[cap-talk] Price of resource accountability

[Neal H. Walfield]

At Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:42:27 -0400,
Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> Norm and I have argued that resource accountability is important. But
> the deeper I get into this the more I find that resource accountability
> and application compatibility do not get along.
> 
> Which raises the question:
> 
>   Granted that ad-hoc recovery methods are ugly, is the anticipated pain
>   from resource denial of service attacks so large that complete
>   re-engineering of systems is justified?

This question makes the assumption that resource accountability is
primarily useful for limiting denial of service attacks.  I think this
is a weak justification for resource accountability.  A stronger
justification, I think, is that good resource accountability means
that it is possible to more accurately enforce resource distribution
policies, and provide information to resource principals about the
amount of resources available to them.  This is one of the main
observations of the Viengoos work.

Neal