(no subject)

This paper explores on important reality that surrounds the Internet
today: different stakeholders that are part of the Internet milieu
have interests that may be adverse to each other, and these parties
each vie to favor their particular interests. This process is called
"the tussle".

The Internet was designed to be a network infrastructure to hook all
the computers in the world together so that as yet unknown
applications could be invented to run there. The architecture of the
Internet is based on a number of principles, including the self-
describing data gram packet, the end to end arguments, diversity in
technology and global addressing. There are, and have been for some
time, important and powerful players that make up the Internet milieu
with interests directly at odds with each other. This deployment
impose new requirements on the Internet's technical architecture.
These new requirements, in turn, motivate new design strategies to
accommodate the growing tussle among and between different Internet
players. The purpose of this paper is to explore what these
requirements and strategies might be.

The principle of design is to modularize the design along tussle
boundaries, so that one tussle does not spill over and distort
unrelated issues, and to design for choice, to permit the different
players to express their preferences. The paper analyzed some cases
to examine the nature of the tussle and to illustrate how our
principles can be applied in specific cases, including economics
issue, and trust issue.

At last, authors concluded that anyone who designs a new enhancement
for the Internet should analyze the tussles that it will trigger, and
the tussles in the surrounding context, and consider how they can be
managed to ensure that the enhancement succeeds. A powerful force is
the tussle of competition. Protocol design, by creating opportunities
for competition, can impose a direction on evolution. The technical
designers, should not try to deny the reality of the tussle, but
instead recognize the power to shape it.

This paper is well written. It is totally different from other papers
we reach in this course. It analyzed the tomorrow's Internet in a
different angle. It analyzed the problems from the conflict and
greedy facts in Internet. However, when I read this paper, I feel a
little boring. It seems it analyzed the issues in too high level, too
abstract. Authors seems did not give a practical approach to solve
the tussle, only provided some principles. Internet, like a society,
is very complicated. Maybe, as it develops, we will see the practical
approaches.
Received on Thu Nov 23 2006 - 21:49:49 EST