Rough Consensus and Running Code: Integrating Engineering Principles into Internet Policy Debates

I. TUTORIAL II. THE CONTINUING DEBATE OVER NETWORK MANAGEMENT AND QUALITY OF SERVICE III. CHANGING TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIMITS OF THE LAYERED AND END-TO-END MODELS IV. ARCHITECTURE AND NETWORK SECURITY V. KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY PAUL MOCKAPETRIS VI. NEW APPLICATIONS, NEW CHALLENGES VII. THE FUTURE Is WIRELESS On May 6-7, 2010, the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition hosted the conference, "Rough Consensus and Running Code: Integrating Engineering Principles into the Internet Policy Debates." (1) This conference brought together members of the engineering community, regulators, legal academics, and industry participants in an attempt to provide policymakers with a better understanding of the Internet's technical aspects and how they influence emerging issues of broadband policy. At various points during the recent debates over broadband policy, observers both inside and the outside the government have acknowledged that the debate has yet to reflect a full appreciation of the engineering principles underlying the Internet and the technological opportunities and challenges posed by the existing architecture. The level of discourse is reminiscent of the days when economic arguments first began to be advanced in during regulatory proceedings, when participants in policy debates lacked a sufficient vocabulary and an understanding of the underlying intuitions to engage in a meaningful discourse about the relevant insights. The conference's title, "Rough Consensus and Running Code," (2) also emphasizes that network engineering has long been a pragmatic rather than a theoretical discipline that does not lend itself to abstract conclusions. Network engineers recognize that there is no such thing as the perfect protocol. Instead, optimal network design varies with the particular services, technologies, and flows associated with any particular scenario. In other words, network engineering is more about shades of gray than absolutes, with any solution being contingent on the particular circumstances and subject to change over time as the underlying context shifts. Policymaking is better served by an understanding of the relevant tradeoffs than by categorical endorsements of particular architectural structures as being the foundation for the Internet's success. Another side effect of the lack of technical sophistication in the current debate is a tendency to defer to opinions advanced by leading members of the engineering community. People without technical backgrounds often regard strong statements of scientific conclusions as possessing a high degree of conclusiveness. Yet anyone who reads broadly in the technical literature quickly realizes that members of the engineering community often disagree sharply over the best way to move forward and that many seemingly authoritative declarations are actually positions in technical debates that are hotly contested and still ongoing. Just as in economics and law, where there are often as many different positions as there are people offering opinions, so too in network engineering. At the same time, many areas over which policymakers are now struggling are regarded by the engineering community as completely uncontroversial and long settled. Understanding how technical considerations should influence Internet policy thus requires a better understanding of the principles on which the Internet is based and an appreciation of the current areas of agreement and dispute within the engineering community. Toward this end, the conference program brought together engineers representing the full range of views on various issues currently confronting policymakers, as well as industry participants who have actual experience in deploying and running networks. I. TUTORIAL The conference began with a tutorial designed to provide an introduction to the basic engineering concepts underlying the Internet and to provide a flavor of the tradeoffs underlying the architectural choices. …