsulated)? - What about UDP or TCP protocols which run into the NAT timeout? - What about forensics? How do you track back an attack from behind a hotel's NAT router? I don't say that all hotels have to support full internet. But I'd like to know what I pay for in advance and decide whether it is sufficient for my needs before purchasing. I've never seen hotel staff people who could explain what's going on there. But if you give things a name, then they can simple tell you what they offer without the need to understand anything. They just need to learn We offer XXX service for x$ and YYY for y$. And with home internet providers you can compare whether the one for US$n-2 is really cheaper than the one with US$n. regards Hadmut ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On 20-jun-04, at 23:23, Ole Jacobsen wrote: But it's substandard service nonetheless. Huh? We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what exactly makes this NAT service substandard?? I'm not sure what you can and cannot do on your corporate network, but for me NAT gets in the way of some forms of streaming video (RTSP protocol), audio/video conferencing (SIP) and IPsec. It's a real shame that software companies are spending their money on getting around this rather than create real innovation. I am not advocating the use of NATs, I am just observing that NATs are a fact of life and I have a hard time accepting that such a service cannot be defined as Internet service. You can define it as partially broken internet service. I don't think the IETF should be in the business of defining what constitues Internet service based on religion rather than reality. And I don't think the IETF should do anything that even comes close to endorsing NAT. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Mark Smith wrote: Not only may the next killer app not be the next killer app because it doesn't work with NAT, the next killer app may have already been invented a year ago, but wasn't able to be deployed because of the prevalance of NAT. Not only don't we know, we also don't know what we may be missing. The next killer app a lot more important than Web for most business people is the Internet telephony, which may or may not use IETF standard protocol. Even though there are people who can not type, most of them can use telephony (maybe over TDD). And the second next killer app a lot more important than Web for most people including, but not limited to, business ones is Internet TV, which may or may not use IETF or Microsoft standard protocol. It has already happened to millions of people in Japan initiated by a commercial company and there will be tens and hundreds of millions of people using them. This is the problem with NAT - it appears to be a nice easy solution, until you realise that the devil is in the details. Yup. If you insist on NAT, you lose a lot of business chances. I can proudly say that I helped the commercial company above get global IPv4 addresses enough for millions of subscribers, which was essential for their aggressive service. The reality of life is that there are successful ISPs and there are poor network providers insisting on NAT. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:03:46 +0100 Christian de Larrinaga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip A traveller cannot change ISP easily so either will just have to accept some things cannot be done or will find a way. As it happens one can preplan and setup a proxy service or a tunnel broker etc that can get round many of these issues. Perhaps the IETF would be wiser to give a warning about the futility of trying to break application transparency. The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms ... using the following tunnel broker / VPN peer. The neat thing about it is that it uses SSL/TLS over UDP, and you can specify the UDP ports to use. As it uses UDP to encapsulate the IP packets, the outer IP header can be NATted. Also, as it uses UDP, and the ports are selectable, you may be able to punch a pipe through a firewall, by using UDP ports #53 a.k.a. DNS, depending on how well the firewall inspects DNS traffic. If that works out, The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms, irrespective of NAT. http://openvpn.sourceforge.net/ Regards, Mark. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Ive been watching this thread for some time, and its time for me to pipe in... I've been working on a viable hotel solution for some time now, and the best I have been able to come up with is a terminal server with thin clients (bootp, tftp, xdmcp... you know the drill) in the guest rooms. The clients are NATed, due to cost of address allocation. They work fine in this scenario, for the standard business traveler, as well as providing universal access for everyone who does not carry a laptop. For someone who wants more and has their own hardware, the terminal server also routes v6 packets, providing end to end connectivity. Regarding the ISP filtering issue, I had to figuratively kick my local cable provider in the head to get them to drop the port 80 block on my circuit, and they list all of their non-business class IP's with a RBL in order to force usage of their mail relays. Its a sad situation. Scott On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Florian Weimer wrote: * Hadmut Danisch: at least here in Germany Internet providers tend to do and not to do what they want. - Some cut off their clients every 24 hours (DSL) This happens on the sub-IP layer and hasn't got to do much with ISPs. - Some block or slowdown particular tcp ports to get rid of peer-to-peer file sharing You get what you pay for. - Some redirect the first web access to any site to their own to force you to read their ads Same here. - Very few support multicast. When I asked my own provider, they didn't even know what this is. (They said 'no, because they don't support Linux'.) You can't get reliable multicast service anywhere in the world. People tend to switch it off if it threatens to impact unicast traffic. It's not possible to run production services over multicast across the Internet at the moment, at least not without a fallback to unicast. - IPv6? Huh? What's that? It's not a real problem to get native IPv6 over ADSL or SDSL. - At least one large provider blocks port 25 to certain IP addresses in order to force you to use the provider's mail relay Which one is that? The case you are writing about does *not* block 25/TCP on the TCP/IP layer. It's true that certain extremely cheap products don't offer that much Internet or Service. These products are marketed aggressively and are usually sold at a loss. Nobody forces you to buy them. -- Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com, jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com, tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf sleekfreak pirate broadcast http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/ ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 14:39, Mark Smith wrote: On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:03:46 +0100 Christian de Larrinaga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip A traveller cannot change ISP easily so either will just have to accept some things cannot be done or will find a way. As it happens one can preplan and setup a proxy service or a tunnel broker etc that can get round many of these issues. Perhaps the IETF would be wiser to give a warning about the futility of trying to break application transparency. The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms ... using the following tunnel broker / VPN peer. The neat thing about it is that it uses SSL/TLS over UDP, and you can specify the UDP ports to use. As it uses UDP to encapsulate the IP packets, the outer IP header can be NATted. Also, as it uses UDP, and the ports are selectable, you may be able to punch a pipe through a firewall, by using UDP ports #53 a.k.a. DNS, depending on how well the firewall inspects DNS traffic. If that works out, The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms, irrespective of NAT. You are forgetting something very big here: Only the smart internet users will find a way out. Normal users, the masses, the ones that bring in the cash, don't know this. The smart ones will pick a real ISP anyways. The others bring in enough cash that even though there are only a few doing the tunneling thing the ISP doing this really doesn't care about those. This are all just normal 'business cases' the same like saying there are not enough IP addresses thus you get only one etc. IETF can't do much about it, except making protocols that can't be NATted and that are of the 'http' or 'p2p' rating, aka something that all the users want but which can't work behind a NAT... enter IPv6 ;) Also the above requires on to tunnel thus you are getting real service from somebody else and basically using your current provider as the l2 provider. The same is the issue with IPv6 Tunnel Brokers which can be seen as ISP's in the fact that they provide IPv6 connectivity. Though the 'l2 medium' is the IPv4 connectivity of another ISP instead of ethernet or cable. Greets, Jeroen signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Yes, with tunnel brokering and the ability to reverse-tunnel Roaming 'Internet users should be able find a way to communicate on their own terms', as they move in a Mobile Environment switching back-end networks if required, for Mobile VPN. Kudos to Cisco's Mobile Access Router 3200 for being an example for this architecture. Yes, I had the pleasure of piggyback riding a WiFi network setup by a neighbor while in a hotelroom in a remote, forsaken place and in the words of Ole, 'as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works)', there was no reason for me to care and probably these rules set for user terms will need to be integrated for policy to switch to another network if I really have to pay. Somebody is paying, but there really ain't no free lunch! Regards, Harsh Verma Director, RD, GLOCOL, Inc Past Vice-Chair (Industry) RD WG, NECCC Member, Cross Boundary WG Tel: +1(916)684-3262 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.glocol.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Smith Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 5:39 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider? On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:03:46 +0100 Christian de Larrinaga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip A traveller cannot change ISP easily so either will just have to accept some things cannot be done or will find a way. As it happens one can preplan and setup a proxy service or a tunnel broker etc that can get round many of these issues. Perhaps the IETF would be wiser to give a warning about the futility of trying to break application transparency. The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms ... using the following tunnel broker / VPN peer. The neat thing about it is that it uses SSL/TLS over UDP, and you can specify the UDP ports to use. As it uses UDP to encapsulate the IP packets, the outer IP header can be NATted. Also, as it uses UDP, and the ports are selectable, you may be able to punch a pipe through a firewall, by using UDP ports #53 a.k.a. DNS, depending on how well the firewall inspects DNS traffic. If that works out, The Internet user may always find a way to communicate on their own terms, irrespective of NAT. http://openvpn.sourceforge.net/ Regards, Mark. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
From: Markus Stumpf You have a contract. This should be listed in the contract and you can read it before signing it. If the contract doesn't talk about limits and they do limit you, sue them. Sue on what grounds? Who says that Internet service has no limits? All reputable service providers have terms of service that include limits, starting with something about network abuse. (Never mind how well those limits are enforced.) Many service providers limit their users to not running servers, but good luck finding someone who knows what they mean by server. Since there are always providers, you can't sue simply because you bought an account with limits you failed to clarify. Trying to find first line technical support people (never mind sales) at a consumer grade ISP who knows has any idea what sort of filtering their employer does is hopeless. It's generally foolish to expect to find someone who even understands the question. (And, btw, some of the statements are incorrect. - Some providers intentionally cut their customers off after 24 hours in order to force them to have a new IP address. (Some DSL modems including the Actiontec 1524 kill TCP connections after an hour or two all by themselves) You have to look at what they sell. They sell DSL Surf Accounts. Surfers usually aren't online for 24 hours without interuption and they don't have problems with the interupt in normal use. If you get a business access you will not have the problem in most of the cases. I've not seen anyone selling DSL Surf Accounts, but I've never looked, and certainly not in Germany. In any case, - which of the classes in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-02.txt is closest to a DSL Surf Accounts? - Should one of those four categories be renamed DSL Surf Accounts? - Should a new class named be DSL Surf Accounts be added? - exactly what filtering is imposed on a DSL Surf Account? Is port 25 filtered? 22? 135 and 138? Some or all UDP? ICMP? - and the same questions for business access. Telling people to read contracts ISP today is disingenuous. If the IETF would define DSL Surf Accounts and business access, then you could hope to ask for one or the other. You might then sue if you didn't get whichever you wanted. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Jeroen Massar You are forgetting something very big here: Only the smart internet users will find a way out. The argument that the smart users can use IP over HTTP makes John's classifications such as web providers unnecessary. Also the above requires on to tunnel thus you are getting real service from somebody else and basically using your current provider as the l2 provider. There are a lot of Hotels claiming Internet capable only because their rooms have extra RJ-11. At Geneva, Internet capable hotel rooms have RJ-45, not for Ethernet but for ISDN. :-| IETF can not stop them claiming Internet capable. So, let's call all the telephone companies ISPs. Smart users can, just like having VPN servers, have modems at home to establish dial-up connection to the Internet from any PSTN telephone in the world. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
--On Tuesday, 22 June, 2004 07:15 +0900 Masataka Ohta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeroen Massar You are forgetting something very big here: Only the smart internet users will find a way out. The argument that the smart users can use IP over HTTP makes John's classifications such as web providers unnecessary. Also the above requires on to tunnel thus you are getting real service from somebody else and basically using your current provider as the l2 provider. There are a lot of Hotels claiming Internet capable only because their rooms have extra RJ-11. At Geneva, Internet capable hotel rooms have RJ-45, not for Ethernet but for ISDN. :-| IETF can not stop them claiming Internet capable. No, IETF can't. But IETF can create definitions that help those who want to be truthful about what they are providing do that, in a way that is clear to themselves and their potential customers. Such definitions may also help folks with those RJ11 or ISDN connections understand why their customers get frustrated and threaten to never return -- today, they are mostly just bewildered. If, with or without those definitions, someone is determined to lie, they will certainly do that and IETF won't be able to do a thing about it. Perhaps local regulators and courts and hotel-rating agencies will, but not IETF. Let me give a specific example that leads me to believe there is hope in at least some portions of this problem. These days, before making a hotel reservation, I routinely check on whether they offer Internet access. As others have suggested, I don't bother asking about NATs, funny filters, etc. -- the odds that someone at the reservations desk will have a clue are about zero. But I do ask and, if I get a no answer, I'm reasonably likely to try to pick a different hotel (usually a much more competitive market than the range of options I have in my neighborhood for lowest price acceptable service, partially because I impose fewer requirements). Now I've gotten to hotels after getting a yes answer and had the same experiences that Ohta-san obviously has: I ask about Internet and am eventually pointed to an RJ11 jack or, worse, an RJ45 jack that might be ISDN and might be no longer hooked up and about which no one can answer questions about charging. Or, as happened a month ago, I find WiFi in the lobby but a beacon connected to... nothing. Seems the hotel took their wired Ethernet to the rooms out a month previously, hasn't gotten the 802.11 hooked up to a router yet, and didn't intend to start figuring what to do with the rooms until they figured out how much capacity the 802.11 has and how far it would reach. I tend to find these situations annoying, just as I find getting to a hotel that advertises Internet in every room and discovering that they mean a WebTV clone and nothing else, not even a spare RJ11 jack. I complain. I write letters. I collect selections of groveling apologies, especially from hotels that are members of chains in which I stay fairly often. But I also get a certain amount of astonishment from folks who were clearly clueless and don't quite understand why I'm upset. The I-D was driven partially by a desire to go to them and say ok, hotel manager, there are these categories, and they are pretty generally understood. Take the list to your supplier, find out what they are providing you, and then tell the truth when someone asks. If you are providing WebTV-clone-only access, and you tell someone that, and they say 'sorry, I'll find somewhere else to stay', then you have a basis for thinking about some business decisions. That is the best I know how to do, but I think it would be a step forward. And, that said, Ohta-san's note and the above suggests that there are at least two, maybe three, categories missing from the I-D because it sort of assumes a broadband connection or better, e.g., * We provide a really nice telephone line, but you are on your own for modems, adapters, and ISPs. * We provide a really nice telephone line that can be used with your modem, and an in-house terminal server connected to our ISP (that was popular several years ago, is anyone still doing it?) * There is this web-enabled TV set in your room, with its own keyboard, but you can't use your own machine except via the telephone. Does the I-D need any of that? Would anyone like to suggest language? So, let's call all the telephone companies ISPs. I can think of a lot of things to call telephone companies :-(. For better or worse, it seems to be the nature of language and marketing organizations that once-precise terms lose meaning. Many of us can actually remember when Decision Support System and even Management Information System meant something, and neither one was a glorified spreadsheet. It happens. It is too bad. But, if there is any cure, it is getting a bit ahead of the
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
John C Klensin; You made, at least, two mistakes, minor and major ones. A minor mistake is that you think you can let people outside of IETF use your terminology, if you give loose enough terminlogy. As you introduce Web connectivity, such people (including mobile operators in Japan) claim that they are ISPs, because they are offering web connectivity over X.25 without IP. That is, The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if service providers and vendors are not willing to adopt them. is applicable to your draft. A major mistake is that you are forcing people within IETF use your terminology even though you are fully aware that some members of the IETF community that some of these connectively models are simply broken or not really an Internet service. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 23:40:03 -0400 John C Klensin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ohta-san, I do not expect that we will agree on this, and may need to simply agree to disagree, but, having just reviewed the draft you included in your slightly earlier not, let me try to explain the other point of view, and why the I-D to which Vernon refers is written the way it is and, in the process, I hope, respond to some of Hadmut's concerns... The IETF has absolutely not ability to insist that an provider of IP services, or various good or bad or terrible approximations to IP servers, do or not do anything. I agree that the IETF doesn't have the right to tell private, commercial organisations how to run their business, and what types of services they can or can't offer customers. However, I think the IETF are in the position to make statements to the effect that if Internet services are being offered in a manner that doesn't follow the operational design and architecture of the Internet Protocols, as outlined in RFC1958, then the end users of those services only have available to them a limited subset of the features, benefits and capabilities of the Internet. We are discussing IETF designed and developed protocols, which I think puts the IETF in a position to state how they _should_ be used. It also appears that the IAB are willing to make statements discouraging certain practices, such as port filtering. Such a statement is at the following URL : IAB concerns against permanent deployment of edge-based filtering http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-10-18-edge-filters.html If we were to establish a document that said, e.g., you are not an ISP, and must not call yourself an ISP, unless you conform to the following rules, I would expect the low-service providers to simply ignore us. That helps no one. Instead, I think there are only two courses of action that have a chance of making progress on this issue. And I think they are complementary, rather than competing, actions. First, Hadmut, and others with his concerns in other countries, probably need to approach the local regulatory authorities who are concerned about consumer fraud and say the range of things that people are selling under the name 'Internet service' includes too broad a range. People are confused, and suppliers are insisting that people make long-term commitments to particular providers with any real idea what they are getting, and that is poor public policy and you should do something about it. Second, the IETF should consider standardizing (or making a BCP out of) some terminology similar to that in the I-D. The intent of that document is to lay a foundation for encouraging service providers to explain what they are offering in language that people can understand and, if the local/national regulators think it appropriate, telling service providers what they need to disclose and in what terms. Bare in mind that documenting something in an RFC, even if the majority of the IETF disagree with it, is commonly interpreted as giving it a level of legitimacy. I've found that a lot of networking people in the enterprise/ISP world (a) don't read RFCs and (b) consider that something being listed as in an RFC automatically implies the blessing of the IETF / IESG / IAB. For example, the original NAT RFC (RFC1631) contains the following statement : -- 4. Conclusions NAT may be a good short term solution to the address depletion and scaling problems. This is because it requires very few changes and can be installed incrementally. NAT has several negative characteristics that make it inappropriate as a long term solution, and may make it inappropriate even as a short term solution. Only implementation and experimentation will determine its appropriateness. -- How many people who bought RFC 1631 compliant NAT boxes were aware that the value of the solution documented in RFC1631 was considered questionable by the authors of the RFC itself? I'd suspect very few. I know I though it was a good idea for a while, until I got burned by it. Whether we like it or not, there are users (of what those users think of as the Internet) who would be perfectly happy with a web-only, all outbound protocols but HTTP and HTTPS blocked, all inbound ports blocked except responses to the above, private address space, and all connections dropped and a new address assigned every half-hour service... as long as it is cheap enough. I think these innocent and naive users are really being done a disservice. The Internet is and will be far more capable that just these services - the current architecture ensures that. I think it is important that the more knowledgable attempt to ensure that the innocent are not taken advantage of, nor denied access to the full capabilities that the Internet achitecture provides. Regards, Mark. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Hadmut Danisch; Do you think a NAT provider an ISP? But if we had a precise definition and a taxonomy of the different classes of ISPs, Then, all the IP and non-IP providers can now leagaly (some illegaly a little beyond the scope of so generous RFC) say they are ISPs and most end users have no chance to know the differences of the taxonomy. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
It seems to me that there is genuine value in having the IETF define terms that distinguish the various types of connectivity, not because the IETF can (or should try) to enforce anything, but to provide authoritative normative terminology that might, in some jurisdictions, help provide a legal basis for egregious cases of false advertising. In particular, it would be nice to have *some* term like Full internet Connectivity that defines the high-end service that really can't be credibly claimed by the lower-end services. I'm skeptical, however, that we can rescue the term ISP from the low-end services that already claim that label. Rather than fight over the pre-existing term ISP, why not try to converge on a new term with a more clearly defined meaning from day one, based on a document from the IETF? After all, the low-end services can legitimately claim to provide *some* Internet services, just not *most* of them, which makes them in some sense Partial ISP's and unlikely to give up the ISP label willingly.Instead, we could invent (and try to popularize) a new term such as Complete High-End Internet Service Providers (CHISPs) or Providers of Internet General Services (PIGS). :-) Anyway, I fear that trying to convince a bunch of low-end providers not to call themselves ISPs is about hopeless as trying to convince people who believe in massive budget deficits and preemptive wars not to call themselves conservatives. -- Nathaniel On Jun 20, 2004, at 9:43 AM, Masataka Ohta wrote: Hadmut Danisch; Do you think a NAT provider an ISP? But if we had a precise definition and a taxonomy of the different classes of ISPs, Then, all the IP and non-IP providers can now leagaly (some illegaly a little beyond the scope of so generous RFC) say they are ISPs and most end users have no chance to know the differences of the taxonomy. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
From: Masataka Ohta [EMAIL PROTECTED] As you introduce Web connectivity, such people (including mobile operators in Japan) claim that they are ISPs, because they are offering web connectivity over X.25 without IP. WebTV is functionally the same as web connectivity over X.25 without IP. Most of the world thinks that part of Microsoft is an ISP. Nothing the IETF or even governments could do would change that. That is, The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if service providers and vendors are not willing to adopt them. Those involved call the services of WebTV either WebTV or Internet service. Professionals (including salespeople) who are not employed by Microsoft in the WebTV operation, especially competitors, would be happy to call it Web Connectivity instead of WebTV. Even Microsoft might like Web Connectivity to limit dilution of its WebTV trademark. Thus such concerns are irrelevant to Web Connectivity. You'd do better attacking one of the other categories. A major mistake is that you are forcing people within IETF use your terminology even though you are fully aware that some members of the IETF community that some of these connectively models are simply broken or not really an Internet service. No, the major mistake is thinking the various classes of IP service do not exist or that you can keep people from naming them with short English words or phrases. As the various classes become more popular and widely recognized, the world will invent and use terms for them. No one but pedants and marketers will care which words or phrases are ultimately chosen. The IETF can speed up and slightly steer the choice, but no one can prevent it. We got to choose the word Internet but did not entirely control the definition (recall small 'i' internet). We lost on intranet catnet and many other terms. The useful things that this draft might accomplish are: - make the choice of terms happen within or a year instead of the years that the current definition Internet needed. - make the people who have more control than the IETF over the choice of terms for the emerging clases Internet service think about the words they want. They are in marketing organizations. Consumer ISPs are not offering the kinds or classes of IP service that I would want. It is insane to ignore that reality. It would be little better to insist that governments will not eventually get involved or that there will be no common terms for the various common classes of IP services and ISPs. ] From: Masataka Ohta [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] But if we had a precise definition and a taxonomy of the ] different classes of ISPs, ] ] Then, all the IP and non-IP providers can now leagaly (some ] illegaly a little beyond the scope of so generous RFC) say ] they are ISPs and most end users have no chance to know the ] differences of the taxonomy. No, - Whatever happens with this draft, it will not have anything like the force of law. The IETF does not have powers over terms equivalent to the groups that name species, chemical compounds, and astronomical bodies. - all the IP and non-IP providers in most of the world can now legally call themselves ISPs. The IETF could not change that. - The terms the world eventually uses for the various classes of IP service and types of ISPs will differ from the consensus of the IETF. This draft can only crystalize the choices. Seed crystals influence the shape of a solid, but do not control it. - the main reason end users have no chance to know the differences delineated by the taxonomy is that the taxonomy does not yet exist. When it exists, users will know as much of it as they care to, just as they now know or don't know the differences among web, Internet, and telephone. Users who do not distinguish between web and Internet also think WebTV is Internet service. IETF cannot change that. That VoIP, text messaging, and cell phones are changing the definitions of telephone and telephone company is part of my point. Much of the good this draft might do will be done simply by discussing in public differences among IP service classes and choices of terms. After the taxonomy is crystalized, it will be out of the IETF's control. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 09:52:51AM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote: Much as I understand the moral outrage that NATs cause in some people's mind, NATs are still a reality AND they (usually anyway) provide connectivity to the Internet. Have you tried using a hotelroom Ethernet port or a WiFi network recently? I can't remember the last time I was assigned something that looked like a real routable IP address, but as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works) is there any reason (apart from religion) that I should care?? That's currently a consequence of the shortage of IP addresses. With IPv4 not every hotel or restaurant can have a Class-C address range. Unfortunately, this shortage doesn't make people ask for IPv6, but makes them getting used to have such NATs, and even more, it appears to be an advantage, because it gives kind of protection to unprotected windows machines. Internet is becoming decadent. However, such a service might be sufficient as long as you just poll your e-mail or visit the web from your hotel room. Would you be happy with it at home? What if you need an open port? What if you want to receive multicast packages? What if you want to contact someone else who also has a NAT provider? What if you want to receive instant messages, e-mail notifications, peer-to-peer services? With such providers Internet is not anymore what it used and was supposed to be. Internet means (at least in my opinion) that in principle every node can comunicate with every other node. Clients behind NAT can't communicate with other such clients. Internet is split into clients and servers, where clients can communicate with servers only. No peer to peer anymore. Do we consider this as internet? Hadmut ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
From: Ole Jacobsen assigned something that looked like a real routable IP address, but as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works) is there any reason (apart from religion) that I should care?? If you have no reason to care, then you shouldn't, except that Full Internet connectivity is significantly more expensive to provide. It's not the bits that are more expensive, but the people who deal with the naughty bits that come with Full Internet Connectivity. If you have a technical reason to care, perhaps because you need to run an application not understood by the NAT systems of your hotel, then you ought to be able to distinguish what you need from what you are getting while talking to people who have never heard of the IETF. Perhaps you would like to run applications that talk to systems back at the factory and that use protocols that don't always play with NAT. Maybe you are a system admninistrator who needs to check your DCC servers (anti-spam system), despite your hotel's filters against UDP port 6277. Perhaps you need to check your DNS servers despite your hotel's filters and redirection of port 53 or all UDP. Maybe you just need SSH and didn't remember to set an sshd listening to port 443 before you left. Maybe you need to talk to port 25 on your SMTP server to see if it is sick. Talk about ALGs, UDP, TCP, and even NAT is cybercrud noise to a hotel desk clerk. However, you might someday be able to say please upgrade the Internet service for room 1234 from Web Connectivity to Full Internet Connectivity. You don't expect airline ticket agents to understand or care what you're talking about if you go on about stall speeds, rates of sink or climb, and so forth, but asking for a ticket on a communter airline instead of a wide body can be useful. There is absolutely no chance of less filtering in hotels, 802.11 hot spots, etc. There will be terms that distinguish those kind of Internet service from what many of us consider the real thing. The issue is whether we must wait for the market to provide equivalents to ham radio, CB radio, satellite radio, AM, FM, TV, and cell phone. Arguing against the idea of draft is like saying the term 'electormagnetic radiation' is good enough. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
--On Sunday, 20 June, 2004 12:45 +0200 Hadmut Danisch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jun 19, 2004 at 11:40:03PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote: First, Hadmut, and others with his concerns in other countries, probably need to approach the local regulatory authorities who are concerned about consumer fraud and say the range of things that people are selling under the name 'Internet service' includes too broad a range. Correct in principle, but no chance to do it in reality. If I contact the regulatory authorities, they will ask me What's wrong with those ISP's? I answer They do... and the don't... They'd say: Uhm, we're familiar with the Internet in common, but not with all those details. Most people seem to be happy with that, and if not, why don't you change to a provider of your taste? We don't see why there is a need to change the status quo of ISPs. I'd reply: Because that's not correct. This is not Internet. This is some approx. This causes technical problems. This is fraud. They'd say: Who are you to tell what's correct and what's Internet? Nobody has ever defined that term. If there is no definition, then there is no correct or not correct. But if we had a precise definition and a taxonomy of the different classes of ISPs, I could say: Look, the IETF has given a definition. They're the guys who control the internet and keep it running well. They are exactly the ones to tell what's correct and what's not. And now, some of those german providers are violating law. Because they are actually advertising to provide internet, what they in fact don't do. False advertising is unlawful. While I don't precisely agree with parts of your description in that paragraph (e.g., the IETF really doesn't control the Internet) that is precisely why draft-klensin-ip-service-terms was written. The questions, I think, are: * Is it right, or at least good enough given that goal? * What does the IESG want to do to process it, and when? * Can we move forward with something like that, with all of its inperfections, rather than getting bogged down in debates about changing things we can't possibly change, religion about various practices that exist and that people profit by selling, and alternate realities in which the IETF can actually dictate what people should do to be legal. Can we make or force anyone to use an particular terms? is explicitly not on that list. It wouldn't be a good idea, and the answer is no anyway. I don't know the answer to any of those questions. The draft was posted just as an attempt to begin moving toward answers on all three, rather than just having periodic discussions of how much nicer the world would be if it were different. And, without having any idea about the specific situation in Germany, I would hope that, in many countries, were such a list of terms and definitions standardized, it would be possible to go to the regulators and say Ok, here is a definition from a recognized standards group with some plausible credentials for understanding the Internet. It defines some service distinctions and why knowledge about those distinctions is likely to be useful to an educated consumer trying to make choices*. I think that it would be useful if you either required providers to supply information about their services in those terms, or at least to establish the principle that using the terms in misleading ways will be considered fraudulent. We actually might make some progress that way. * The area of why someone should care about these terms is not, IMO, sufficiently handled in the document. Text would be welcome as long as it maintains the tone of the document, i.e., that it avoid denouncing anyone or anything other than lying about what is being offered. As editor (at least temporarily) of the only draft in this area that has been posted and that I consider realistic given real-world realities, I want to again try to reinforce the observation made by Ole and others. There are services (or, if you prefer, disservices) out there that real people are paying real money for and using happily. To tell the providers of those services you must be clear about what you are providing is reasonable and not intrinsically offensive: they have enough of a market that they will probably presume they can sell them even if they are described clearly. To tell them you can't provide that service because they imply that no one will be able to operate a full-capability, permanent-address server out of a one-night-stay in a hotel room is nonsense and will be treated that way -- they will respond that no one wants to buy such a thing and will be, to a first-order approximation, correct. From personal experience, if I check into a hotel and hook up to the local Ethernet, or use a public hotspot, I'll happily
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
--On Sunday, 20 June, 2004 19:37 +0200 Hadmut Danisch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 09:52:51AM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote: Much as I understand the moral outrage that NATs cause in some people's mind, NATs are still a reality AND they (usually anyway) provide connectivity to the Internet. Have you tried using a hotelroom Ethernet port or a WiFi network recently? I can't remember the last time I was assigned something that looked like a real routable IP address, but as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works) is there any reason (apart from religion) that I should care?? That's currently a consequence of the shortage of IP addresses. Actually, there is not a lot of evidence for this. I suggest it is partially a consequence of something else. Let's assume I'm a provider of internet service to a hotel chain or a random collection of hotels. It is in my interest to keep my actual costs as low as possible, so that my hotel can compete with the one down the block (to offer the same limited/lousy service, but see below). I need to assume that the folks who work in the hotel on a day-to-day basis will know about as much about the Internet as they do about fixing television sets. Putting in an expert drives my costs _way_ up. Even sending out an expert to provision the hotel has a serious impact on my costs. So, let's consider what I want to do. I want to have an absolutely standard kit that I can put on a truck with a field service type whose level of training is unpack boxes, plug in router, plug in cables, plug in WAN feed, turn everything on, perform a few very standard tests, return to truck. I'd prefer that even keying in an address for the hotel's WAN-side connection and downstream router not be on that list. The state of the art today with IPv4, and, as I understand it, pretty much with IPv6, is that I'm better off with a NAT and private address space inside the hotel. If the question of why there aren't widely-supported DHCP or equivalent facilities by which that entire hotel router (and its DHCP server and upstream ports) can be trivially configured remotely, ask the DHC WG or the Internet ADs, not me. If you want to know why mail clients can't be autoconfigured off DHCP with the hotel's local outbound mail server, go take it up with the mail client vendors. But, until those sorts of problems are solved, please go read Vernon's comments again: providers are providing these low end services between that is what people want to buy and the price they want to buy it at. Higher levels of service would cost more, maybe a lot more, mostly due to provisioning and support costs and not, e.g., hardware costs or restrictions on IP address availability. And, while I have serious doubts that there is a large market there, if we can make service term descriptions a bit more clear, then I can imagine a hotel saying ok, we have two kinds of Internet service available, 'client-only' at $10/night and 'full' at $30/night -- pick what you want and hand us your credit card. Whether I'd be willing to pay for the higher-end service or not, I'd far prefer being offered that choice than please give us your money and we will deliver whatever we feel like and you can learn to like it. With such providers Internet is not anymore what it used and was supposed to be. Internet means (at least in my opinion) that in principle every node can comunicate with every other node. Clients behind NAT can't communicate with other such clients. Internet is split into clients and servers, where clients can communicate with servers only. No peer to peer anymore. Do we consider this as internet? I don't. My religion about this may not be very different from yours, or even from Ohta-san's. But the market has clearly decided that people will buy such whatever-they-are-called services and no amount of saying naughty or inadequate is going to make them go away. And we are more likely to get what we do want --when we are willing to pay for it-- if we help precisely those providers understand and sell both whatever they are selling now and what you would consider adequate Internet service. Otherwise, as with most hotels and consumer cable-modem and DSL providers today, the only thing available will be the cheapest possible service (to provide) they can get away with offering at whatever price they can get away with charging for it. john ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On 20-jun-04, at 19:37, Hadmut Danisch wrote: Have you tried using a hotelroom Ethernet port or a WiFi network recently? I can't remember the last time I was assigned something that looked like a real routable IP address, but as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works) is there any reason (apart from religion) that I should care?? Well, if you don't care that a soda is $6 and local calls from your room are more expensive than international ones from your office, why start here? But it's substandard service nonetheless. That's currently a consequence of the shortage of IP addresses. There is no shortage of IP addresses. There are still more than a billion that have never been used. However, there is a big policy/distribution problem, or in other words: With IPv4 not every hotel or restaurant can have a Class-C address range. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: But it's substandard service nonetheless. Huh? We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what exactly makes this NAT service substandard?? Sure, I probably won't be able to make my laptop be a web server, nor will you be able to log into it from where you are, but who cares? That's NOT what the typical business traveller wants and the service provided is a lot more useful (and typically much cheaper) that the dialup alternative. I am not advocating the use of NATs, I am just observing that NATs are a fact of life and I have a hard time accepting that such a service cannot be defined as Internet service. My home network is provided by a NAT too, but so far I have not found it to be a huge problem. There are other services that I would like to see, but they are prevented by policy and not by the NAT architecture per se. I don't think the IETF should be in the business of defining what constitues Internet service based on religion rather than reality. Ole ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Ole Jacobsen; We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what exactly makes this NAT service substandard?? For example, how can you use mobile IP there? Sure, I probably won't be able to make my laptop be a web server, nor will you be able to log into it from where you are, but who cares? How can you receive IP telephony call on your laptop? Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 02:23:51PM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote: We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what - How would you do a Voice-over-IP phone call with someone else if both of you are in such a NAT-hotel-room? - How do you join a multicast session (actually this is not a matter of NAT, but of different levels of Internet services). - I and some friends use a UDP based protocol to exchange status messages with a central server. The next version will allow to send notifications if mail has arrived to avoid polling continuously. How would you do that? (I'm sometimes using IP over GRPS with my cellphone, where I receive a RFC1918 address, which is NATed. When I am awaiting an important e-mail, I have to poll every few minutes. Polling over GPRS is expensive. The provider which seems to be the cheaper could turn out to be more expensive.) - How would you do IP-address based authorization (e.g. RMX/SPF/CallerID) if other people can have the same IP address at the same time? - IPSec through NAT (if not UDP-encapsulated)? - What about UDP or TCP protocols which run into the NAT timeout? - What about forensics? How do you track back an attack from behind a hotel's NAT router? I don't say that all hotels have to support full internet. But I'd like to know what I pay for in advance and decide whether it is sufficient for my needs before purchasing. I've never seen hotel staff people who could explain what's going on there. But if you give things a name, then they can simple tell you what they offer without the need to understand anything. They just need to learn We offer XXX service for x$ and YYY for y$. And with home internet providers you can compare whether the one for US$n-2 is really cheaper than the one with US$n. regards Hadmut ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Nathaniel Borenstein; In particular, it would be nice to have *some* term like Full internet Connectivity that defines the high-end service that really can't be credibly claimed by the lower-end services. If IETF successfully convince service providers that Full internet Connectivity is the name of the high-end service, all the service providers will call their service Full internet Connectivity against which IETF can do nothing. Vernon Schryver; However, you might someday be able to say please upgrade the Internet service for room 1234 from Web Connectivity to Full Internet Connectivity. And the hotel operator will say Sure, you can now access all the Web pages including those containing adalt contents. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
If by IPSec you mean what the marketing folks call VPN, then so far it has worked just fine. Muticast, VOIP and the rest of stuff you mention probably does NOT work, but my point was that this is NOT what most business travellers want. And, yes, I agree they should provide a matrix of what is available for what cost. Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Academic Research and Technology Initiatives, Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 GSM: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Hadmut Danisch wrote: On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 02:23:51PM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote: We can certainly have an argument about what is a reasonable price, but if I can do *exactly* the same things (read/send e-mail, browse the web, transfer files, make connections to remote hosts via SSH, listen to BBC Radio 4, etc.) as I can from inside the corporate network, then what - How would you do a Voice-over-IP phone call with someone else if both of you are in such a NAT-hotel-room? - How do you join a multicast session (actually this is not a matter of NAT, but of different levels of Internet services). - I and some friends use a UDP based protocol to exchange status messages with a central server. The next version will allow to send notifications if mail has arrived to avoid polling continuously. How would you do that? (I'm sometimes using IP over GRPS with my cellphone, where I receive a RFC1918 address, which is NATed. When I am awaiting an important e-mail, I have to poll every few minutes. Polling over GPRS is expensive. The provider which seems to be the cheaper could turn out to be more expensive.) - How would you do IP-address based authorization (e.g. RMX/SPF/CallerID) if other people can have the same IP address at the same time? - IPSec through NAT (if not UDP-encapsulated)? - What about UDP or TCP protocols which run into the NAT timeout? - What about forensics? How do you track back an attack from behind a hotel's NAT router? I don't say that all hotels have to support full internet. But I'd like to know what I pay for in advance and decide whether it is sufficient for my needs before purchasing. I've never seen hotel staff people who could explain what's going on there. But if you give things a name, then they can simple tell you what they offer without the need to understand anything. They just need to learn We offer XXX service for x$ and YYY for y$. And with home internet providers you can compare whether the one for US$n-2 is really cheaper than the one with US$n. regards Hadmut ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Hi Hadmut, On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 11:42:23 +0200 Hadmut Danisch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, at least here in Germany Internet providers tend to do and not to do what they want. - Some cut off their clients every 24 hours (DSL) - Some block or slowdown particular tcp ports to get rid of peer-to-peer file sharing - Some redirect the first web access to any site to their own to force you to read their ads - Very few support multicast. When I asked my own provider, they didn't even know what this is. (They said 'no, because they don't support Linux'.) - IPv6? Huh? What's that? - At least one large provider blocks port 25 to certain IP addresses in order to force you to use the provider's mail relay and have the sender e-mail address replaced by the customers default address at the provider's domain. They say it's against spam, but I guess it's because they take money for opening the port and allowing to use SMTP and such any sender domain. - ... So it would be good to have some kind of standard or definition, what exactly an internet provider has to do and what to refrain from. I tend to come up with the answer to your question the following way : (Q) What is the Internet ? (A) A global network that runs the Internet Protocols, and follows the Internet architecture. (Q) What is the Internet architecture ? (A) It is described in RFC1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1958.html). (Q) What does an Internet Service Provider do ? (A) Provides access to the Internet. (Q) What if the Internet Service Provider doesn't provide access to the Internet in a way that follows RFC1958 ? (A) They aren't providing access to the Internet, so I think they shouldn't be calling themselves an Internet service provider. A number of things you describe, such as blocking port 25, redirecting URLs etc. do not follow RFC1958. I don't consider those organisations to be true ISPs, and I don't give them my Internet access business, as they don't seem to be prepared to properly provide it. Regards, Mark. ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
From: Mark Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] So it would be good to have some kind of standard or definition, what exactly an internet provider has to do and what to refrain I tend to come up with the answer to your question the following way : (Q) What is the Internet ? I prefer the definitions of various kinds of Internet service in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-02.txt Today, providers that sell sevices to users of Microsoft systems and do not pay exquisite attention to which of them are infected with the latest worms and viruses must block and redirect port 25 to their own SMTP servers and so not provide what that draft calls Full Internet Connectivity. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Hadmut Danisch wrote: Is there any? If not, shouldn't there be one? E.g. as an RFC? Here is an old Internet Draft, which IESG at that time refused to make it RFC, because some wanted to call NAT providers ISPs. Masataka Ohta -- INTERNET DRAFT M. Ohta draft-ohta-isps-00.txt Tokyo Institute of Technology July 2000 The Internet and ISPs Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as work in progress. The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Copyright (C) The Internet Society (May/1/2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This memo gives definitions on the Internet and ISPs (Internet Service Providers). 1. The Internet The Internet is a public IP [1, 2] network globally connected end to end [3] at the Internetworking layer. 2. ISPs A network provider is an ISP, if and only if its network, including access parts of the network to its subscribers, is a part of the Internet. As such, ISPs must preserve the end to end and globally connected principles of the Internet at the Internetworking layer. M. OhtaExpires on January 1, 2001 [Page 1] INTERNET DRAFTISPs July 2000 A network provider of a private IP or non-IP network, which is connected to the Internet through an application and/or transport gateway is not an ISP. Dispit the requirement of global connectivity, a network provider may use transparent firewalls to the Internet with no translation to filter out a limited number of problematic well known ports of TCP and/or UDP and can still be an ISP. However, if filtering out is a default and only a limited number of protocols are allowed to pass the firewalls (which means snooping of transport/application layer protocols), it can not be regarded as full connectivity to the Internet and the provider is not an ISP. 3. Security Considerations While some people may think that filtering by application/transport gateways offer some sort of security, they should recognize that macro virus in e-mails can pass and are passing through all such gateways. 4. References [1] J. Postel, Internet Protocol, RFC791, September 1981. [2] S. Deering, R. Hinden, Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification, RFC2460, December 1998. [3] B. Carpenter, Architectural Principles of the Internet, RFC1958, June 1996. 5. Author's Address Masataka Ohta Computer Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology 2-12-1, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8550, JAPAN Phone: +81-3-5734-3299 Fax: +81-3-5734-3415 EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] M. OhtaExpires on January 1, 2001 [Page 2] INTERNET DRAFTISPs July 2000 6. Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (July/1/2000). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an AS IS basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES,
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Vernon Schryver wrote: I prefer the definitions of various kinds of Internet service in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service-terms-02.txt It confuses Internet service and IP service and calls even a NAT provider ISP. In each case, the terminology refers to the intent of the provider (ISP) It is not an acceptable definition. The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if service providers and vendors are not willing to adopt them. Consequently, the terms proposed are intended to not be pejorative, The draft attempts to authorize NAT providers call themselves ISP. Then, the NAT providers are willing to adopt it and just call themselves not web providers but ISPs. So, the draft is useless. The only meaningful thing for IETF to do is define what is ISP as a terminology within IETF. There are a lot of IETF standard track documents of little value ignored by service providers and vendors. So, don't bother. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?
Ohta-san, I do not expect that we will agree on this, and may need to simply agree to disagree, but, having just reviewed the draft you included in your slightly earlier not, let me try to explain the other point of view, and why the I-D to which Vernon refers is written the way it is and, in the process, I hope, respond to some of Hadmut's concerns... The IETF has absolutely not ability to insist that an provider of IP services, or various good or bad or terrible approximations to IP servers, do or not do anything. If we were to establish a document that said, e.g., you are not an ISP, and must not call yourself an ISP, unless you conform to the following rules, I would expect the low-service providers to simply ignore us. That helps no one. Instead, I think there are only two courses of action that have a chance of making progress on this issue. And I think they are complementary, rather than competing, actions. First, Hadmut, and others with his concerns in other countries, probably need to approach the local regulatory authorities who are concerned about consumer fraud and say the range of things that people are selling under the name 'Internet service' includes too broad a range. People are confused, and suppliers are insisting that people make long-term commitments to particular providers with any real idea what they are getting, and that is poor public policy and you should do something about it. Second, the IETF should consider standardizing (or making a BCP out of) some terminology similar to that in the I-D. The intent of that document is to lay a foundation for encouraging service providers to explain what they are offering in language that people can understand and, if the local/national regulators think it appropriate, telling service providers what they need to disclose and in what terms. Whether we like it or not, there are users (of what those users think of as the Internet) who would be perfectly happy with a web-only, all outbound protocols but HTTP and HTTPS blocked, all inbound ports blocked except responses to the above, private address space, and all connections dropped and a new address assigned every half-hour service... as long as it is cheap enough. I wouldn't want such a service, I gather Vernon wouldn't, and you probably wouldn't want it either. But I don't see a problem with those who want it getting it, as long as no one is deceiving them (or anything else) about what they are getting. And it is precisely the no lying about why you are selling aspect of this that the I-D is addressed to, not an (almost certainly useless) attempt to proscribe particular services or terminology. regards, john --On Sunday, 20 June, 2004 07:44 +0900 Masataka Ohta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Vernon Schryver wrote: I prefer the definitions of various kinds of Internet service in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-ip-service- terms-02.txt It confuses Internet service and IP service and calls even a NAT provider ISP. In each case, the terminology refers to the intent of the provider (ISP) It is not an acceptable definition. The definitions proposed here are clearly of little value if serviceproviders and vendors are not willing to adopt them. Consequently,the terms proposed are intended to not be pejorative, The draft attempts to authorize NAT providers call themselves ISP. Then, the NAT providers are willing to adopt it and just call themselves not web providers but ISPs. So, the draft is useless. The only meaningful thing for IETF to do is define what is ISP as a terminology within IETF. There are a lot of IETF standard track documents of little value ignored by service providers and vendors. So, don't bother. Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
