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RE: 10 years and no ubiquitous security



Title: RE: 10 years and no ubiquitous security

Hello Mr. Simpson,

I am not quite sure what was the point of your "10 year" memo, but it was entertaining.  You may have had some valuable information for us but it was sidetracked swerving into and over Steve Kent.  I am relatively new to the IETF so I carry no political baggage one way or the other.  However, I must say that in my observations and conversations with Mr. Kent, I find him to be an extremely talented and technically astute individual.  Further, he has, in my opinion, a very professional and articulate style when addressing technical issues within the WGs.  He presents in a clear manner that can be understood by the audience in a non-offensive manner.  I think that if more participants adopted these characteristics and qualities, the IETF process would deliver Internet benefits much more efficiently.

Should you have constructive comments that can help make things run more smoothly in the WGs, you would indeed further the cause of Internet Security delivered more quickly to the user community.

Best regards,

Dennis Beard

-----Original Message-----
From: William Allen Simpson [mailto:wsimpson@greendragon.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 6:50 PM
To: ietf@ietf.org
Cc: ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
Subject: 10 years and no ubiquitous security


10 years ago this week, we had an IETF meeting in San Diego.

10 years ago on Tuesday, Phil Karn sprawled out across my hotel room bed
and drew the packet header that became ESP.  (Remember when we were
small enough to have hotel room BOFs?) 

10 years today, at a lunch meeting, Phil Karn gathered a group of us,
and we agreed to pursue IP Security, as "the most important thing
missing from the Internet".  (Most real work was still done in lunch and
dinner BOFs last time I attended IETF, and presumably that tradition
continues now.)

10 years ago tomorrow, Brian Lloyd and I had a "rubber hose" lunch
meeting with Steve Kent, who as a member of the IAB had refused to allow
the PPP WG to publish CHAP in our RFC as an official authentication
protocol.  (He had previously mandated that we remove all security
protocol negotiation.)  He backed down, but we had to change the name
from "cryptographic" to "challenge".

Steve Kent refused to charter the IPSec WG.  We had to reform the
structure of the IAB (removing Steve Kent) -- which was good for many
other reasons, although its efficacy was short-lived.

After all these years, ESP itself is remarkably unchanged.  (The
sequence field is 32 bits instead of 16 bits, but we did that in 1993.) 
Remember, by 1995 we had multiple interoperable implementations.

Roughly 5 years ago, IPSec was supposed to be disbanded, because its
work was complete.  Instead, somebody named Steve Kent secretly took
over the WG editorship (with no consensus, or even WG discussion), and
his "appointment" was enforced upon the new "reform" WG Chairs.

For 5 more years, IPSec WG has slowly turned out unworkable documents,
generating endless and fruitless discussion.

Today, IPSec has insignificant deployment, and the WG goeth on forever.

...

Should I remind folks that at that same San Diego IETF, JI and Phil and
Steve Deering and others of us had a lunch BOF on Mobile-IP?
--
William Allen Simpson
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