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The
non-Internet that never was but might be.
By Scott Bradner
The Internet as we know it today might never have happened it
the Comite Consultatif International Telephonique et Telegraphique (CCITT) had
not turned down the offer of TCP/IP from Vint Cerf and other Internet pioneers
about 35 years ago. Now we
are about to find out if the CITT's successor organization, the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) (http://www.itu.int) will succeed in what many people see as an
attempt to do now what they refused to do all those years ago.
Take, for now, as an assumption that the IETF would not have
come into being if the CCITT had accepted TCP/IP. Take, as well, the assumption that CCITT had developed
IP-based applications using the same philosophy that CCITT (and its fellow
telecommunications standards development organization, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)) have followed
since their creation. CCITT and
ISO, as a general rule, develop carrier-centric technologies. Their architectural assumption is that networks are brought to customers by
telecommunications carriers, and that those carriers also provide
whatever network-related services the customer might need (and the carrier
decides what the customer needs, not the customer).
In
a carrier-centric architecture, telephone companies
provide directory and email services rather than enterprises or third
parties. In a carrier-centric architecture,
telephone companies are the sources of innovation. Imagine, if you will, Tim Burners Lee attempting to persuade
a telephone company that there might be a business opportunity in enabling
physicists to use a mouse rather than a keyboard to access information on
network servers, or, for that matter, that there was a business in network
servers that did something other than place telephone calls.
You
might ask why I bring this history and imagined alternate universe up right
now. Well, unless you have been living-off-net for the last year or so you will
know that the ITU is about to convene the self-anointed World Conference on
International Telecommunications (WCIT)
in Dubai. (http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/Pages/default.aspx) Among the hundreds of proposals to
revise the ITU's governing treaties are too many that would move the Internet's
operations or standardization under the auspices of the ITU, and, in many cases, make
significant changes in the way things currently work. I mentioned one of the proposals in this column a few weeks
ago.
(http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2012/091912-bradner.html)
The
Internet, to date, is the only major area of international commerce that has
largely escaped regulation. While some of us may think that this has been a
much-needed vacuum, many governments strongly disagree, so it is reasonable to
worry that the outcome of WCIT will not be something that will make the
Internet better for its users.
While
it is too late for anyone to fully unwind the decades of Internet-driven
innovation, some of the proposals, if enacted, would do material harm to the
Internet we currently know. See
the Internet Society's WCIT coverage for more information. (http://www.internetsociety.org/wcit)
The
ITU says that the people of the Internet have nothing to fear - the ITU is not
trying to take over the Internet nor will it adopt anything that a member state
(country) disagrees with. (see http://www.slideshare.net/ITU/myth-busting-presentation) Very few people outside of the ITU
accept at face value the ITU's claims of benign intentions and a number of
their assertions of the lack of worrisome proposals have been shown to be
premature or inaccurate.
In
any case, we will know in a few weeks what rules the ITU has given to work
under but it will take a lot longer to find out what they will think they can
do under those rules.
disclaimer: Many parts of Harvard expose students to rule
sets but it is up to the students to operationalize them. But the university has not provided an
opinion on appropriate rules for the ITU nor on the
ITU's ability to live within rules so the above opinion on the first of these
is my own. We will have to see
over-time about the second.