Internet Perspectives

1. Internet Perspectives May 2002 Geoff Huston Chief Scientist, Internet Telstra

2. One View of the Internet • “Moving from disruption to disruption” • 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

3. Internet Disruption Events • The so-called “Killer -Apps” of the Internet: • Email • 1988 • FTP • 1990 • The Web • 1993 • Portals • 1996 • Instant Messaging • 1998 • Napster • 1999

4. Contenders for future K-As • Mobility & Wireless • E-identity services • Music Distribution • Video Distribution • GRIDs • Telephony services • Appliances • ??

5. BUT… • 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. • 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

6. Another View of the Internet • Packet carriage medium • 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

7. ‘Hourglass’ IP Objectives • IP is not an end in itself • It enables applications to work across a diverse set of environments • IP is not a panacea for all communications requirements • 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: • potentially cheaper than alternatives • flexible in that it makes few assumptions about application behaviour • scales into environments of high volume and high speed

8. Technology Phases • Innovation • Deployment and Adoption • Exploitation • 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

9. Internet as a Commodity • 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!

10. Commodity Markets • Prevailing market price determined by the second most efficient producer • Market share determined by Producer’s • efficiency • scale of production • reliability

11. The Commodity Perspective of the Internet • 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 • Technology innovation • Volume of production • Stability of customer base • Reliability of production • Maturity of offering • Complexity of offering

12. Looking Forward • Commodity markets are dominated by production efficiency • Producers are forced to create products that are: • Cheaper to produce and operate • Support a broader application base • Support a larger, more diverse client base

13. The Message to Providers • 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 • Complexity costs rise disproportionately to size • Use extensible solutions • Avoid excessive layering • Grand unified convergence is a myth • Everything over Something can become a tragic technology mistake • Manage cost

14. The Message to Vendors • Fewer features in base components • Simple, stable platforms • Component modularity • Longer active lifecycles for equipment • Reliable and predictable operation

15. Specific Concerns • What technologies are of interest to carrier-based public Internet Service providers at present?

16. Whats on our technology radar? VPNs VOIP and ENUM QoS Identity technologies V6 DNS Zeroconf PnP (in no particular order!) Mobility Management Architectures Multi-Provider last mile access AAA and EAP TE and MPLS IP-based Technology Issues

17. IP-based Technology Issues • Provider-Provisioned VPNs • 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.

18. IP-based Technology Issues • VOIP and ENUM • 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

19. IP-based Technology Issues • QoS • Today - largely an enterprise approach to resource rationing • 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

20. IP-based Technology Issues • Identity technologies • 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

21. IP-based Technology Issues • V6 • Any day now • Really • Trust me! • The incremental deployment model of NAT technologies is well-suited 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

22. IP-based Technology Issues • DNS • 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

23. IP-based Technology Issues • Zeroconf PnP • 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

24. IP-based Technology Issues • Mobility • 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 • 3G vs 802.11b,a,g

25. IP-based Technology Issues • Management Architectures • 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

26. IP-based Technology Issues • Multi-Provider last mile access • 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

27. IP-based Technology Issues • AAA and EAP • 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

28. IP-based Technology Issues • TE and MPLS • 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