IETF meetings: US Government demands prioritization
Priority Sign by Pete Reed
Representatives of the US government have demanded that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) come up with a solution for prioritizing certain data within government networks and at the interfaces to other networks. [..]
At the IETF meeting in Prague Antonio Desimone of the US Department of Defense said that the switch to a “global grid” raised a number of issues, such as how delivery of a specific e-mail could be ensured within a defined period of time. What was needed was a prioritizing of data, one that also took in emergency and catastrophe scenarios. [..]
The solution would have to encompass the networks of partners, such as NATO, as well as public and commercial networks. As it was, the prioritizing of important data traffic was a topic of interest to all sides, he declared. [..]
At the IETF meeting in Prague it was impossible to miss that some parties had their doubts about a default “priority bit” for data traffic. Commenting on the idea Fred Baker, Cisco developer and former head of the IETF, told heise online: “Realizing the prioritization in all servers is undoubtedly a controversial matter with the IETF.” He said he was especially worried that prioritization might in reality not be confined to authorized persons. Should confinement fail script kids and hackers might find ways to use “priority bits” for their purposes, he observed.
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