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Re: IPv6 Security Last Call Initial Questions


Robert W. Shirey says:
> At 11:21 AM 3/31/95, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> ...
> 
> >TCP/IP WANs. (I was very amused when a certain ignorant government
> >official actually claimed in my presense that no one was using "the
> >internet" for mission critical applications.
> 
> In this case, I think it's
> a matter of your lack of familiarity of the terminology used in the
> Government, particularly the U.S. Department of Defense.

The individual in question believed the internet to be a toy without
commercial application, and had reason to know better.

BTW, "mission critical" on Wall Street means you start losing
significant money or go bankrupt if the application in question goes
down. This is the equivalent of the DOD notion of "mission critical"
meaning that loss of the application would endanger life or national
security, since for a corporate entity where billions of dollars are
at stake in a day's trading the urgency is often as extreme, at least
to the company. The situation is in some sense more extreme than you
would expect because in some firms such as highly leveraged trading
operations one is essentially "at war" at all times.

> Data networks are used to provide mission-critical services throughout DoD
> and rest of the Federal community.  I am not yet aware of such usage on the
> Internet.

I know of financial institutions that could conceivably go bankrupt
within a brief period without their corporate TCP/IP networks
remaining functional.  This is not to say that these companies depend
on external service providers to keep these networks working.

Keep in mind, by the way, that the protocols we are talking about are
used internally in organizations as well as externally. My interest in
a functioning IPSP is far more frequently for internal use by my
clients, although of course the external applications are also nice.

Perry