Internet Protocol Forum

Contents:

From the Editor
Cloud Computing
End-to-end Security
Letter to the Editor
Fragments
 

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This journal has covered numerous emerging technologies since we started publishing in June 1998. It would be an interesting excercise to look at which of these technologies have been successfully deployed, which ones have been rejected, and which ones are still emerging or slowly being deployed. In this issue we examine another emerging technology, or perhaps “a new concept” would be a better term, because a collection of new and old technologies are coming together to form what is collectively known as Cloud Computing. In a two-part article on cloud computing, T. Sridhar gives an overview of the concepts underlying this area of development. Part 1 of the article is subtitled “Models and Technologies.” It will be followed by Part 2: “Infrastructure and Implementation Topics,” which will be published in our next issue.

In the last year, I have had one of my credit cards “compromised” (unauthorized charges posted to the account) and subsequently replaced twice. This situation is always annoying and worrisome. Most likely, these breaches resulted from the card information being captured through an online purchase transaction. I am sure I will never know the full story, and luckily the credit card companies are pretty good about detecting fraudulent charges and quickly resolving the matter. When you start thinking about the number of network and server elements involved in a typical e-commerce transaction, it isn’t entirely surprising that someone with criminal intentions could exploit a weakness in the overall system. Our second article, by Michael Behringer, explores the topic of “end-to-end security” in more detail.

Those of you who have been subscribers to this journal for several years have probably noticed that your subscription has been “auto-renewed” once a year without requiring any renewal action on your part. Starting with the December 2009 issue, we will no longer extend your subscription when it expires unless you renew it by visiting the IPJ “Subscriber Services” webpage. You will need to use your e-mail address and Subscription ID in order to gain access to your record, where you can renew, update your delivery address, or change delivery method. IPJ is available on paper, as well as online in both HTML and PDF formats. You can also contact us at ipj@cisco.com regarding your renewal. The expiration date and Subscription ID are printed on the back of the journal for subscribers in the United States, and on the envelope for our international subscribers. We believe that this new renewal policy will result in fewer undeliverable or unwanted copies being mailed out—a plus for the environment.

Part 1: Models and Technologies

by T. Sridhar

Cloud computing is an emerging area that affects IT infrastructure, network services, and applications. Part 1 of this article introduces various aspects of cloud computing, including the rationale, underlying models, and infrastructures. Part 2 will provide more details about some of the specific technologies and scenarios.

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by Michael H. Behringer, Cisco Systems

End-to-end security relies on protocols and mechanisms that are implemented exclusively on the endpoints of a connection. The most typical example is an HTTPS connection (based, for example, on Transport Layer Security (TLS)[1]) to a web server; IP Security (IPsec)[2] can also be used for end-to-end security, as was initially proposed as a default connection mechanism for IPv6.

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End of Eternity

Dear Ole,

In their “The End of Eternity” articles, (IPJ Volume 11, No. 4 and Volume 12, No. 1) Niall Murphy and David Wilson provide a detailed and compelling description of the lasting harm that could result from the exhaustion of unallocated IPv4 addresses—harm to Internet users and aspiring new entrants, to technical-coordination and fault-management mechanisms, and to the likely irreplaceable cooperative decision-making and consensus-development mechanisms that distinguish the Internet from every other important transnational sphere of activity in human history. Thankfully, the authors foresee a potential happy ending—or at least yet another chapter in the story—in “an IPv6 Internet, or at least enough of one to keep off address scarcity for a workable subset of the industry.”

However, having foreshadowed how they expect the IP addressing cliffhanger to be resolved, the authors go on to detail a variety of interesting but considerably less persuasive assumptions and predictions, all based on the stipulation that establishing IPv4 address markets would represent the best means to “shorten the gap” between the end of IPv4 and the return to a “normal” state of Internet growth and development, that is, one that is unconstrained by IP address-related scarcity (or at least no more constrained than it has been over the last decade-plus of CIDR and hierarchical interdomain routing).

I believe that it is worth highlighting here the logic that binds these two engaging and well-written articles together into something that is, unfortunately, substantially less than the sum of its parts. If the authors are to be taken at their word that “an IPv6 Internet” represents the only currently feasible and also satisfactory conclusion to “the IPv4 end game,” then that conclusion does not by itself entail that IPv4 markets are the only, or most obvious or effective—or even workable—candidate mechanisms for coordinating the distribution of IP addressing in the run-up to more widespread IPv6 adoption. And yet, that postulate is offered, without explanation or defense, as the grounding justification for an investigation of various optional features and collateral effects that the foretold IPv4 address market might have.

Many observers have committed untold pages and pixels to the exploration of hypothetical IPv4 address markets, both in IPJ and elsewhere, going back as far as RFC 1744 (1994). The two articles by Murphy and Wilson represent valuable additions to that growing corpus. However, to my knowledge, no other writings in this area have built on the proposition that IPv6 is indispensable; therefore, IPv4 addresses should be privately traded. To put it in the most generous possible terms, this claim is highly contestable. As separate and independent analyses, IPJ readers may derive many useful insights from these two articles, but attributing any special relevance to those insights based on any presumptive connection between IPv4 markets and the future necessity or viability of IPv6 would be a mistake.

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CSNET Receives 2009 Postel Service Award
NRO Declaration on RPKI
ARIN Hosts 4-byte ASN Wiki
Upcoming Events
Call for Papers

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