Tolls could dot the Internet highway and police booths, too
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NEW YORK (AP) -- On the Internet, the traffic cops are blind -- they don't look at the data they're directing, and they don't give preferential treatment.
That's something operators of the Internet highway, the major U.S. phone companies, want to change by effectively adding a toll lane: They want to be able to give priority treatment to those who pay to get through faster.
OK, that was a cheap shot. The main people who would consider Linux a "Rogue" operating systems would...
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Yep, but there's also an additional take to this; if we're going to put toll lanes through routers, we have to put in a toll booth and enforcement police as well (though the two are really independent, but it's part of the same problem).
1 Toll booths. OK, so a pbuttenger in the InternetAutobahn(tm) may or may not have access. I, as an Earthlink customer, am currently treated no differently than any other Consumer Debt level Earthlink customer (I don't know about higher-bandwidth types). That should change, which requires, among other things, a router aware enough to differentiate my packets from someone else's. Ideally, an identification # would be Earthlink's responsibility to tack onto *each packet* (cf RFC793, specifically the OPTIONS section, for one location on IPV4; IPV6 should have a similar section but I'd have to find the relevant RFC). The identification number would be an amalgamation of a router ID # (namely, my DSP uplink) and a secret customer ID that Earthlink can use later for backlookup.
This of course is easily spoofable if misimplemented, which can lead to problems; ideally, routers would be on the loookout for such spoofs as well. Routers of course would drop improperly identified packets and blacklisted packets, which leads us to:
2 Police precincts. If there is someone out there known to be doing something illegal (child love, piracy, other such services), then, upon a writ from the appropriate authorities, a blacklist can be extended to that identification number in 1, such that no router can route it. (There are some issues here, as the hacker can probably synthesize another one easily enough. Of course, can he synthesize a valid checking account number? Probably, but it will be harder.)
Presumably, a router would be required to mutate the identification number in such a fashion as to ensure that it is clear that packets coming *from* that router are provably (within a certain probability) coming from that router, with the encrypted payload of the originating node or router.
Obviously this could get arbitrarily long if we're not careful, but then most implications only allow a certain number of hops anyway.
Usage of the router would be billed, presumably, on a monthly basis. That could vastly complicated things of course for the company(s) managing the trunk packet routing.
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Rex Ballard wrote on 28 Feb 2006 06:46:01 -0800 Not necessarily for Microsoft, though they're one of the biggest. But obviously there...
The Ghost In The Machine ... That presumes that the cracking requires a brute force method. Besides...
The jurisdiction of the writ gets very interesting if one contemplates whether a website selling sugar can be blocked in the US but not in, say, Denmark.
I'm not sure I understand the problem. The ATM transport protocol allows a router to create high priority channels and low priority channels. Most commercial grade routers...
3 Rogue operating systems. Wait, is Linux a rogue or just a useful tool? Depends on whom one asks, I suppose.
Watch this space; I think it's going to get a little messy. But never mind that, whom did you want to own your data today? :-)
-- It's still legal to go .sigless.