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swIPe available for FTP.
swIPe is now available at
ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/swIPe/swipe.tar.Z
I wish I had a better archive site for it, but it seemed important to
get it out in a hurry.
BTW, I want to make it clear that I don't think that swIPe is
necessarily perfect and needs no changes, and that I don't think it
should be made a standard tomorrow with no discussion. I do think that
we've been avoiding playing with real proposals for too long, and that
it is important that things get back on track. swIPe is an opportunity
to experiment with a real protocol that fits nicely into the spirit of
the existing internet protocols.
If someone comes up with something better, I will naturally support
it. However, make no mistake that we need something, and soon -- the
internet is increasingly experiencing problems caused by the lack of a
security infrastructure. This is a good chance for people to begin
working with real code instead of chatting ad infinitum.
Too often, the community has sat back as a real need has gone unfilled
for too long, only to have something bad come out of it. Take HTTP.
Personally, I don't like it, but all the "good" people decided it
wasn't an interesting issue and played elsewhere until it was too
late. Mosaic filled a real need, and even though badly written and on
top of a bad protocol it saw wide deployment -- now its too late to
fix. I think that a fire has to be lit under people to spend time
working on the issue of IP security, and this seems like a golden
opportunity to me to pour some charcoal and stand by with a match.
To repeat: I am NOT being sarcastic when I say "if you see flaws in
swIPe, speak up; if you have an alternative, please present it." I
want to see discussion, which hasn't gone on for far too long.
Don't mistake this for a claim that I think swIPe is flawed and should
NOT be pushed along the track towards standardization. I personally
find swIPe very attractive. However, I'll be happy provided a
reasonable solution arrives and is adopted, regardless of who's it is.
Perry