Internet Perspectives
May 2002
Geoff HustonChief Scientist, Internet
Telstra
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
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
Contenders for future K-As Mobility & Wireless E-identity services Music Distribution Video Distribution GRIDs Telephony services Appliances ??
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
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
‘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
Technology Phases
1. Innovation2. Deployment and Adoption3. 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
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!
Commodity Markets
Prevailing market price determined by the second most efficient producer
Market share determined by Producer’s efficiency scale of production reliability
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
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
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
The Message to Vendors
Fewer features in base components
Simple, stable platforms Component modularity Longer active lifecycles for
equipment Reliable and predictable operation
Specific Concerns
What technologies are of interest to carrier-based public Internet Service providers at present?
IP-based Technology Issues
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 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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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