[e2e] New approach to diffserv...

[David P. Reed]

At 09:14 PM 6/17/2002 +1000, grenville armitage wrote:

>David P. Reed wrote:
>         [..]
>>When I put a letter in the mail, the post office also has no control over 
>>what I send, and does not know how valuable this particular letter is.
>
>Sure they do. Put a 33cent stamp on a house brick wrapped in
>paper and see how far it gets. For that matter, put a few
>copies of Wired in a folder/envelope and discover how much
>the post office charges you for the content.
>
>That sounds to me like control of their resource.

Controlling one's resource has nothing to do with what middleboxes on the 
market do.  IP providers already may reject packets based on size and lack 
of adequate payment, and also rate of presentation.

Those are all resource related.

But there are middleboxes that are being developed to try to detect, for 
example, copyright watermarks in the data.   That's a requirement that 
cannot be met "in the network" without interfering with a lot of 
non-copyright infringing activity (if only by slowing it down).   And the 
goal has NOTHING to do with provider resource management.

If packets sent into the net might have anthrax or bombs that could damage 
routers, the situation of risking provider resources might come into play.

And, though you didn't mention it, the mail screening put in place by 
governments is indeed analogous to middleboxes - precisely analogous in 
fact.   But:

a) said governments usually bar individuals and corporations from doing 
same, with severe penalties, and

b) it is considered bad form to do it, even when it is done, and often 
carried out by people who themselves are extremely tempted to corrupt behavior.

Neither a nor b lends metaphorical support to the idea that middleboxes 
proliferating everywhere is a good thing or desired by users.