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.'"

Comments

where's the content?

[jessecurry]

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?

Re:where's the content?

[jd]

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.

Seems normal.

[jd]

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.

A little more here...

[XanC]

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

Re:TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

[gclef]

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.

Re:TCP/IP still needs a rewrite

[TheBracket]

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!

Re:no

[jd]

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?