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A new use for an old protocol can affect the protocol in two ways: It can increase the complexity of the protocol, as it did when MIME support was added to SMTP, or it can "profile" the protocol and use only a part of it. This profiling is a force that has entered the Internet protocol suite of late. Applications like MMUSIC (Multiparty Multimedia Session Control) and IPP are writing profiles of HTTP in an attempt to be isolated from changes in HTTP by the real owners of HTTP. Initially, profiling will deliver the application quickly to your users. But over the long haul, profiling will result in product conflicts that will increase your support work.

Those of us who lived through the OSI-TCP/IP war remember how profiling only made a programmer's work harder. There is always the time-consuming challenge of determining what parts of the protocol to use and what is meant by profiling those components. Past experience indicates that profiling work is more time-consuming (both for specification and implementation) than developing a new protocol. The old adage that we keep solving the same old problems is at work here. New people do bring fresh enthusiasm to the Internet, but old-timers have done it before and know what paths were and were not followed and why.

New Development Leaders With any luck, more than our protocols have matured on the Internet. In the past, corporations have adopted TCP/IP applications after they have been used on the Internet long enough for some of the novelty to wear off. The corporate community can now position itself as a leader in Internet development. Once you delve into the impact of a course of action, you can make your opinions known. Go to www.ietf.org/html.charters/wg-dir.html to learn which working groups are active in the IETF and familiarize yourself with their charters, milestones and work accomplishments. Then consider what their work will mean to your company, your security policy, your change-management procedures and your budgetary plans. It is past the time in application development when the vendors lead you through the warp and woof of the Internet. It is time to protect your investment in Internet usage.

Robert Moskowitz is a senior technical director at the International Computer Security Association and a member of the Internet Architecture Board. Send your comments on this column to him at rgm@htt-consult.com.