Social and Ethical Issues

As noted above, zeroconf is not a perfect technology as it currently exists. However it should be considered that any technical solution developed by the IETF Zeroconf Working Group can almost certainly be shown to modify the behaviour of at least one application. Some combination of protocol design (or protocol design error) and program design (or program design error) will ensure that this is the case.

So it is worth considering if the IETF should endorse a technical solution that may break applications.

I am personally not especially concerned if some applications break, however I would be concerned if one of protocols that breaks is a major one (say HTTP/IPP, or FTP, or SSH). If specialist applications break (say something that does IP based refers in a cluster environment), then the answer is likely to be "don't run that application and zeroconf technology at the same time". Zeroconf is a technology that can be run in major data centres, but the people with the specialist applications are the ones best able to handle the breakage and modify the configuration of the hosts/networks to compensate.

The progression of zeroconf should be judged on the balance of the advantages and disadvantages, not just the absence of disadvantages.

It is important to recognise that zeroconf can potentially contribute to social equity issues, to ease the division between technically able, and those who cannot access technology. At the moment, ability to use the internet (or local network) is basically the domain of the technical elite. If we pass up the opportunity to make this type of technology more accessible, just so someone's computing cluster doesn't need to be modified, then that would be sad. It might even be unethical.

Conversely, we should understand that the network administrators of the future may not have the experiences that today's administrators have, since network administration requirements for small networks may largely disappear. With a smaller group of people involved in network administration, we should also consider where the next generation of network designers and programmers will come from.