From: damaged justice <frogfarm@yakko.cs.wmich.edu>
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 02:06:59 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: Book Review - Coordinating the Internet
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>From: danny@staff.cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
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Subject: Book Review - Coordinating the Internet
Followup-To: alt.culture.internet,talk.politics.misc
Date: 12 Dec 1997 11:37:48 GMT
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http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/h/Coordinating_Internet.html

     title: Coordinating the Internet
    edited: Brian Kahin + James H. Keller
 publisher: The MIT Press 1997
     other: 491 pages, references, index

The superstructural politics and economics of the Internet (such issues
as censorship and taxation) have long held centre stage.  Increasingly,
however, the politics and economics of the low level operation of the
Internet have emerged from the shadows.  It is these -- the governance
and pricing of routing, addressing, and naming services -- which are
the subject of _Coordinating the Internet_.

The first four essays consider general issues in Internet governance.
Gillet and Kapor explain how 99% of the Internet operates without
centralised control and suggest that coordination of domain name
assignment and IP address allocation will eventually look "a lot more
like coordination of the rest of the Internet".  Gould provides a UK
perspective, suggesting the evolution of English constitutional law
and the supranational powers of the European Union as possible models
for the Internet.  Johnson and Post argue for decentralised governance,
highlighting serious problems with alternatives such as extending national
sovereignty, international treaties, or governance by international
organisations.  Rutkowski is less enthusiastic, claiming that "the
notion of Internet self-governance is in fact an illusion arising from
the relative unfamiliarity of many people associated with the Internet
with either its history or the surrounding legal and regulatory constructs
in which it exists".

The domain name system is probably the most visible area of contention at
the moment; it is the subject of seven of the papers in _Coordinating the
Internet_.  Five of them take different positions on the legal arguments
over its interaction with trademark law and the political arguments
over which organisations should be involved in its administration: the
United Nations, the United States Federal government, InterNIC, and the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority just some of the contenders.  Taking a
step back, Andeen and King compare the DNS with telephony addressing in
World Zone 1 (the North American Numbering Plan) and Mitchell, Bradner
and Claffy argue that the obsession with the DNS is a red herring,
that issues of Internet governance and sustainability are far broader.

Moving on to less prominent but probably more fundamental issues, Rekhter,
Resnick and Bellovin write about the need to provide financial incentives
for route aggregation and efficient use of the address space, and suggest
a framework for property rights and contracts that will achieve this.
And Hoffman and Claffy evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of
metro-based addressing (based on geography rather than provider).

There are five papers on interconnection and settlement systems and
agreements between service providers.  Bailey and McKnight survey the
variety of interconnection agreements and argue for the introduction
of usage-sensitive pricing in conjunction with integrated services
with guaranteed quality of service.  Cawley, in contrast, extols "the
virtues (and appropriateness) of capacity-based pricing and flat-rate
tariffs", but suggests that many kinds of pricing models can coexist and
that "interconnection and settlement are best left to market forces".
Chinoy and Salo review what the transition from the NSFnet to commercial
backbones teaches us about oversight and scaling issues.  Farnon and
Huddle use theoretical efficiency modelling to argue that the present
"sender keeps all" settlement system is flawed.  And Mueller, Hui and
Cheng recount the history of the Hong Kong Internet Exchange.

The final two papers deal with quality of service evaluation, with
performance monitoring and statistics.  Almes presents an overview of
the IETF IP Provider Metrics effort, while Monk and Claffy suggest ways
of overcoming practical obstacles -- political and economic as well as
technological -- to adequate data acquisition.

_Coordinating the Internet_ is moderately technical (though it avoids
plumbing the complexities of protocols such as BGP) and on some issues
its presentation of so many different viewpoints may be more confusing
than clarifying.  But it is an accessible and informative collection --
and an important and timely one, given the increasing urgency of some
of the issues it debates.

--

Disclaimer: I requested and received a review copy of _Coordinating the
Internet_ from The MIT Press, but I have no stake, financial or otherwise,
in its success.

--

%T	Coordinating the Internet
%E	Brian Kahin
%E	James H. Keller
%I	The MIT Press
%C	Cambridge, Massachusetts
%D	1997
%O	paperback, references, index
%G	ISBN 0-262-61136-8
%P	xviii,491pp
%U	http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262611368
%K	Internet, politics, economics, law

12 December 1997

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        Copyright (c) 1997 Danny Yee (danny@cs.usyd.edu.au)
        http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/book-reviews/
        ---------------------------------------------------

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