Transcript Internet Perspectives

Internet Perspectives
May 2002
Geoff Huston
Chief Scientist, Internet
Telstra
One View of the Internet
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“Moving from disruption to disruption”
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Characterization of the Internet as a disruptive
technology
Internet deployment is driven by a succession of
disruptive events
Market survival is characterized by adaptation to
rapidly shifting models in the wake of each
disruptive technology
Market leadership is characterized by advance
identification of disruptive events
Internet Disruption Events
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The so-called “Killer -Apps” of the Internet:
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Email
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1988
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1990
FTP
The Web
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Portals
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1996
Instant Messaging
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1993
1998
Napster
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1999
Contenders for future K-As
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Mobility & Wireless
E-identity services
Music Distribution
Video Distribution
GRIDs
Telephony services
Appliances
??
BUT…
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The problem with this perspective on the
Internet is that leading market players are
forced into making investment decisions on
likely directions in disruptive environments.
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This predictive investment has a high risk
There is little tolerance left for high risk options in
this sector
Players are looking for a more conservative
approach to investment in this sector
Another View of the Internet
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Packet carriage medium
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Packet architecture
Address architecture
Flow control protocol
The so-called ‘hourglass’ model of IP as
a generalized adaptation layer between
the communications medium and the
application
‘Hourglass’ IP Objectives
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IP is not an end in itself
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IP is not a panacea for all communications
requirements
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It enables applications to work across a diverse set of
environments
Some applications demand a higher level of service than IP
can effectively deliver
But IP has a market role by levering off three major
assets:
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potentially cheaper than alternatives
flexible in that it makes few assumptions about application
behaviour
scales into environments of high volume and high speed
Technology Phases
Innovation
Deployment and Adoption
Exploitation
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2.
3.
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The Internet is now at the stage where the
initial phases of innovation and early adopter
models are completed.
The current phase is one of exploitation of the
technology to lever advantage in other activity
sectors
This phase is typically a commodity phase
Internet as a Commodity
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Deregulated market with competing
suppliers
Open market price information
Uniform product with limited scope for
bundled value add as a product
differentiator
Price is everything!
Commodity Markets
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Prevailing market price determined by
the second most efficient producer
Market share determined by Producer’s
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efficiency
scale of production
reliability
The Commodity Perspective of
the Internet
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Each supplier must drive down its cost of
production in order to maintain market share
The drivers behind production cost for base
level Internet services are
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Technology innovation
Volume of production
Stability of customer base
Reliability of production
Maturity of offering
Complexity of offering
Looking Forward
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Commodity markets are dominated by
production efficiency
Producers are forced to create products
that are:
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Cheaper to produce and operate
Support a broader application base
Support a larger, more diverse client base
The Message to Providers
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Bundling and complex solutions (value-add) should
not be undertaken at the expense of base level
efficiency of the product
Use simple architectures with basic functions
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Use extensible solutions
Avoid excessive layering
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Complexity costs rise disproportionately to size
Grand unified convergence is a myth
Everything over Something can become a tragic technology
mistake
Manage cost
The Message to Vendors
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Fewer features in base components
Simple, stable platforms
Component modularity
Longer active lifecycles for equipment
Reliable and predictable operation
Specific Concerns
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What technologies are of interest to
carrier-based public Internet Service
providers at present?
IP-based Technology Issues
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Whats on our
technology radar?
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VPNs
VOIP and ENUM
QoS
Identity technologies
V6
DNS
Zeroconf PnP
(in no particular order!)
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Mobility
Management
Architectures
Multi-Provider last mile
access
AAA and EAP
TE and MPLS
IP-based Technology Issues
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Provider-Provisioned VPNs
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Cross-product impacts with circuit-switched VPN
technologies
Edge-to-edge overlay and shared secret alternatives
Complexity issues of routing and topology maintenance, QoS
control, VPN stacking, network management and use
metering
There is a suspicion that the value of the provider role in
supporting PP-VPNS is greater than the incremental cost of
supporting various levels of differentiation within the host
network. This has yet to be conclusively proved.
There is also the belief that private data networks will
continue to be valued as a premium offering by enterprise
customers as a surrogate to effective distributed security
solutions. This has yet to be contradicted.
IP-based Technology Issues
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VOIP and ENUM
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Cross product impact with telephone revenue
streams for value-added services
Ability to integrate enterprise private voice
environments with the PSTN
Ability to create further value-added services that
leverage telephone services
The concentration of interest is not so much in the
carriage of voice over IP as the integration of
switching control systems with IP-based
distributed applications
IP-based Technology Issues
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QoS
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Today - largely an enterprise approach to resource rationing
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No large scale adoption within the public network environment
Issues with service management, metering, application
interaction, inter-provider interaction, routing, complexity
control, and viability of outcomes
It would be wonderful to charge disproportionately more for
some packets. It would be a mistake if the costs associated
with this functions are greater than the incremental revenue
opportunities
IP-based Technology Issues
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Identity technologies
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Most forms of e-commerce architectures rely on robust
authentication and adequate privacy
Most forms of network abuse leverage off the weak level of
authenticated identity that exists within the public IP
environment
There is a view that a widely deployed trustable
authentication service would enable wider adoption of online
transactions across a larger client base
Shift the emphasis away from a trusted device to that of a
trusted user of the device
The base technology is largely available – the regulatory and
business models to support such a framework are still
formative
IP-based Technology Issues
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V6
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Any day now
Really
Trust me!
The incremental deployment model of NAT technologies is wellsuited to the current collection of deployed applications and weak
authentication
Large scale public deployments are increasingly based on private
address space and NAT / ALG edges with limited capability
provided to the end client
Requirements for stronger authentication and peer-to-peer
applications drive a need for end-to-end coherency
But provider push is not enough – the actual driver is based in
client pull, and to date the application base that drives client need
for end-to-end coherency (V6) remains elusive
IP-based Technology Issues
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DNS
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One of the most alarming cesspits of the public
Internet infrastructure!
The distributed nature of the application requires
strong authentication and security to operate with
any degree of integrity
The distributed nature of the application ensures
that this remains an elusive objective
A visible need to use advanced DNS technologies
(DNSSEC, DNS IND, PKIX) to address the more
overt weaknesses in this application
IP-based Technology Issues
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Zeroconf PnP
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Broader deployment models encourage the use of
self-configuring arrangements where a device
establishes its address, routing and identity
context using a model of trusted configuration
agents
DHCP-based solutions have been effective in
particular environments (dial and enterprise).
Some further refinement of solutions appear
necessary in the area of LAN-based connection
services found in DSL, 802.11 and similar
IP-based Technology Issues
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Mobility
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Recognition of high value solutions in the area of
nomadic and roaming IP environments
Issues of differing technical solutions, differing
transport characteristics, identity and location
ambiguity, differing tariffs in the mobility domain,
inter-provider roaming arrangements
Leverage of current mobile telephone
infrastructure vs deployment of data-specific
nomadic technologies
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3G vs 802.11b,a,g
IP-based Technology Issues
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Management Architectures
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Current element-by-element view of
management is ill-suited to an overall view
of network integrity
If service management is an increasing
topic of interest in enterprise overlays then
management tools need to monitor the
end-to-end delivered outcomes
IP-based Technology Issues
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Multi-Provider last mile access
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Requirement to provide switching solutions that
operate on policy-based constraints rather than
header-based directives
A morass of competing technologies including
various forms of PPP, L2TP VCs, LSPs coupled with
policy-controlled aggregators
Highly complex switching environments with poor
scaling properties
IP-based Technology Issues
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AAA and EAP
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Desire to separate the access mechanism
from the billable end user
Support of a variety of inter-provider
roaming arrangements that allow efficient
use of access infrastructure
IP-based Technology Issues
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TE and MPLS
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Intended to allow for more efficient use of
network resources through managed load
dispersal
Current routing-based approaches to TE suffer
from uncontrolled feedback loops leading to
network instability
The area of interest at present is not MPLS per se,
but the ingress control systems which assign
traffic into LSPs