Vint Cerf on Why TCP/IP Was So Long in Coming

whitehartstag writes "TCP/IP is 25 years old this year. Vint Cerf says there was a long development cycle for both TCP/IP and for X.25, and we'd have been using TCP/IP much sooner if TCP/IP had been more marketable. 'Over the years, we can come up with many examples both of where the best technology did (or did not) win and of how marketing has defined a service. For example, many of the "best" features of frame relay, such as the ability to use Switched Virtual Circuits (SVC) in addition to Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC) were never widely marketed because the pricing was too complex. Rather, the PVC was a simple replacement for a leased line at a fraction of the cost with better performance.'"

where's the content?

I know that there isn't much real content on the web anymore, but that's not even an article. Where the hell is the content?

A little more here...

Apparently the "article" is a response to a comment (the only comment, mind you) attached to this "article" [networkworld.com], which is similarly content-free.

Re:A little more here...

Plus the submitter's name+link goes to the same site, so I'm guessing this is just more NetworkWorld clickbait for Slashdot.

Re:A little more here...

NetworkWorld Accountant: Ad revenue seems to be off this week. Quick, somebody submit a story to Slashdot! (Before Computerworld does the same thing!)

Re:where's the content?

You need to run the article through a ROT13 filter, followed by the Bible Code decoder and finally the Redneck filter, to get the URL of the real article. This encryption technique was developed to prevent the real server being slashdotted.

Re:

I know that there isn't much real content on the web anymore, but that's not even an article. Where the hell is the content?

It's split up. One packet went to Australia, another to Zimbabwe, and another to
       

Seems normal.

Pricing complexities are why multicast is taking so long to reach the home, even though it has been enabled clear across the entire backbone up to the local ISP level for over a decade. The virtual circuits costing issue is presumably part of why MPLS is also somewhat of a rarity. Of course, this does raise some questions, one of which is why - when the early Internet and IPSS were Government-funded, mostly Government-run, intended to be fault-tolerent and suitable for military use - cost was a factor at all. Big business did not enter the X.25 or TCP/IP markets until very late in the game, and most initially used gateways off their own internal network protocol. The Internet's native protocols should have had no impact at that time.

So why is it normal for the immaterial to matter more than the significant? It is normal, but it is also irrational and nonsensical.

Re:

I guess this moderator thinks that 'troll' means "I didn't understand a word you just said".

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I guess this moderator thinks that 'troll' means "I didn't understand a word you just said".

No no no! Didn't you get the memo? For the time being Moderators are to use Overrated, Flamebate, and Troll until the new options of -1 Unpopular, -1 Shut-up, and -1 I-just-don't-like-you are rolled out. It's just a workaround, so be patient.

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I think you may have missed the -1 CowboyNeil option.

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You only need an address for each group address subscribed to by a downstream node. Since you have access to port numbers, you can place as many streams on a single address as you like (up to 65535), although obviously you lose some benefit from the multicasting if you overload too many streams onto a single group address. Well, unless you use source-specific multicast (SSM), in which case so long as the content is differentiated by source address, you can stuff everything onto a single group if you really

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Maybe he does. I've not seen 3Com for a while and Bay went belly-up. If he was the chief designer for those two, it would explain what happened to them.

Argh! Typo!

The translation list is here [multicasttech.com].

Re:no

Customers are almost certain never to get IP Multicast, but (probably) not for technological reasons. It's easy to bill per stream, for unicast streams, but harder for multicast. And, let's face it, there are certain segments of the entertainment industry - not just the *AA's - that have a vested interest in providing heavily metered audio/video streams. Multicasting has the potential to slash revenue by an order or two of magnitude. It's also easier to guague interest (for advertising reasons) for unicast connections than for multicast. And since unicast demands more on the CPU and on the pipe, machine manufacturers and ISPs have financial incentives to encourage customers to use the least-efficient delivery format possible.

If the customers are the only ones who could gain, and everyone else would lose, then who is going to be insane enough to switch on multicast routing to the home?

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The benefit of multicast is to the network provider. Where the same stream needs to be sent to many (thousands) of customers, multicast has a huge benefit. In fact, for 'push' content delivery it is the only viable means of networking.

And cable has been able to deal with the pricing issues for decades. The content is encrypted, with multiple keys---one for each subscriber. Anyone else can receive the multicast, but it does them no good without the key. When you join the stream, you not only join at an IP le

TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

Unfortunately, for all of us, IPv6 is heading our way like some rusty old stream train. Its rickety and badly designed, but massive, and will squash anything in the way.

IPv4 at least was designed well, and has lasted a long time. However, IPv6 has no firewall/NAT support (if you are in a company, you have to have a firewall, else you run afoul of a lot of corporate regs like SOX, HIPAA, and if doing credit cards, PCI). You can't tunnel or VPN (if you do, you pretty much do IPv4 routing as a kludge.) Fin

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IPv6-over-IPv6 seems to work ok. Some of the earliest routing protocols provided firewalling and NATting within the routing protocol itself (Telebit's router provided superb NAT and Firewall capabilities as an integrated facility). Permanent addresses lead to fragmented heirarchies and exploding routing tables, which is a major problem with IPv4.

Re:TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

It seems to me like most of the things you listed as missing were things IPv6 was specifically designed to get rid of.

Re:TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

So much misunderstanding crammed into such a small post. I'm impressed.

However, IPv6 has no firewall/NAT support

IPv6 partisans strongly discourage NAT, but there is nothing in IPv6 that will prevent it. Firewalling is still possible in IPv6, and is assumed to continue.

You can't tunnel or VPN

Where in the world did you get that from? There are several tunneling protocols supported as standard in IPv6. 6-in-6, IPSec, GRE...take your pick.

Finally, it doesn't support a person having their own permanent IP range. You are forced to use a subset of the range of whomever you are connecting to, and if you change ISPs or peers, you have to completely re-IP your servers.

This is untrue. ARIN (and most other RIRs) changed their allocation policy a year and a half ago. At present, if you qualify for Provider-Independent space in IPv4, you will also qualify for PI-space in IPv6.

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There is no personal IP range, which is a darn good thing. Can you imagine the load that would put on routers, having a few billion routes changing constantly? However, with the "autoconfiguration" if I'm not mistaken, the last 64 bits of your IP would pretty much always stay the same, its the first bits that would change.

Besides, in a way your IP address will always be the same, and much shorter.. ::1 is much shorter than 127.0.0.1 to type!

Re:TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

A lot of your "missing" features of IPv6 are exactly what it was meant to eliminate! You absolutely can firewall IPv6 (just as you can firewall a regular routed IPv4 space; a default stateful "outbound only" IPv6 firewall is every bit as secure as a similar IPv4/NAT setup). OpenBSD's pf has supported firewalling IPv6 for years; I'm pretty sure ipfw on FreeBSD has it, too. Iptables on Linux also seems to support it.

NAT isn't something to be missed. The number of nasty kludges required to get protocols that require two peers each behind a NAT to communicate is ridiculous, and a lot of protocols (VOIP, P2P, most games, etc.) can be simplified quite a bit when you take out the various NAT-hole punch routines.

Juniper already ship IPv6 capable VPN kit, you can do it on various open source platforms with things like tinc, and Windows Server 2008 supports it.

In other words, IPv6 is taking a long time, but it's getting there - and support for essential features is developing decently well. I'd recommend getting familiar with it now; even if it never materializes in its current form, it's a good idea to play with lots of different setups and be ready for anything!

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You are just wrong half the time, and half wrong all the time. First off, a firewall is a piece of software that prevents packets from getting through. It can work with IPv6 just fine. Tunneling and VPN is what IPSec is for in tunnel mode. IPv6 mandates IPSec support, so I don't see how that is a kludge. Finally the mobility of IP addresses across ISPs leads to exploding routing tables. It's just not an option.

Historical analysis

To read the historical analysis on the adoption rate of TCP/IP versus....??...is interesting to, well, um... you know, ... crap. No one.

Anyway, thank Gore we're not stuck in an X.25 world!

TCP/IP wastes bandwidth

A very significant factor for the slow uptake of TCP/IP was that most early networks were slow and point-to-point (head office to branches for realtime links and uucp etc for emial). IP wrapping is relatively expensive in terms of extra bytes etc, but that wrapping gives flexibility. When you only had 1200 baud point-to-point connections then you didn't need the flexibility of IP nor the extra wrapping cost.

IP only started to shine once significant numbers of networks got interconnected.

PVC tubes

So I guess we can look forward to Ted (series of tubes) Stevens describe the Internet as a "series of PVC tubes". :P