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Re: [ontolog-forum] Sabotaging a communication system is not a new idea

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:42:46 -0500
Message-id: <546A4FB6.4050708@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John,

It is unfortunate that there were no historians around when the Web was created. There is material on the technology of ALOHAnet which later was used in the development of ARPAnet.
My IP address was published in the printed “telephone” book of Internet addresses in 1972 when I was writing image processing code for spy satellites. The code was run on Illiac IV which I downloaded via Telnet to the Illiac disks. I later became the chief communications architect of the TCP/IP network later known as
Global Command and Control System, designed to handle Top Secret traffic. Therefore, I am as likely a historian as any on early TCP work, and I try to be objective in recounting the history.

You wrote:

“Unfortunately, the Arpanet protocols were designed in the 1960s by academics who had no experience with such issues.”

This is true, the ARPAnet protocols inherited packet switching from ALOHAnet at the University of Hawaii, used to communicate between campuses on different islands. All TCP work was built on the concept of packets. In this sense packet switched networks were initiated by academics. Subsequent work was done in the commercial sector by groups like BBN and Honeywell and others.
 
But this does not address the concepts of jamming or anti-jamming because it does not need to. In fact we were very aware of the need for anti-jamming over packet networks in the ‘70’s and had an appropriate response that is still in use today. That involves two concepts: “closed user groups” and “black coding” (or whatever the variant is called now).

Closed user groups used reserved bandwidth over the Internet using defined paths through the Internet routers. These assured that in the event of a major alert, the Internet would not see any change in the traffic across the net. This was ensured because of “black packets” that maintained encrypted traffic at 100% regardless of the clear message content. Packets are thrown away if they are not used by the destination node.


 You wrote:
The WWW was also designed for free sharing among academics who had no experience with such issues.  When we talk about ontologies for networks, it might be a good idea to consider them.”

Not really, the Web was designed for advertising and commerce by a consortium of companies that funded the initial W3C work. There were researchers involved in that work at the commercial companies, but academic work was not on their minds, that fell to the academic text book publishers of the AAP. The W3C Consortium members were more interested in the "pull/push" aspects of hypertext documents. These eventually resulted in the control of the sessions by websites, not the users. This was seen recently in the use of "persistent cookies" which have a life beyond that of the session. Indeed, we have such controls on the user's web sessions that they may control may be taken away from entirely.

Rich,

I don't see the role for security mechanisms for ontologies in the communications stack. They belong in the session or application layer, unless you can provide a justification. We are bound to see security mechanisms such as "compartmentalized data" and "closed users groups" in ontologies in the future. I have done some work in CALS, the DoD spec that accommodated various security levels using the "marked data" functions of the CALS tags. These tags are then converted to standards for secure page (TS, S, C, FOUO) annotations during page composition.
Likewise, the DoD was using semantic markup as early as 1988 in some U.S. Army documents.

-John Bottoms
 FirstStar Systems
 Concord, MA USA

On 11/17/2014 11:12 AM, sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Rich,

That's true.

> Other creatures also jam, avoid jamming, and
> various tactics and strategies that have worked
> well for them in the past. Dolphins do it a lot.
> It's a naural development.

Unfortunately, the Arpanet protocols were designed in the 1960s by academics who had no experience with such issues.

The WWW was also designed for free sharing among academics who had no experience with such issues.  When we talk about ontologies for networks, it might be a good idea to consider them.

John





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