[e2e] Protocols breaking the end-to-end argument

[David P. Reed]

On 10/25/2009 10:04 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
> 37 years of networking history boils down to this:
...
> 13. Angry old hippies go "Right on, FCC, your daddy's Internet is good 
> enough for you!"
>


What a warped interpretation of history... it discredits itself, in my 
opinion only, of course.  If this were a forum for discussing policy 
matters, I'd engage in debunking it.  It is not such a forum, however.  
This is a research forum, loosely associated with the IRTF, and 
Bennett's comments (true or not) have not contributed to this forum.

With regard to historical analysis, Bennett (and his informants) are 
welcome to write an article for ACMs Annals in the History of Computing, 
where actual historians apply peer review to such claims and submissions.

The use of the phrase "rhetorical trick" is offensive to me personally.  
Bennett persists in this claim, and John Day surprisingly (to me) joins 
him in this warped idea that our paper was written as a move in a battle 
(war) that some would claim was relevant to today.  That it offends me 
personally doesn't matter that much in the scheme of things - certainly 
Bennett's strange historical analysis of "causation" wouldn't stand a 
test against facts.

However, it is clear we must take Bennett seriously: Jon Peha (FCC Chief 
Technologist), Robert Pepper (former FCC senior exec and Cisco senior 
exec), Rob Atkinson (progressive political activist and friend of Blair 
Levin), and several Congress members (including Darryl Issa) support the 
organization that employs Bennett as a Senior Fellow where he makes this 
set of claims (ITIF) *as part of his job*.  That organization claims to 
be a "non-partisan think tank" devoted to research and analysis.  So I'd 
suggest that this analysis be subjected to rigorous review - but NOT on 
an IRTF list.  Perhaps Bennett's claim (made in his online resume) that 
he was "responsible" for major networking standards, "including ... WiFi 
and UWB" will also be reviewed rigorously, again, not on this list, but 
elsewhere, perhaps by the FCC.  Many people on this list know some of 
the people who are given credit for 802.11 in the community -- you're 
welcome to ask them about Bennett.


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