insight 

I’m asked all the time what I think is a good idea for a TLD.   The answer depends on how you judge success.  If it’s high volumes of registrations and huge profits you’re after then I’m not sure there is a “good idea” any more, except of course running the root registry, which could be more successful, by those criteria, than any registry before.

The possible route to take is looking at entirely new ideas for TLDs, in the same way that .tel is attempting something completely new.   So in that spirit here is my idea for a completely different TLD that I’ve been shamelessly promoting for the last year.  Not do anything with, you understand, but to get people to think “outside the box” on domains names, because that it where the future may well lie.

My idea then is very similar indeed to TinyURL.  What you register is not a domain, but a URL, which gets translated into a short code and it is that short code that then becomes the domain name.  So you would register the URL “http://blog.nominet.org.uk/insight/2008/06/icann-paris-new-gtlds/” and get given the domain name 6hgntn.l in return.

The domain name would not be a delegation though, just a URL redirection on my huge specially written webserver (easy to do).  You might be able to choose from a variety of redirection techniques and you may be charged differently depending on how much data you allow the registry to keep.  If you let them keep everything then it might even be free.

If you wanted to choose the domain for the redirection, instead of having one assigned then that would certainly cost a lot more, but then the registry would have to do dispute resolution and all that so maybe it is not worth selling these.

So, why .l?  Well obviously, because it is so short and actually any one character TLD will do, l for link or u for URL or r for redirection, it doesn’t really matter.  Some might even say this is the downfall of .mobi, at four letters for the TLD it is three letter too long and should really be just .m.

The issue that ICANN community process has been least able to tackle is that of access vs privacy in the WHOIS databases of Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). On the one side you have registrants, both individuals and organisations who want to maintain privacy for some very sound reasons. If you ran a web site offering abortion advice from a country where that was illegal then you would register in a gTLD, not the local country code and also want some degree of protection of your identity.

On the other side you have law enforcement who regard WHOIS, quite genuinely, as a very important tool in fighting online crime. Obviously that means that either there are a lot of dumb criminals who use their real identities to register domains or, more charitably perhaps, the protections in place to stop fake registration data do actually work.

This side is joined by the formidable Intellectual Property Community for whom domains names and the Internet are a huge problem of detection and enforcement. They, like law enforcement, want free and unfettered access to all WHOIS data.

Stalemate

The current position at ICANN is stalemate. Views are becoming so entrenched that the most recent discussion was on whether or not to commission more research into the problem, with some groups saying quite vehemently that enough research had been done over the years so no more was needed!

Jurisdiction

If we just concentrate on the issue of access for law enforcement you should hopefully understand just how complex and potentially intractable this problem is.

In the UK our policy is pretty straightforward. If you are a UK law enforcement agency and you ask for the data then we give it, even if the registrant has opted for privacy in the WHOIS. If you are a law enforcement agency outside of the UK then you must contact one inside the UK and ask them to ask us. So we deal exclusively with law enforcement agencies in our local jurisdiction.

In the gTLDs however the problem is much more complex. Let’s say PIR were to adopt the same policy and only deal with US agencies, since that is where they are based. Can you really imagine other countries being happy at asking US law enforcement agencies for data from what is supposedly a global domain name? Can you even imagine Iranian or Cuban law enforcement agencies asking or receiving an answer?

So this is altogether a global problem, in a world where mechanisms for establishing credentials over long distances are, at best, informal.

This is why one camp just wants it freely accessible, without limits and with all the data in it checked regularly. That way their access problem is simplified. Of course those who care about privacy would never agree to that.

There was a lot happening in the DNSSEC world at this ICANN, far more than any other forum and far more than previous ICANN meetings.

Signing .org

Public Internet Registry (PIR) announced their intention to sign .org, with the help of their registry partner, Afilias. This will be the first big Top Level Domain (TLD) to sign. The best bit is the reasons they give for doing are exactly the right reasons - they want to make the Internet a safer place by doing the right thing and signing .org.

Implementation is a while off but all the pre-work has been done and the ICANN board voted to give PIR the go-ahead. This is a brave step forward from the progressive CEO of PIR, Alexa Raad, and we wish them all the best.

IANA preparations and the new TAR

IANA announced their plans for a Trust Anchor Repository (TAR) as an interim measure until the root is signed. This will be a web site that us TLDs can populate through our normal processes with our keys. Anyone ISP or business who wants to use DNSSEC on the nameservers now has only the one place to visit to get keys rather than going to lots of different places.

This will certainly make life easier but it is still a poor second to signing the root. That unfortunately is out of IANA’s hands otherwise they would have done it by now, they have a well designed and well built (we’ve audited it) infrastructure in place to do it when they get the go ahead.

One thing IANA have been clear about is that they do not want any API access to the TAR. They are clear that this will develop into a competing technology to signing the root and almost everyone knows that is the best way forward.

US Government internal mandate

I haven’t checked this independently but I’ve been told that some departments of the US Government are going to mandate the use of DNSSEC internally. I’ve no idea how this will work but it shows a genuine recognition of the value of DNSSEC that I hope manufacturers take note of.

Resistance is fading

As knowledge and understanding of DNSSEC and the benefits it brings are spreading, the resistance amongst it from registries is fading. There are two public refuseniks but even then the picture is different depending on which part of the organisation you talk two.

The first is DENIC (.de) who are in the unenviable position of having a zone with more than just nameservers in it, they also have direct customer data of the type normally only seen on registrar nameservers. This means that DENIC have no choice but to sign their whole zone and cannot take advantage of the latest revision to DNSSEC that allows the rest of us to only sign those domains that are actually using DNSSEC. For us that means a gradual and low impact implementation of DNSSEC, but for DENIC it means the kind of big bang implementation us larger TLDs have all been frightened of.

The second, and most recent dissident, is apparently Verisign. Their CTO Ken Silva has been quoted in the media as saying that the urgency for DNSSEC is not there any more. I’ve no idea what is driving that, but I suspect it is the cost and complexity of adding DNSSEC support to their proprietary nameserver cluster. There is no doubt that bandwidth costs will increase for TLDs because the size of the response we are giving is increasing dramatically. But then with the likely gradual increase in DNSSEC takeup I expect this to be naturally absorbed in our rolling upgrade programme.

What this statement does do though is throw the spotlight on their contract with the US Department of Commerce (USDoC) to be the Root Zone Maintainer (RZM). It sits a bit uneasily when the rest of us are all pushing for the root to be signed, IANA are prepared and yet Verisign is going soft on the whole idea.

The exit plan

It might be more accurate to describe this as a lack of an exit plan. It is becoming clear that there is no way currently for a zone to signal that it intends to stop signing itself. If it just does so without such a mechanism then any validators operating in strict DNSSEC mode (nobody would do this just yet) would decide that all replies from that zone were bogus, effectively losing contact with it. Thankfully this is just a theoretical risk for now and our DNSSEC expert, Roy Arends, already has a solution so this should not take long to spread amongst implementors.

So, overall a lot is happening in the push for a secure DNS. All we need now is the root signed!

The most reported news from this ICANN meeting was the apparent go ahead for many new Top Level Domains (TLDs) to be bid for. Some of us here have even been on the new media commenting on it. But as with many of these things the devil is in the detail, so here is some more in depth explanation of this decision.

The background

ICANN is split into various constituencies and all of the work on this has been within the Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) the consitutuency that represent registries of Global TLDs (gTLDs) and Sponsored TLDs (sTLDs), registrars and the business community including the powerful intellectual property community. They were asked by ICANN to come up with a policy for how more TLDs might be allowed into the root, which they duly have done. Other than two policy guidelines that had dissenting views, this was largely a full consensus decision. First hurdle crossed.

There was also an investigation into whether or not there were any technical issues with adding many more domains to the root. This concluded that there weren’ t any such issues. Second hurdle crossed.

Finally ICANN itself evaluated the GNSO policy to determine whether or not it is implementable. Not to actually create the implementation plan but to check carefully for any hidden showstoppers in the details. This they did at the cost of $10 million, as reported by their CEO Paul Twomey, and concluded that the policy was indeed implementable.

The decision ICANN actually took

So with all those pre-conditions met the ICANN board voted to ask the executive to go away and come up with an implementation plan, accepting the principle that there is no reason why there cannot be many more names added to the root.

This is going to take some months and may well cost another $10 million to do.

However, during the vote some ICANN board members raised strong concerns with two of the policy guidelines (the same ones that had dissenting views) and there was general agreement that they needed to see how these would be handled in the implementation plan, before the concerns were allayed.

The details of the policy and the two contentious guidelines

The one thing ICANN wants to avoid is having to make judgements on whether or not a new TLD is a “good thing”. They wanted a policy that took much of the decision away from them into a community driven process. Of course, quite what the community is for any new TLD, is still to be decided, but the principle is there.

The policy the’ve got does that with these two exceptions:

• Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law. This obviously is completely open to interpretation and interpretations vary wildly by country. I have no idea how ICANN is going to get a workable solution to this even with the long list of potentially applicable internationally laws.
• An application will be rejected if an expert panel determines that there is substantial opposition to it from a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted. Again this is highly subjective in so many different ways. What is substantial? What is a significant portion? And what is the applicable community?

So we wait with anticipation the implementation plan. I’m glad I’m not writing it.

What kind of new gTLDs might we see?

This is the question that everyone is asking and anything said here is purely speculation. Albeit speculation based on the ideas that have been circulating at ICANN, but speculation nonetheless.

1. Generic wordsThese are popular in any TLD, plain generics like colours, animals, vegetables, emotions and so on, mainly because they have such a widespread usage.
2. Regional names that cannot be applied for through the ccTLD process So this might include .sco or .cym. There is already an established precedent for this in .cat for the Catalan language and culture.
3. Global brands I’m writing the application for .nominet as we speak … no hang on … erm …
4. Common word endings For example .tion should get you around 3,000 cool domain names like litiga.tion or rejec.tion. Domains names can be fun and creative.

Before you get carried away the application fee could well be $100,000 and non-refundable, based on previous processes. Furthermore ICANN may have a cunning plan for TLDs where there is more than one applicant - they have already selected an auction provider to build the necessary system to auction the domains. Interestingly though, this is by no means fully decided and is another element that has to go into the implementation plan for further approval.

How many will there be?

This is the most interesing bit and one where I think ICANN has not looked far enough into the future. Currently the application cost is expected to be $100,000, to recoup the $10 million spent so far on this, and the millions more to go. But then what happens?

The root is the ultimate registry, the ultimate domain to have, so the demand is going to be enormous. the policy is designed not to judge except in the very edge cases and so the only thing that will stop a proliferation of names in the root is the price. ICANN has no other lever to hold back the flood because it has specifically not given itself one in this whole policy and process.

So when the initial outlay is recouped and ICANN has made say another $50 million from new applications, will it really be able to sustain such a high price? Granted the assessment for many of the initial applications will be high, possibly covering most of the fee, but soon standard questions, standard answers and a much cheaper process cost will appear. This will then leave ICANN open to a huge pressure to reduce the price to a cost-recovery level, and if does that then the floodgates open and we could get millions of registrations in the root.

That leaves us moving from a distributed, resilient, multi-level hierarchy, towards a concentrated, flat and vulnerable root. It’s all a question of numbers.

But will they be a success?

The problem in answering this has been the apparent ’success’ of .com. Yes it’s huge and yes it is vastly profitable but both of those attributes may not be the best thing for the Internet. The whole Domain Name System is designed to be distributed and putting too many names under one TLD, both as an absolute and as a proportion of the whole, goes against that. Furthermore is sets an unrealistic standard for growth and absolute size that new TLDs are highly unlikely to achieve. China (.cn) and India (.in) will probably exceed .com adding to the imbalance.

So the new TLDs should really be judged by how well they are adopted by their target community (where they have one), how stable they are, and what quality they bring to the market. If this happens then the whole Internet will benefit.

Note: Edited the bit about the application fee as Phil pointed out this had not been confirmed one way or the other.

I wrote previously about the discussions starting on establishing trading markets as a way of dealing with the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.  Well things have now moved on a bit and we have a policy proposal being discussed (proposal 2008-07) at RIPE that is the first key step to enabling a market in the RIPE region to form.  It doesn’t mention money but it does allow for simple address transfer between registered holders of IP addresses.

To save you having to look it up, this the key text being added:

Any LIR is allowed to re-allocate complete or partial blocks of IPv4 address space that were previously allocated to them by either the RIPE NCC or the IANA. Such address space must not contain any block that is assigned to an End User.

Address space may only be re-allocated to another LIR that is also a member of the RIPE NCC. The block that is to be re-allocated must not be smaller than the minimum allocation block size at the time of re-allocation. Demonstration of need for the address space by the receiving LIR to the RIPE NCC is not required during transfers.

Re-allocation must be reflected in the RIPE Database. This re-allocation may be on either a permanent or non-permanent basis.

LIRs that receive a re-allocation from another LIR cannot re-allocate complete or partial blocks of the same address space to another LIR within 24 months of receiving the re-allocation.

The re-allocation will be notified to the RIPE NCC, who will record the change of allocation. Please note that the LIR always remains responsible for the entire allocation it receives from the RIPE NCC until the re-allocation is transferred to another LIR or returned. The LIR must ensure that all policies are applied.

Re-allocated blocks will be signed to establish the current allocation owner.

Re-allocated blocks are no different from the allocations made directly by the RIPE NCC and so they must be used by the receiving LIR according to the policies described in this document.

A number of people have expressed support for the proposal but not ETNO, the influential voice of the European Telecoms industry.  We are another refusenik, for similar reasons.  Rather then go through them again, here is the text of the objection I wrote to the working group:

I do not support this proposal for the following reasons:

* It breaks the policy of providing addresses to those who need them in a
fair and non-discriminatory fashion because it allows LIRs to choose who
gets spare addresses for arbitrary and secret reasons rather than through
the open and transparent process of the RIR.

* It is discriminatory to those LIRs in developing countries (within this
RIR region) who have fewer IPv4 addresses than other countries for
historic reasons and will now have to pay considerably more for addresses
by buying them from other LIRs.  This will only exacerbate an already
difficult global position where some countries are pushing for a change in
the global management of the Internet driven by a perception of exclusion.

* It is only a partial solution to the problem.  Many LIRs believe that
much more can be achieved by a determined and well implemented policy on
reclaim/reuse.  However this policy only addresses the potential transfer
solution to the problem, not the potential reclaim/reuse solution.
Furthermore, it is likely that this policy, if implemented before a proper
reclaim/reuse policy will render such a policy unachievable and
unworkable.

* It will create a landrush of false or exaggerated allocation requests
from people who wish to profit by arbitrage, leading to far faster
exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.  In other words there will now be a
significant difference in the price that IP addresses can be ‘bought’ from
RIPE NCC compared to that at which they can be sold on the open market.
This difference in price, the arbitrage opportunity, will lead to an
influx of speculators who will work out how to play the system and so lead
to many more addresses being allocated than otherwise.

* It takes RIPE NCC into the business of a regulator of a secondary
market, which is something it has no expertise in and brings considerable
risk.  RIPE NCC has to develop into this role because the nature of the
proposal requires policing to check transfers have happened within the
rules.  However, with the potential for transfers to have commercial and
financial implications there is far greater possibility of costly and
complex challenges to RIPE NCCs decisions.  This in turns brings with it
the risks of scrutiny from competition authorities.

* It will lead to rapid degradation of the IPv4 LIR database and loss of
control for RIPE NCC in the registration of IPv4 addresses.  If LIR A
sells a block of IPv4 addresses to LIR B then the legal ownership is
adequately covered by the contract that exists between the two and so
there is no incentive to register the transfer with RIPE NCC other than
when peering with people that make strict use the LIR database.  Rival
databases, based around IPv4 trading exchanges, will spring up.

There is still until 9th July left to comment on this proposal and given just how important it is then if you have strong views one way or the other then now is that time to let the working group know.

I noticed the other day that there is a “Linked ICANN” group in LinkedIn so I joined it assuming it was run by ICANN.  However, having seen the home page (http://www.linkedicann.com/) it clearly isn’t.  In fact it appears to be a domainer run group since that site has nothing but adverts on it.  I’m not a member of the group any more.

This got me thinking that it would be good for us to have a Nominet group on LinkedIn for anyone to join, which we could use as another way of keeping in touch with our community.  It would also mitigate the chances of someone doing to us what they’ve done to ICANN.  So I’ve created a group called “Nominet Community” and anyone can join.  This is the URL:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/101204/7BB57564185C

While I was at it I created one for Nominet staff, past and present, to join.  Obviously this one is not open to everyone:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/101205/179AFC14DE04

The Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) of ICANN have reported the results of their investigation into Domain Name Front Running (DNFR).  The conclusion, after a pretty thorough analysis, concurs with our findings that there are no provable cases of DNFR.  It also highlights the major issue that there is widespread confusion amongst registrants as to how the domain name industry works and their expectations are very different from reality.

One other very interesting part of the report is the figures given for the volumes of certain lookups done in the .com and .net.  For example in July 2007 there were 3.9 billion  WHOIS lookups for .com and .net !

You may have seen already our post on Domain Name Front Running (DNFR) since when things have got much more interesting.

Our original post explained our position that we have seen no evidence of DNFR and regard it as an inevitable consequence of a global market.  Network Solutions actually commented on that post saying they thought it did exist and needed to be tackled urgently as consumer confidence was being eroded.

Their response, which you probably have heard about, was to change their domain lookup tools so that any non-existent domain looked up through their site was automatically locked by them for four days so that nobody else could register it.  You as the customer who found it could register it, but only through Network Solutions and they are clear they will not be monetising the domain before then.

So, if you have not spotted it, they appear to be front running to protect end users from front running.

The second irony is slightly more oblique.  .com suffers dreadfully from the actions of domain tasters, who register huge volumes of domains and then cancel them before the grace period.  The mechanisms for deciding what domains to process in this way are largely algorithmic - how long was it registered for, when was it cancelled, how many clicks did it get in the tasting period.

Once a domain has entered the domain tasting merry-go-round it can be difficult for it to get off.  As soon as one taster lets it go another one picks it up because it meets the criteria for automatic registration.

So there is a possibility that the Network Solutions action could lead to a domain being picked up by tasters once Network Solutions drop the domain.  In that case the consumer who wanted it but decided they did not want to get it from Network Solutions would effectively lose it forever as it would now be on the taster radar.

There are discussions starting within the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) about the creation of trading market in IPv4 addresses as we approach the inevitable exhaustion of unallocated addresses.  The view being put forward is basically “this is likely to happen anyway and by discussing it now, we can ensure it happens in an orderly way”.

When I first heard this idea I was a bit surprised.  The RIRs are policy based bodies and so a shift to a trading market appears to be an abandonment of that policy base.  However I have been partly corrected on that.  The discussions within RIPE (I’ve no idea about the other RIRs policy process) are for a policy based allocation policy to stay in place, but the outcome of that is to be a ‘right to buy’ rather than an allocation as now.

Of course this hybrid trading market still only enables policy control of the buying of domains, not the selling of domains, which is where some of the real disagreements start to surface.

The international view

The view taken by some countries is that the global allocation of IPv4 address space is unbalanced in favour of the early adopters, namely US-based organisations.  The introduction of the RIRs has meant ‘fair’ allocation since then but the historical imbalance goes uncorrected.  So if a trading mechanism were established now, the countries that were not early adopters are going to have to pay possibly very large sums for things that others got for free.

The view from some of the RIR people is that the crunch is coming soon anyway and there is no point trying to correct that balance, it will take too much effort to do and not buy us much time anyway.  They also believe that the trading mechanism will lead to many of those early adopters selling on large parts of their allocations thereby introducing more addresses than would be available otherwise.  I’ll come back to both of those points later.

What about IPv6

Of course the looming exhaustion of IPv4 addresses is nothing new.  IPv6 was designed to get around the limitations of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are available easily and in vast numbers, so why can’t we just use that?

The simple answer is that IPv6 devices cannot talk to IPv4 devices and only a small fraction of the Internet runs IPv6.  So if I have only IPv6 on my desktop, I will not be able to contact web sites such as the BBC News, Google, The Register or even our web site.

Therefore, for the foreseeable future, both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are going to be needed.  If you have a closed network, such as an internal management system, then you can use IPv6 alone, but not otherwise.

Certified allocations

There has been talk of moving to a secure routing system for some years now where address allocations are issued certificates and those are then used by Internet routers to determine if someone is entitled to route the addresses they are advertising.

The RIRs have started the process of issuing certificates for allocated addresses, but the technology has not been finalised or deployed to see these being used automatically.  In the interim some RIRs hope they will be used manually (i.e. before we interconnect you show me yours and I’ll show you mine).

Now we have the really interesting position.  How do those with pre-RIR allocations get certificates?  Should they have to go through an allocation policy process before they can get a certificate?

Alternatively, what if the price of the certificate reflects the size of the addresses?   Say a /19 cost roughly €50,000.  That makes roughly €100,000,000 for a /8.   In a trading market this may well be the figure a /8 fetches when sold to the highest bidder.

Timescales and investment

Exhaustion of unallocated IPv4 addresses is unavoidable and we have to migrate to IPv6.  Everyone knows that even we don’t all act accordingly as uptake and use of IPv6 address space is very low.

This seems to come down to basic economics.  Without a business case for the move to IPv6 only a few are going to make the move.  So the question is whether a trading market aids that move, which to me appears not to be the case:

• Those who already have IPv4 addresses will not have any pressure to move.  Don’t forget, these are the ones running the established services that need to move to IPv6 to be accessible to others.
• Those who need IPv4 addresses may be able to use IPv6 for closed networks, but otherwise are going to have to spend money on IPv4 addresses that might otherwise be used for IPv6 migration

Equipment is generally replaced in cycles, often three to five years, at which point new functionality tends to be introduced by being included in the newer products.  If I ran a large network of cable modems I would have started a couple of years ago to look to the next versions to support IPv6, but I would never consider swapping out perfectly good ones just for that functionality.  It might take several years before they all had IPv6 and I could switch to that for the management network, reducing address allocation.

So going back to the point on the need to reclaim space, maybe there is a valid reason, which is to buy enough time for the ordinary update cycle to enable the functionality without forcing people to make out of the ordinary investment.

There’s more

There is a lot of stuff I haven’t covered here, such as the role of Network Address Translation (NAT), the worry that carperbaggers might try to grab the remaining space in anticipation of a market, the role of RIRs in controlling routeing (correct spelling, trust me) or not and how to get people to really plan for IPv6.

What is clear though is that there is a lot to think about in this one development and it has a heavy impact on a lot of people.  This is one to watch.

The misbehaviour of some users of the Internet has wrought a change that is probably going to end up being far wider than is currently perceived. It is likely to mean the reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles, whether those were defined or just assumed, that are believed to have been key contributors to the success of the Internet to date.

A spectrum of misbehaviour

To understand this we need to begin with a model of the mindset of the misbehaving parties. Rather than give one single model, which would be unrealistic, it is possible to define a spectrum of behaviours into which the majority of these parties fit and from that spectrum to derive a set of common indicators that identify such parties.

• At one end of the spectrum we have those who can be harshly characterised as the ’selfish’. These are the people who use their home connection to the maximum downloading videos over bittorrent, with no regard for the impact on the other users of what is still essentially a shared medium.
• In the middle of the spectrum we have a group that can be less contentiously characterised as the ‘carpetbaggers’. These are those who see the Internet as a source of profit driven by mass action. This is where the business model behind spam originates.
• At the other end of the spectrum we have those who are fairly characterised as ‘crooks’. These are the people who create botnets by taking advantage of the weaknesses in security both technical and social that protect home desktops.

Common mindset

The most obvious common indicator derived from this spectrum, is that these people see the Internet as a natural resource just waiting to be exploited. If we analyse this indicator further we get the following attributes:

• Anything that is not explicitly forbidden (or more accurately - prevented by the technology) is allowed.
• There are things out there on the Internet that are not ‘owned’ by anyone.
• What they want to do is more important that any other considerations.

It is remarkable just how many otherwise sensible parties fall into the trap of believing some of these things. For example the rampant theft of WHOIS data by security companies.

Explicit control

The technical response to this misbehaviour, from which the majority of success in this struggle has originated, has been focused on explicit control that either prevents or permits certain activity. A whole industry has built up around this.

There are varying degrees of success with that approach. For example the response is less than perfect when it is difficult to precisely identify the behaviour to combat, as is the case with spam. Furthermore the exploitative mindset continues to search and probe for new avenues to exploit.

Emerging from this response is the recognition that misbehaviour will only be controlled by securing each and every part of the Internet that can be exploited.

This is not to deny the impact of after-the-fact enforcement and economic mechanisms for controlling behaviour, but prevention is always better than cure.

End-to-end principle

One principle that has defined the Internet until now is the end-to-end principle, which can be summarised as the intelligent choices being made by the end devices with the core of the Internet being relatively simple.

However this principle cannot prevent the exploitation of the core which is just as much a target as anything else. If we try to maintain this principle then it will continue to allow the development of end services that try to grab as much of the core as possible. This is inevitable given the mindset above. Efforts might be made to regularise access to the core at the end devices, but then that is just a semantic trick to make it appear the end-to-end principle is still in place.

The conclusion then is that the only way we can prevent the misbehaviour that impacts the core is to allow the core to defend itself. That means the end-to-end principle has to give. There may well be other principles that have to give before this is all over.