Re: [SLUG] the way of the future

[Rick Welykochy <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave Fitch wrote:

> I was more interested in the talk about TCP/MS - TCP/IP with M$
> proprietry "extensions" - and the future of the internet.

Good point. For those who have not read the article at 
<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010802.html>,
the author Cringely (is that his real name?) presents some
interesting hypotheses and conclusions.

Quoting Cringely, in summary:

1. MS dictum: every feature in Windows had to pass the litmus test,
   "Does it increase market share?"

2. Lack of security in Microsoft software was a deliberate business decision. 
   (I don't think was a concious decision at the beginning, but might be now)

3. The real motive for raw socket support is for Microsoft to use Windows XP
   to exploit a bad situation, to deliberately make things worse. 
   (A great business decision as we shall see next)

4. Microsoft wants to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol ... [the] new
   protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as
   pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you
   remember that product from Banyan Systems. I'll call it TCP/MS
   (This is where the real speculation and danger begins)

5. [MS can ship] the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install
   it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies
   could happen in less than a year, and that year could be prior to the new
   protocol even being announced. It could be shipping right now. 
   (The last sentence above is wild speculation)

The motivation in 4. above is to promulgate the false idea that TCP/MS is more
secure than TCP/IP and all those horrid attacks originating from *nix boxes
(when  WinXP and even WinK are really the main culprits) can and will be prevented
once the switch to TCP/MS occurs. "You'll be safe from Unix then, oh saintly
MS customers".

By "more secure" is meant that the reserved areas of TCP/IP headers will
be appropriated by MS to provide originator ID info for outgoing packets.

With the above hypotheses, one can easily proceed to a conclusion that shows
MS's 95% market share can be used to force routers, content providers, servers,
practically everthing and everyone that wishes to interconnect with the Windbloze
boxies out there (i.e. a huge potential customer base for any business) to
conform to TCP/MS. Routers would require small changes, TCP stacks a bit of a tweak
and voila! MS increases its market share (their original intent) and eventually
owns the Innernet.

My observations:

- there would be a great inertia preventing the uptake of TCP/MS in routers and
  Internet software

- if TCP/MS were introduced, it will not be secure, for there is scant "reserved" space
  in the IP and TCP for much "identification", and the headers would not provide any
  "originator ID" information that could not easily be spoofed, just like IP addresses
  are currently spoofed; if TCP/MS used extended length headers, TCP/MS still could easily
  be embraced by the open source community if required

- recent history shows that MS's repeated attempts to subvert basic Internet protocols
  such HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, HTTP proxy, etc. into propriety have, in the main, failed.
  Why? Because their market share of 95% desktop only translates to maybe 60% of connected
  machines (servers, clients, desktops, etc), and interoperability is the basic requirement
  of the Innernet; thus any further attempts to proprietise Internet protocols will be
  met with great resistance from the majority of routers, servers and software that run
  the Internet ... MS controls surprisingly little of this part of the 'Net :)


Cheers
RickW



-- 
_____________________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
       - Henry Spencer