5 ms·

That's an interesting position to take, because I imagine if a team of developers decided to invent the internet in a vacuum today, it'd be a hell of a lot more

That's an interesting position to take, because I imagine if a team of developers decided to invent the internet in a vacuum today, it'd be a hell of a lot more secure than the "let's hope nobody uses this protocol maliciously" attitude prevalent in the early days of the internet. Not that that is a bad thing, but just something to think about.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
"Secure" as in "security by closed source and obscurity, because, hey come on, we need to upsell you on 'enterprise' features"? Yes, of course. Not really any different from the Internet we have today, though.
hnlmorg 5y ago
In the early days of the internet it was a closed network of academic and government properties. Nobody at that time would have guess it would grow into even the 80s style internet, let alone what we have now.
tres 5y ago
It wasn't an attitude of naive hope that there wouldn't be nefarious actors leveraging the protocol; there was a different kind of people using the Internet. There's no need to design security in the system when you literally know everyone who is using it. And everyone who was using it had the same goals in mind. So, I don't disagree with the sentiment -- people today would probably do it a little bit differently; however, I do disagree with the expression -- people designing these protocols weren't naive. They were trustful because they had to be. In the early days of building something new, nothing works without trust; not the Internet... not Bitcoin... not a nascent venture... nothing.
- int0x2e 5y ago
  While I don't disagree, if people at the time had assumed that everyone on the network could be trusted (forever), why design the IPv4 address space to make room for 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up.
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    > 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up. Because when TCP and it's predecessors were invented there were only a few computers in entire world. In initial ARPAnet there were only 4 hosts (In September 1973 there were 42 computers connected to 36 nodes) But each computer had many users. That's why there were so many ports, because the thinking was there will be big computers with many users each running their own internet connected clients and servers. That was true even in the beginning of 1990's, when I want to high school, I had access to Unix shared between 2000+ people.
- registeredcorn 5y ago
  To expand on what's being referenced here, consider the following: video game speedruns. Throughout the 80s, 90s, and early-to-mid 2000s, there was a certain level of trust in the claims people made about PBs (Personal Bests) and WRs (World Record/Ranking). There was no practical way to record, host, or especially upload literal hours of footage (VHS footage) of a run you did. Even if you did somehow achieve all of the above, it would be a grainy, low quality video which is hard to see, maybe with a stopwatch nearby so people can verify your claim. People would be watching this through RealPlayer, if they could watch it at all! So what do you do in such a situation where people have no practical or easy means to verify claims? You build credibility off of how active you are with other members of the community. You post and comment on forums about what strategies you're trying, what difficulties you're dealing with, and what new information you might have uncovered through trial and error. You don't prove your work, you prove your worth. Your standing is evidence of your claim. To me, this is a great example of "personality-credit" communities that's existed online; Usenet and BBS aside. The mentality has largely faded away with improvements to bandwidth and services like Twitch and YouTube, but considering the technological challenges of what someone in say, 1993 would be dealing with in trying to prove they just set a new record can really give a glimpse into what things used to be like.
matt123456789 5y ago
People do think about it. RFCs are still being written and revised by people daily. IETF, W3C, and others are publishing new standards like QUIC. We understand the risks a lot better now than when those original RFCs were written because the world has changed a lot since then, and in no small part because of them.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

"Secure" as in "security by closed source and obscurity, because, hey come on, we need to upsell you on 'enterprise' features"? Yes, of course. Not really any different from the Internet we have today, though.

hnlmorg 5y ago

In the early days of the internet it was a closed network of academic and government properties. Nobody at that time would have guess it would grow into even the 80s style internet, let alone what we have now.

tres 5y ago

It wasn't an attitude of naive hope that there wouldn't be nefarious actors leveraging the protocol; there was a different kind of people using the Internet. There's no need to design security in the system when you literally know everyone who is using it. And everyone who was using it had the same goals in mind. So, I don't disagree with the sentiment -- people today would probably do it a little bit differently; however, I do disagree with the expression -- people designing these protocols weren't naive. They were trustful because they had to be. In the early days of building something new, nothing works without trust; not the Internet... not Bitcoin... not a nascent venture... nothing.

int0x2e 5y ago
While I don't disagree, if people at the time had assumed that everyone on the network could be trusted (forever), why design the IPv4 address space to make room for 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up.
- unionpivo 5y ago
  > 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up. Because when TCP and it's predecessors were invented there were only a few computers in entire world. In initial ARPAnet there were only 4 hosts (In September 1973 there were 42 computers connected to 36 nodes) But each computer had many users. That's why there were so many ports, because the thinking was there will be big computers with many users each running their own internet connected clients and servers. That was true even in the beginning of 1990's, when I want to high school, I had access to Unix shared between 2000+ people.
registeredcorn 5y ago
To expand on what's being referenced here, consider the following: video game speedruns. Throughout the 80s, 90s, and early-to-mid 2000s, there was a certain level of trust in the claims people made about PBs (Personal Bests) and WRs (World Record/Ranking). There was no practical way to record, host, or especially upload literal hours of footage (VHS footage) of a run you did. Even if you did somehow achieve all of the above, it would be a grainy, low quality video which is hard to see, maybe with a stopwatch nearby so people can verify your claim. People would be watching this through RealPlayer, if they could watch it at all! So what do you do in such a situation where people have no practical or easy means to verify claims? You build credibility off of how active you are with other members of the community. You post and comment on forums about what strategies you're trying, what difficulties you're dealing with, and what new information you might have uncovered through trial and error. You don't prove your work, you prove your worth. Your standing is evidence of your claim. To me, this is a great example of "personality-credit" communities that's existed online; Usenet and BBS aside. The mentality has largely faded away with improvements to bandwidth and services like Twitch and YouTube, but considering the technological challenges of what someone in say, 1993 would be dealing with in trying to prove they just set a new record can really give a glimpse into what things used to be like.

matt123456789 5y ago

People do think about it. RFCs are still being written and revised by people daily. IETF, W3C, and others are publishing new standards like QUIC. We understand the risks a lot better now than when those original RFCs were written because the world has changed a lot since then, and in no small part because of them.