[e2e] e2e principle..where??....

Panos GEVROS P.Gevros at cs.ucl.ac.uk
Tue Jun 5 08:15:21 PDT 2001


John Day typed :
 
 |>the conflict between elegant design vs. viable bussiness model above
 |
 |I disagree.  If done right they are one and the same.  This "elegant 
 |design vs viable business model" argument is the refuge of the 
 |mediocre who don't know how to do both.

it is well documented that in multiplayer games there are Nash equilibria 
which are not Pareto optimal (as game theorists would say),
it seems that in the case of future Internet  developments there are now many 
more players involved than when It was designed (i wasn't there so please 
correct me if i'm wrong), this point i think is usually overlooked


 |>i m not sure whether the end-to-end argument addresses issues of end-point
 |>"trust" and this is where  everything starts : the providers have to do thin
 gs
 |>*inside* their networks
 |
 |Trust in the sense you use it has nothing to do with the problem.

the problem as i saw it was that the man-in-the-middle does nasty things to 
endpoint traffic.
why ? because he cannot (don't have the means to, nor is allowed to ...) do 
these things in the endpoint in the first place and because he knows that the 
endpoint will not do these things by itself.
then comes the question why the endpoints don't do these things voluntarily?
is these things in their best interest (i guess not) ? and who is the one that 
knows the best-interest of the endpoints ? and if there is a conflict of 
interests then what ? should the players be left to strictly pursue their 
self-interests (endpoints will certainly lose out and the e2e model may will 
break) or maybe a *compromise*, a deal would be a better idea (in well 
specified scope so that each party can be sure that the contract is honoured 
by the other)
that would bridge the gap of mistrust between the endpoint and the access 
network and would leave higher level entities (providers/networks) to sort out 
the rest of things between themselves,
moreover they could do this better because they would be directly responsible 
for the behaviours of their end-points.

 |>so imho there is only one way for the pure internet, e2e, model to survive,
 |>the end-points (their behaviour,etc) must be trusted ,
 |>i'd put that on top of the research agenda.
 |
 |Based on their behavior to date, it ain't going to happen.

the trust could come if more control is exercised on the endpoints (within a 
well specified scope e.g by the authority of the access network )

cheers
Panos





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