[e2e] 0% NAT - checkmating the disconnectors

[David P. Reed]

Greg Skinner wrote:
> I went back and reread Saikat's paper.  I did not view his remarks in
> the light that you seem to.  I read them as "a network operator would
> like to protect his network from abuse, and enable its authorized
> users to freely communicate."
>   
I did not read the following paragraph from Saikat's email that way:
> Is there a way to architect the Internet to give the network operator
> full control over his network? So, when his boss (who paid for the wires
> and routers) asks him to block application X, he can do just that and
> not cause the collateral damage that firewall-hacks cause today.
>   
It's important to realize that the Hushaphone decision was argued (and 
won) on the basis that AT&T's claim that ANY application they didn't 
like had a risk of "damaging" the network, which was demonstrably owned 
by AT&T.   So there is a plausible (but outlandish) risk that any user 
action can damage the network (even attaching a piece of plastic to the 
phone handset!)

The resolution of Carterfone was not based on a demonstration the there 
was NO risk to the network from attached devices.   It was based on AT&T 
abusing its social contract with the US Government, whereby the 
government acknowledged a de facto monopoly, in exchange for a variety 
of public goods that it promised (such as investing in and deploying new 
technology via Bell Labs) and its failure to deliver those public goods.

The same deal exists in the implicit Internet Compact (such as it is) - 
if you offer to carry IP traffic, you offer to carry all of it, just as 
all other AS's do.   Subject of course to making yourself a target of 
directed attacks that are in fact real.   The Internet as a whole aids 
each other in finding and fixing such problems.   Unilateral behavior 
leads to balkanization, and at that point there is no Internet.