[e2e] What if there were no well known numbers?

[Joe Touch]

Keith Moore wrote:
>> All forms of communication are bootstrapped by first determining if you
>> are the intended receiver. Making the receiver initiate that process
>> only relabels the endpoints; the receiver now needs to initiate
>> communication with new parties. The net result is that senders can no
>> longer reach any new parties. That's a very uninteresting network, IMO.
> 
> only if the network required receivers to specify senders on an
> individual basis.
> 
> today, most servers want to listen to all incoming traffic that is
> intended for the host and destination port.  but there is no particular
> reason to burden the network to carry traffic to the server that the
> server will discard.

You know who you don't want to talk to (who, which ports, etc.). Pushing
that filtering as far out as possible is certainly useful, but also well
known.

When you change your mind or add a new protocol, you need to open that
firewall up and let stuff in. There are two cases:

	1- you know who you're expecting
	2- you don't know who you're expecting

1 is vanishingly uninteresting; sure, it works for a fixed subset (e.g.,
within an enterprise or VPN).

2 is the only interesting case for a few reasons:

	- it is THE case that makes the Internet work
		the Internet being the open subset; you don't need
		to inform everyone to join

	- it requires informing everyone you're joining the net so
	they can decide whether to let you in
		such informing presents the same kind of
		unsolicited communication I've described as
		fundamental

	- it's the only case for which there is extant solution

As to authentication of source, that just pushes the problem of
unsolicited load to the authentication infrastructure.

Joe

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 250 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/attachments/20060807/cae97470/signature.bin