[e2e] Are we doing sliding window in the Internet?

[Christian Huitema]

> > Has the IETF become the protocol police?
>
> The IETF has not; members of the IETF have taken the task on, though.

Well, who made you king?

This is in fact a serious question, that goes well beyond the present discussion of CUBIC, or CTCP. I certainly respect the engineering talent of the people on this list, but we are speaking here of allowing or not some products to run on the Internet. I understand the feeling that improper use of some software might "harm the Internet". But where do we draw the line? Shall we ban Kazaa? BitTorrent? Skype? Video streaming over UDP? VoIP? Who draws that line? What are the checks and balances?

Assuming that we can agree on who is the judge, who is the police? If there is a ban, how is that ban enforced? Do we rely on ISP to deploy some kind of firewalls? Do we ask the police to raid people's home and check that they are not using forbidden software? Do ask the department of commerce to ban the sale of some products?

-- Christian Huitema