Scaling Information Infrastructure: The Case of Next-Generation IP in the Internet

Design Principles Meet the Real World The main reason, IAB argued, that it favored CLNP was that it was necessary for the Internet to ® nd a solution very soon (IAB, 1992a, p. 14). CLNP is a protocol that a is already speci® ed, and several implementations existo so it a will avoid design of a new protocol from scratch, a process that would consume valuable time and delay testing and deploymento (IAB, 1992, p. 10). The concern for practical experience is deep, and the CLNP solution of the IAB appealed to this. Furthermore, it paved the road for interoperability, another key principle in the Internet. Interoperability is recognized to be the end result of a process of stabilization: I think that relying on highly independent and distributed development and support groups (i.e., a competitive product environment) means that we need a production, multi-vendor environment operating for awhile, before interoperabilitycan be highly stable. It simply takes time for the engineering, operations and support infrastructure to develop a common understanding of a technology. (Crocker, 1992) While acknowledging this design principle, the IAB (1992b) in its Kobe declaration of June 1992 explained its IPv7 decision and argued that for IP an exception had to be made: We believe that the normal IETF process of a let a thousand (proposals) bloom,o inwhich the a right choiceo emerges gradually and naturally from a dialectic of deployment and experimentation, would in this case expose the community to too great a risk that the Internet will drown in its own explosive success before the process had run its course.