Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrows Internet

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Tussle in Cyberspace Defining Tomorrows Internet
Offense by Amit Mondal
Courtesy to Ahamed Mohammed/Rice
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The paper basically talks about

• Accommodating choices in design

- Allows innovation
- Allows a tussle to occur

• Gives flexibility for designers and consumers

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• It talks about more of philosophical issues
  without any technical advise.

• Highlights connection between Engineering and
  society, . Good, but issues discussed here not
  new nor particular to the Internet.

• Lacks coherence, discuss complex issues written
  in books in 10 pages, However sometimes dives
  into lots of details like Source routing,
  firewalls etc!

• Discuss ethical questions without clearly stating
  the assumptions or value systems

• No concrete value, Things mentioned in this paper
  are quite obvious but no concrete design
  guidelines provided.

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Challenge Flexibility increases complexity

• Flexible designs will be complex

• Applications should be written to deal with this
  complexity

• Innovative applications come up.but slowly!

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Challenge Designing for Outcomes

• Paper says Do not design so as to dictate the
  outcome

• How can a design proceed without a goal in mind?

• Design of the internet based on packet in
  packet out
• functionality..very simple and not designed for
  any outcome
• ..packets go in and come out and this is all
  happens in the
• network. This simple idea was powerful in the
  early days..
• but there is much fear that it seems to be
  eroding..
• So what went wrong to the outcome blind
  internet????
• (self-contradicting)

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Challenge Making a tussle space does not solve a
problem

• Paper does not talk about who wins in the tussle

• Allowing a tussle to occur is not a solution

Papers Example DNS and Trademarks

• Even if we separated trademark names from
  machine
• names, trademarks disputes will not
  disappear

one could then try to design these latter
mechanisms to try to duck the issue of
trademark
The SMTP server example A user of mail may
choose an SMTP server..An ISP might try to
control that choice by redirecting packets..
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Challenge Lots of Choices Confuses Average User

• Installing Windows is easier than installing
  Linux to an
• average user

• Too much choice does not make a user happy

• Confused about choices to make and their
  consequences

• Only informed persons can make correct choices

• Configuring and using simple applications
  becomes hard

Papers response to this is unsatisfactory
..we may see emergence of third parties that
rate services (the online catalog of consumer
reports) and parties that provide pre-configured
software
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Challenge Little Incentive to Providers of Choice

• Providing more choices is costly

• Popular choices will get cheaper (Economies of
  scale)

• Users of less popular choices will need to pay
  more

One should be prepared to pay for what one uses
or there is very little incentive for the
provider to offer it.
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Finally, The point of this paper is known already
and acted upon

• Transport layer provides choice TCP/UDP

• IP-lock in is addressed by DHCP and NATs

• Loose source routing is addressed by overlay
  routing