<nettime> [RRE] IP Insurgency

[Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>]

     [orig to "Red Rock Eater News Service" <rre@lists.gseis.ucla.edu>]

[I'm not sending out the introduction to Gordon's report here because I
necessarily agree with all of it, but because the issues are interesting.
I've taken the liberty of reformatting it to 70 columns.  His mention of
David Isenberg's "stupid network" arguments reminds me that some Internet
people are unhappy with David, and thus with those such as myself who
have promoted his work, because he articulates in a elephone context
some arguments that originated as the fundamental justifications for the
Internet.  But that's just the point.  Those wishing to see the Internet
version of the arguments can consult the reasonably accessible paper
by Jerome W. Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David D. Clark, End-to-end
arguments in system design, ACM Transactions in Computer Systems 2(4),
1984, pages 277-288.]

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 20:08:28 -0500
From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com>

This posting contains the Preface to the fourth volume in an annual
series of infrastructure handbooks from the COOK Report. The preface
summarizes our understanding of the current state of the Internet.
The complete handbook, including this preface and the table of
contents is described in detail at our website.
(http://cookreport.com/insurgency.html )

IP Insurgency:  Internet Infrastructure and the Transformation of Telecomm

State of the
Internet in 1998

Rapid Technology
Development Pushes IP Everywhere

While in the popular imagination the Internet is the World Wide
Web, email, mail lists, and e-commerce, for a much smaller group of
experts, the Internet took on new dimensions in 1998.  First during
1998 it became evident to everybody that one could not be considered
a player in the telecommunications arena without providing access
to the Internet.  Less widely recognized, but in the end far more
significant, was a second development.  In the eyes of a small number
of cognoscenti, the Internet, considered in the broader sense of the
technologies that support TCP/IP, began to play the central role in
developments that are now transforming telecommunications on a global
level.

In 1998, currents set in motion by the growth of the commercial
Internet began to impact all of telecommunications.  Many of these
currents were identified by the analysis in David Isenberg's Rise of
the Stupid Network.  At the most basic level, the Internet's on-going
expansion helped to fuel a very rapid growth in the overall amount of
network data traffic.  It created a momentum that helped to ensure the
deployment of optical network technologies previously not expected to
be commercially viable before the end of 2000.

In this context, some of the people who were watching the build-out
of the fiber networks of the next generation telcos were gripped
by some gnawing doubts.  Might a world-wide, build-out of TCP/IP
connectionless networks become an extremely cost effective
undertaking?  Might it turn into a tsunami that could endanger the
economic viability of the multi-trillion dollar PSTN worldwide?  This
may seem like a bold claim.  However, its substance is brought starkly
home by the reality of the laying of more than 50,000 miles of new
fiber by companies like Qwest, Level 3, IXC, Williams and Enron --
companies whose names are generally unknown to most of the American
public.

Advances in Optics
Enable Building of New Nets for a Penny or Two on the Dollar

>From the end of1996 through the end of 1998 was a period of time when
ATT's spin-off of Western Electric, renamed Lucent, came to have a
market value exceeding that of its parent company.  During this same
two years, the maturation of wave division (WDM) multiplexing and
then dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) increased the carrying
capacity of fiber from 20 to 400 gigabits per second.  The speed of
this growth far out stripped the pace of change dictated by Moore's
law which, by making mainframe processing power affordable for desktop
computers, was turning the legacy telco view of the world on its
head.  Cheap intelligence sent potential control of the public switched
telephone network into the hands of every user at its periphery.
The speed of these changes sent tremors through telco business models
by rendering obsolete the 20 to 30 year depreciation cycle for the
telco's central office switching and network equipment.

The next-gen upstarts would use the commonality of IP packets as
envelopes into which the entire range of communications protocols -
voice and video, as well as data - could be stuffed.  TCP/IP made it
possible for these new companies, each of which possessed in its new
dark fiber capacity in excess of that of ATT or MCI, to implement
networks in which the cost of delivering services would be a small
fraction of those incurred by their legacy predecessors.

But while the legacy networks were saddled by the burdens of
regulation, they also had the customers.  Their existence rested on
the installed base of more than 600 million telephones world wide
known as the public switched telephone network (PSTN).  While next-gen
telcos would gain some businesses and early adapter individuals as
customers, they knew that their ultimate test would be to take on
the huge PSTN with streamlined systems that cost a fraction as much
to operate.  To do this they would need the development of protocols
to enable new services at a fraction of the cost of the old.  They
would also need protocols to cheaply and transparently merge critical
portions of the PSTN to their new IP services.  One force impelling
the triumph of the TCP/IP insurgency which, seen another way, is
merely the ubiquitous application of the protocol, is that legacy
companies are generally finding it necessary to offer their own
versions of IP telephony.  The next-gen telcos are surrounding and
enveloping the PSTN like amoebas.  They are doing this as the stronger
and more forward looking legacy telcos are rolling out system upgrades
that, in high user density areas, are essentially copies of the DWDM
fiber nets of Qwest and Level 3.

NSP Movers, Shakers and Dinosaurs--
Assessing the Ranks

While the next-gen build-out was underway, consolidation became the
battle cry among ISPs.  Verio continued its buyout binge spurred
along by a $100 million investment from NTT.  But Verio loomed not
much larger in the scheme of things at the end of the year than at
the beginning.  Except for the changes in the prices of their common
stock, (some prices much more absurdly inflated than others) business
continued as usual for DIGEX, PSI, GTEI (BBN), ATT Worldnet, Sprint,
AOL, and MSN.  Among year's the smartest moves was the Sprint Earth
Link alliance which made Earth Link into an excellent national
service.

IBM Global Net was purchased for more than $4 billion by ATT.  Known
in some circles as the "American PTT," ATT thereby gained the biggest
legacy TCP/IP network in the world.  ATT continued to show its lack
of understanding of the new times with its purchase of TCI.  ATT's
leadership, not grasping the full potential of either satellite
or wireless as a local loop solution, seemed fixated on competing
with the rapidly merging ILECs for a second wire into American homes.
ATT's combination of these two huge legacy dinosaurs, we predict, will
go nowhere fast.  These behemoths are unable to understand that, in
their ability to keep up with the speed of technology changes, their
huge size is a liability.  ATT's January 99 win of the new backbone
for @Home is certainly interesting -- especially when one considers
that @home rejected bids by all the next-gen telcos.  Certainly ATT is
looking to challenge the LEC strangle hold on the local loop.

The one hopeful glimmer to come from ATT all year long was its hiring
of Sally Floyd and Vern Paxon for its Silicon Valley based Internet
research group.  (Cisco however completed the plucking of Lawrence
Berkley Labs and increased the size of its very considerable brain
trust by hiring the legendary Van Jacobson.)  Meanwhile IBM as the
other major global dinosaur of American industry, rather than compete
internationally against upstart Teleglobe and UUNET, sold Global
Net and cast its lot with e-commerce by building up its Washington
lobbying organization with Mike Nelson, Roger Cochetti, and John
Patrick.  Arm in arm with Vint Cerf, these IBM folk rather than push
new technology development, got ever more firmly behind their Global
Internet Project which collected big industry money on behalf of the
newly emerged and morally bankrupt ICANN.

Bernie Ebbers' combined MCI-Worldcom made major waves as an exercise
in debt leveraging.  It took one major backbone (ANS) and turned it
into a corporate firewall security arm of UUNET.  Its move to take
the largest backbone of all (MCI) and combine that with UUNET was
properly attacked as an effort to build monopoly share.  John Curran's
analysis of the implications of this move was accurate.  He offered
a very powerful explanation of why it would lead to damaging industry
consolidation.  The upshot was that MCI was forced to sell its
backbone business to Cable and Wireless, an international legacy telco
still in search of its first Internet clues.  While the successful
merger gained MCI executives a pool in excess of $150 million in
golden parachutes first promised them by BT, it is likely to spell
the end for MCI's very considerable supply of Internet technical talent
which is leaving for players who appreciate it.  Doug van Howelling's
Abeline alliance with Qwest while leaving a smiling Richard Leibhaber
has stripped MCI's vBNS research partnership with the NSF of the
depth of R&E support that it otherwise would have enjoyed.  MCI does
have a strong Internet telephony R&D effort, but given Ebber's efforts
to strip costs in order to pay off the money borrowed to finance
his acquisitions, we wonder whether it has any chance of surviving.
Four months after Ebber successfully swallowed MCI, the over riding
priorities of the new mega-company appear to be cost cutting not
technology advancement.

Peering discussions continued apace and served as a mirror for
changing models of the network.  John Curran (GTEI CTO) showed how
peering, even among the top five or six backbones, depends on market
place share.  His analysis played a significant role in forcing the
divestiture of Internet MCI.  Later in the year GTEI (BBN) was in the
center of a peering dispute with Exodus.  In the resulting squabble
those who thought content providers could call the tune found out
otherwise.  Finally, the model of regional multi-homing to many
backbones, pioneered by Fast Net, was used successfully on a national
level by Savvis.

The Local Loop
Challenge

@Home remains a savvy player.  We know many delighted customers.
Nevertheless implementation in some areas has been slipshod.  From
what we can tell problems almost always have been the fault of the
Cable provider.  However, cable modem internet connections, now
approaching a million, are growing in a serious way.  The Canadian
cable industry seems more intelligent than its US counterpart.
Videotron's 1999 experiment with Cisco for the delivery of telephony
via cable internet connection shapes up to be quite exciting.

The FCC is revisiting Part 15 no-license radio rules that include
spread spectrum wireless for the first time in a generation.  It's
December 98 Notice of Inquiry Proceeding (98-153) has generated
substantial support for its suggested ultra wide band use of the
spectrum by a range of devices that can cut across television and
other previously prohibited frequencies.  One notable comment filing
is from Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation that recommends
changes to the rules that will enable a wide variety of devices and
services hitherto restricted.  IRC conducted a study validating Tim
Shepard's MIT dissertation that asserted that millions of radios could
operate without interference in a very small area, such as a city.
IRC challenged, with impressing technical calculations, fears that
such radios and devices operating at very low noise levels would
interfere with traditional services.  It did a study that showed
that a Pentium class PC makes about the same noise as a proposed
Part 15 device will - and nobody is complaining that PCs interfere
with television reception.  The rethinking of FCC policy in this area
could help break the LEC monopoly by permitting manufacturers to make
high performance, low cost, no-license digital radios that can bypass
traditional wire based data services, and turn this technology into a
major means of local loop access.

Satellite has the potential to become an alternative to local loop
connectivity.  Unfortunately it is currently too expensive.  Sky
Station isn't off the ground yet.  Nor is Teledesic.  We recently
published a cover article on Alohanet and innovative effort to
increase the efficiency and there for lower the price of satellite by
use of spread spectrum.  Alohanet is currently having difficulty at
the very critical stage of putting their prototypes into production.

Craig McCaw's NextLink Communications has done a very interesting
deal with Level 3 that could have interesting synergies for Teledesic
(another McCaw owned company) when its system goes live.  Give the
amount of fiber involved, McCaw could sell access to that at market
rates and throw in satellite local loop for free, if he ever wanted to
mount a LEC killer.  Readers will find it well worth taking a look at
the details of the arrangement found in section 11 of the Level 3 10q
filed on November 13, 1998 at http://www.edgar-online.com.  Basically
Internext, a subsidiary of NextLink will gain the right to use 24
of Level 3's dark fibers by paying a total of $700 million in cost
sharing as the network is built.

Technology
Development:  Fiber, DWDM, Routers, IPV6 & Telephony Protocols

The impact of Bernie Ebbers' speculative excess on MCI is a shame
since it is MCI that has developed the very clean, lean and mean,
telephony model outlined in our December issue.  This model has only
five levels beginning with WDM over fiber, framed by gigabit ethernet,
on top of which ride IP and MPLS.  Applications are handled in two
layers, one for web IP applications and one for IP servers which
packetize voice video and data.  The five layers are tied together
by a single hierarchy of web based information systems and network
management.  It is likely that six systems will make up the management
organizational structure of the next generation telco's compared to
the 12 systems that must be maintained and coordinated so that the
legacy telco can provide separate voice and internet services.  If
MCI doesn't bring this new architecture to market, it is likely to be
realized by Qwest or Level 3 whose backbone is being built largely by
ex-MCI senior engineers.

Plans to send IP over glass became reality.  CANet3 became the first
operational IP over fiber network.  By year's end it was generally
understood that many DWDM light paths (lambdas) running with gigabit
Ethernet or SONET framing over fiber and doing without ATM and
without complete SONET gear could cut the transmission cost of data
by a factor of as much as a 100.  Faster routers were also coming
on-line.  These included boxes from Lucent, Nortel, and Juniper.
Implementations of IPv6 stand in the wings.  While quality of service
at the IP level remained a seemingly intractable problem, we find it
intriguing to begin to hear talk from Sycamore Networks and elsewhere
that multiple lambdas at level two may be used to provide a kind of
on-demand QoS.  (Details on this may be found in this issue.)

Having an 18 month head start over Level 3, Qwest acquired EuNet
and Colorado Supernet and started offering IP services and various
transport services priced very aggressively in an effort to win market
share from ATT and other old line telcos.  But Level 3 made a mark
for itself with efforts to hurry into development a protocol that
would allow providers of IP telephony to seamlessly interconnect
their systems with the PSTN.  Williams, meanwhile, got read to test
Sycamore Networks' first optical filters.  Mediatrix, a small French
Canadian company, developed a persuasive argument which pointed out
that for Internet telephony to take off most quickly, the tools for
its implementation should be located at the user's intelligent desktop
on the periphery of the network.  As far as telephony protocols
themselves go, we learned why H.323 is generally to be avoided and
why SIP is both elegant and simple and therefore good.  In a December
1998 follow-up conversation with Mediatrix we also learned that the
industry, instead of giving birth to a dominant IP telephony protocol,
is nurturing whole families of protocols.  Such families will cover
a wide range of Internet telephony applications.  Thanks to this
widespread protocol development we see few, if any, roadblocks to the
development of a considerable variety of IP telephony applications
created by a variety of vendors ranging from ILECS to next generation
telcos.

No Real Boundaries Separate Commercial
Internet from Rest of
Telecommunications

In general, two 'rivers' are moving forward.  On the one hand, the
commercial Internet is growing rapidly.  On the other hand it becomes
very evident that the innovations designed to propel the commercial
Internet need not stop there.  If IP Sec is useful in the commercial
Internet, it is equally useful in private internets.  If IP telephony
is useful in the commercial Internet, it is probably even more useful
in using corporate Virtual Private internets to take telephone traffic
off the PSTN.

In short, by the end of 1998 the technology supporting packet data
networks had become so productive that entrepreneurs began to find
compelling economic arguments to begin to use it to carry the payloads
of older, legacy, connection-oriented voice and video networks.
Fueled by the opportunity to entirely eliminate the expensive SONET
and ATM infrastructures of the PSTN, companies have been formed to
take advantage of these technology blank slates and are beginning to
force the older networks to think about emulating them or die.  The
commercial Internet has unleashed currents that for the first time are
really pushing convergence between voice and data networks and between
the commercial Internet and the PSTN.  These currents are moving
cost-effective unregulated TCP/IP nets into direct competition with
the regulated PSTN.  The grounds on which the unregulated networks
compete with the telcos could hardly be less equal.  The telecom
technology development engine nurtured by the open, non-proprietary
intellectual meritocracy of the IETF has created substantial new
wealth and entire new industries.  It is beginning to dawn on some
of the legacy telcos and legacy computer companies that they cannot
compete.  They will have to cannibalize their installed technology
base and do it quickly or die.  A lot of powerful people in a lot of
big companies will soon have to face the reality that they should be
very afraid of the TCP/IP Insurgency bearing down upon them.

The Mysterious ICANN Coup

In this context the Internet now finds itself caught on the horns of
a serious dilemma.  Three years of domain name wars, culminating in
1998, finally brought home to the American government that the dynamic
Internet engine of wealth creation was politically immature.  Some
of the most critical functions of the network were done by Jon Postel
on the basis of nothing more than informally agreed upon custom.
What Postel did had no authority in law except as function supported
by a DoD contract for a small homogeneous (and largely U.S.) research
community.  His Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions
had no institutional basis.  While the Internet was an obscure
research network, it did not seem worthwhile to have anyone argue
over who set the rules for domain names, IP numbers or protocol
port assignments.  Suddenly in 1998, with the impact of the TCP/IP
insurgency about to change the face of a multi- trillion dollar world
wide telecommunications industry, the stakes were very real.

The year 1998 marked the culmination of what some considered to be
nothing more than a process designed to provide a formalized mechanism
for the execution of the IANA functions.  For others, we suggest
that the creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) was a much more serious matter.  These people
saw ICANN not just as the means for the administration of critical
technical functions but as a vantage point from which they could
determine how the Internet should be governed by using it to make the
rules under which the Internet would operate.

We have documented extensively our complaints about ICANN in previous
issues of the COOK Report and will not repeat the details of our
indictment here.  Instead, what we wish to call attention to is
the question of the limits of ICANN's power.  Defined narrowly,
ICANN should be nothing more than a body that sets policy for the
development and use of domain name space, the assignment of IP
numbers, and the assignment of port numbers to new protocols.  These
are considerable powers, especially when we recall that the first
allocations of IPv6 numbers are expected this year.

In reality, the importance of ICANN's role is increased well beyond
these functions by the fact that virtually all players see it as
the first legally-constituted, international governing body for the
Internet.  While acknowledging that ICANN's initial role is limited,
Esther Dyson has indicated that there many other issues, including
e-commerce and privacy, with which she would find it attractive to
become involved.  She has also left open the door to ICANN's adding
a new 'supporting organization' at some as-yet-to-be-determined
point in the future.  By definition, if ICANN added a new supporting
organization, it would be extending its authority.

Indeed, the dilemma created for the IETF by ICANN's tendency to
increase the bounds of its authority became starkly apparent as the
fall out from the ICANN BOF at the Orlando IETF was debated on the
POISED list in late December.  The one IANA function that was free of
controversy was the assignment of port numbers for new IETF protocols.
Nevertheless, the ICANN bylaws elevated what some claimed was largely
a clerical function into a Protocols Supporting Organization (PSO)
that would give the Internet Architecture Board the right to name
three members to the 19 member ICANN Board of Directors.

At the ICANN BOF at the Orlando IETF, Mike Roberts and Esther Dyson
explained the ICANN position to a thoughtful audience which has
become aware that ICANN is no longer a continuation of the old IANA
functions.  The wait-and-see attitude of the audience was a marked
difference on the part of the unthinking endorsement of ICANN
demonstrated at the IETF plenary in Chicago in August.  It was
pointed out that ICANN would require the IAB to sign a contract
for IANA services with it (ICANN) if it wanted ICANN to recognize
the IETF as the Protocols Supporting Organization and to permit the
IAB to fill three ICANN Board seats.  ICANN was told that ISOC was
the organization that would have to sign any contracts on behalf of
the IETF and the IAB.  The leaders of the IETF have always resisted
incorporation, fearing quite correctly, that letting the lawyers in
the door would be giving them carte blanche to destroy IETF culture.

We asked Fred Baker, IETF Chair, to assess our understanding of what
happened.  Fred replied "I think you missed some points here.  ICANN
requires the PSO to be a corporation, and the IETF is not and probably
never will be, for a list of good reasons.  There was no argument that
the IETF should incorporate, during the plenary, the POISSON meeting,
or any other time.  There was merely the observation that the IETF
could not itself be the PSO - and the observation that European
Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) and others want status in
the PSO when it is formed (which is also different from being the PSO
themselves).  This has been a settled issue for quite a while; what
was discussed in both forums what form the PSO might take."

Fred added: "The PSO is an independent entity which the ITU, ECMA,
ETSI, and IETF might be members of - and as currently constituted,
the IETF would be the only class 1 member of.  I think there is only
one proposal, and it is to be found at
http://www.ietf.org/drafts/draft-ietf-poisson-pso-bl-01.txt.
Basically, it describes a shell corporation that has members which are
themselves organizations, and describes what their various classes of
membership are.  The PSO has the right to appoint ICANN Board Members.
But the IETF would have a pretty strong voice in the PSO.  The IETF
cannot sign contracts, as it is not a legal entity.  ISOC signs
contracts for the IETF when appropriate.  But nobody is planning on
the IETF signing any contracts here."

Judging by what the lawyers who gave birth to ICANN as a corporation
have done to the IANA functions, the IETF has been very well-advised
in its refusal to incorporate.  As we pointed out in our January
issue, the establishment and early operation of ICANN has been done
in a way that is totally antithetical to the time honored open and
democratic processes of IETF working groups.  The ICAN and IETF
cultures could hardly be farther apart in their approach to problem
solving.  Those who might have felt comfortable working with an ICANN
with Jon Postel at the head had to ask themselves at the ICANN BOF if
they trusted Esther Dyson and Mike Roberts in the same way that they
trusted Postel.  The answer was surely "no".

We suggest that our readers ponder these issues very carefully.  The
intellectual meritocracy of the IETF working group is the fundamental
cultural foundation from which springs the TCP/IP insurgency that
is overturning the telecommunications world.  Nothing would suit the
agenda of the huge legacy telecom empires better than a world in which
their lawyers are able to tell the engineers of the Internet what they
can and cannot do.  It seems likely to be a few weeks before we will
see the IETF/IAB final response.

The Golden Egg - Will ICANN Kill the Goose or Just Steal It?

Right now we know only that ICANN was established in the most
mysterious of ways.  We know that its leaders give lip service
to openness while pursuing an unclear agenda behind the scenes,
justifying their bylaws with specious arguments at best, and
practicing a style of operation that renders them accountable to no
one but themselves.  Borrowing the epithet of "adult supervision," we
must ask: is ICANN nothing more than a benevolent dictatorship imposed
on the Internet by the mighty five for the Internet's own good?  Or,
is it something else?  Time will tell.  We find it hopeful that the
NTIA's November 25, 1998 MoU with ICANN made it clear that ICANN is
not ready to provide adult supervision to anyone.  Indeed, ICANN is
now receiving parental supervision from NTIA, pending a show of its
ability to muster strong enough consensus support from the Internet
Community.

Even so, knowing that the IP Insurgency is now so close to total
triumph in undermining the old telecom order, we would be naive not
to consider the possibility that more serious intentions lay behind
the conservative, old line computer companies, and ITU-oriented telco
interests saw an opportunity.  In the process of institutionalizing
the IANA functions they could try to form ICANN as an international
regulatory governing body for the Internet - one that they could
indeed use to protect their own interests.

The only problem is that they still fail to recognize that the
Internet, as the Stupid Network, where the processing intelligence is
at the periphery and not inside central office switches, has unlike
the telephone system no Central Office that can be used as a point
of control.  They would like to make ICANN into a Central Office
control point for the Internet.  What they fail to realize is that,
unless they can convince the government of the United States and
the governments of the all the other major internet using nations
of the world to pass laws giving ICANN legal enforcement powers over
its supporting organizations in their respective countries, they are
likely to fail.  Why?  Because there is no Central Office point of
location for the Internet.  To the Stupid Network, the telco Central
Office model is simple irrelevant.  Attempts to create one, barring
acts of unthinkable international coordination, will fail.

Put simply they have failed to understand that they have no authority
beyond the consent of those whom they would pretend to govern.  So
far Interim president Mike Roberts, has led the secretive and Internet
ignorant ICANN board in ways that will likely ensure that when ICANN
speaks, no one will listen.

There can be no proof that ICANN will do evil because ICANN is not yet
fully constituted, and has not yet been given NTIAs' final blessing.
But make no mistake about the legal and operational framework that
Mike Roberts, Larry Landweber, Joe Sims and their corporate supporters
have built for ICANN.  They are trying to structure it with the hope
that it will be possible for ICANN to get control of telecom rule
making globally including the Internet for whatever purposes they may
have in mind.

While the world's legacy telcos and computer companies may be slow
to innovate, they are run by people intelligent enough to realize that
if they can't win on technical merit, ICANN may be the vehicle for
their self-preseveration.  In the minds of these people, ICANN looks
destined to become the first Internet international regulatory body.
Therefore, these companies have ample reason to want to gain direct or
indirect control of ICANN.  Such control may be their only way to see
that the IP insurgency doesn't overwhelm and absorb them.

But something even more profoundly important is at stake.  The
technologies of the industrial age raised the economic barriers for
anyone wanting to start a business beyond the reach of most ordinary
Americans.  Because our culture and history has long preached the
virtues of self-reliance and economic independence, this was hard
for most of us to swallow.  For the first time in a century, the small
cost and enormous power of the personal computer hooked to a modem
and to the Internet re-opened the door to individual freedom and
economic self-reliance.  But this re-opened door is a profound threat
to both those business interests that seek monopoly market power and
those whose livelihood depends on social and political control of the
masses.  These people fear the Internet and are looking for a way to
control it.  ICANN, as constituted, represents the last best hope of
achieving their misguided goal.

January 27, 1999


You have just read the preface to:

IP Insurgency:  Internet Infrastructure and the Transformation of
Telecomm Can Triumph of Stupid Network Be Derailed by ICANN Model
of Central Office Control?

An Anthology of COOK Report on Internet Articles:
Volume Four of an Annual Handbook on the Commercial
Internet's Business, Technology and Management Issues

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