[Air-l] not wishing to start a war . . .

[Matthew Allen]

Denise wrote:

> In my book the packet doesn't care what it is carrying. Carrying a bit

> of binary code or a text message is all the same. Doesn't make the 
> packet a container of expressive content.  That content appears to the

> reader on the other end.

While Bob has produced some argument against this position from a
conceptual perspective (and I think Bob and Denise are both right
depending on one's conceptual starting point), it might be worth
pondering the longer-term impact of IPv6 on the received wisdom that the
packet doesn't care what it is carrying. One of the empirical reasons
why Denise's position has become, for some, a legitimate conceptual
position is that the original design of internet protocol was heavily
weighted towards 'all information is equivalent' within a particular
packet, with very limited capacity to differentiate packets while they
remained in transit and not being sent or received. Clearly though IPv6,
by increasing the size of the header and permitting significant
additional information about the packet might produce experiences in the
world which will require some revision of the 'packet doesn't care'.

Perhaps though, it's not the packets that care or don't care but,
rather, the systems which use those packets (both technological and
economic)? There's an extraordinarily complex and altogether unseen
world within the network (which in fact Denise helped educate me in over
coffee somewhere at an AoIR conference I think) which is mostly divorced
from packet contents. IPv6 however has the potential to bring some
interaction between packet content and packet-switching system.

M


Dr Matthew Allen
Associate Professor in Internet Studies 
President Association of Internet Researchers
Faculty of Media Society and Culture
Curtin University of Technology
CRICOS Provider Code 00301J
http://smi.curtin.edu.au/NetStudies/allen.htm
+61 8 92663511 (v) +61 8 92663166 (f)