Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!wrs
From: wrs@Apple.COM (Walter Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Georgia Tech's Restriction on Internet Access
Summary: Trusted hosts are antiquated
Message-ID: <50182@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 13 Mar 91 02:46:17 GMT
References: <23808@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 37

Apple uses the "trusted host" scheme.  We have a big VAX (apple.com) that 
speaks to the Internet and transfers mail, and an internal network that is 
completely separate.  To use the Internet you must get an account on 
apple.com, which usually requires very little effort (at least for R&D 
employees).

Providing a "trusted host" was fine in the ancient (more than five years 
ago) Internet environment, where mail and remote login was pretty much the 
entire functionality one could want from a network.  However, in the 
modern Internet, we have progressed beyond such childish 7-bit ASCII games.

The most common example I can think of is the X Window System.  To connect 
the window server on my local workstation with a client on the Internet 
requires the client to initiate a connection with my workstation.  In the 
trusted host scheme, this is impossible, since the client doesn't even 
know my workstation exists.

As Internet technology progresses, I imagine that more services based on 
such client/server protocols will appear.  An institution that follows the 
remote-login-and-mail-only trusted host model will be preventing its 
members from using such services.

Certainly, there are valid concerns related to loosing thousands of young 
explorers with Ethernet-equipped PC's onto the Internet.  I think, 
however, that eliminating these concerns by restricting an entire 
institution to whatever Internet resources can be accessed through one-way 
Telnet connections may be too extreme a solution.

- W

P.S. I hope no one takes offense at the phrase "young explorers".  I
     myself am a young explorer with an Ethernet-equipped Macintosh...
     and a few years ago (at CMU), it was even on the Internet.
--
Walter Smith                            wrs@apple.com, apple!wrs
Apple Computer, Inc.                    (408) 974-5892
My corporation disavows any knowledge of my activities on the network.