Architectural Digest
When Clark talks about creating a new architecture, he says the job must start with the setting of goals. First, give the medium a basic security architecture -- the ability to authenticate whom you are communicating with and prevent things like spam and viruses from ever reaching your PC. Better security is "the most important motivation for this redesign," Clark says. Second, make the new architecture practical by devising protocols that allow Internet service providers to better route traffic and collaborate to offer advanced services without compromising their businesses. Third, allow future computing devices of any size to connect to the Internet -- not just PCs but sensors and embedded processors. Fourth, add technology that makes the network easier to manage and more resilient. For example, a new design should allow all pieces of the network to detect and report emerging problems -- whether technical breakdowns, traffic jams, or replicating worms -- to network administrators.
The good news is that some of these goals are not so far off. NSF has, over the past few years, spent more than $30 million supporting and planning such research. Academic and corporate research labs have generated a number of promising technologies: ways to authenticate who's online; ways to identify criminals while protecting the privacy of others; ways to add wireless devices and sensors. While nobody is saying that any single one of these technologies will be included in a new architecture, they provide a starting point for understanding what a "new" Internet might actually look like and how it would differ from the old one.
Some promising technologies that might figure into this new architecture are coming from PlanetLab, which Princeton's Peterson has been nurturing in recent years (see "The Internet Reborn," October 2003). In this still-growing project, researchers throughout the world have been developing software that can be grafted onto today's dumb Internet routers. One example is software that "sniffs" passing Internet traffic for worms. The software looks for telltale packets sent out by worm-infected machines searching for new hosts and can warn system administrators of infections. Other software prototypes detect the emergence of data traffic jams and come up with more efficient ways to reroute traffic around them. These kinds of algorithms could become part of a fundamental new infrastructure, Peterson says.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Guest (Ted Vollers) on 12/20/2005 at 4:45 AM
1
Guest (Adrian Lopez) on 12/20/2005 at 5:17 AM
1
Something really bothers me about this proposed future for the Internet.
Guest (Kerry Bowser) on 12/20/2005 at 8:42 AM
1
Guest (Kerry Bowser) on 12/20/2005 at 8:42 AM
1
Guest (Jim Hayes) on 12/20/2005 at 12:51 PM
1
Spam can be cured on the current Internet by charging per email - I think a penny a msg while Bill Gates promotes a tenth as much, but either will kill off the economics of Spam.
The problem is the suppliers of equipment for the Internet are probably scared Spam will go away, because it will open up massive amounts of bandwidth and squash sales of new equipment needed to expand Internet capacity. Thus they have little incentive to stop Spam. However, killing Spam will more than double the capacity of the Internet and allow new options like IPTV to take over.
Maybe thats the solution - create a secure Internet2 for communications and leave the current infrastructure for IPTC broadcasting, with hardware designed to only accept and display video. Would that make everybody happy?
But to make it truly successful, it should be internatioal in scope.
Guest (webfrog) on 01/11/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
1. Charging for e-mail - talk about an administrative and technological nightmare. With international boundaries blurred or invisible it would be impossible to implement under the current structure of the internet. Anyway the spammers already use off shore systems to send it to try to avoid the U.S. legislation on spam.
2. Keep patching and worry about it later. Sorry but the longer we do that the more disruptive the re-build becomes and I guarantee you it will be disruptive no matter what.
3. The internet is already run by big companies, they provide the very backbone of the internet and are the reason we even have it, without them there would not be an internet.
Guest (wsebfrog) on 01/12/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
One road to improving the internet would be the adoption of IPV6, that would provide over 281 trillion addresses, more than enought for every device that wants to access the internet it's own IP address.
Guest (Bill Priff) on 12/21/2005 at 1:41 PM
1
There is a choice to be made. There will either be a dumb network, and open network protocols - which will spur innovation and some chaos and uncertainty, or there will be a network run by big companies that cant shake the bellhead mindset - which will lead to less freedom and innovation.
Guest (C R Muthukrishnan) on 12/22/2005 at 12:30 AM
1
Guest (muthu) on 03/27/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
Guest (C R Muthukrishnan) on 12/22/2005 at 12:30 AM
1
Guest (Bill Rosenfeld) on 12/22/2005 at 10:59 AM
1
Guest (Ted Vollers) on 12/20/2005 at 4:45 AM
1
Guest (Adrian Lopez) on 12/20/2005 at 5:17 AM
1
Something really bothers me about this proposed future for the Internet.
Guest (Jim Hayes) on 12/20/2005 at 12:51 PM
1
Spam can be cured on the current Internet by charging per email - I think a penny a msg while Bill Gates promotes a tenth as much, but either will kill off the economics of Spam.
The problem is the suppliers of equipment for the Internet are probably scared Spam will go away, because it will open up massive amounts of bandwidth and squash sales of new equipment needed to expand Internet capacity. Thus they have little incentive to stop Spam. However, killing Spam will more than double the capacity of the Internet and allow new options like IPTV to take over.
Maybe thats the solution - create a secure Internet2 for communications and leave the current infrastructure for IPTC broadcasting, with hardware designed to only accept and display video. Would that make everybody happy?
But to make it truly successful, it should be internatioal in scope.
Guest (Bill Priff) on 12/21/2005 at 1:41 PM
1
There is a choice to be made. There will either be a dumb network, and open network protocols - which will spur innovation and some chaos and uncertainty, or there will be a network run by big companies that cant shake the bellhead mindset - which will lead to less freedom and innovation.
Guest (Bill Rosenfeld) on 12/22/2005 at 10:59 AM
1
Guest (Adam) on 02/04/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
Guest (Kevin) on 03/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
The people and companies cited in this article have a lot to gain by a massive change to the Internet. Akami, Microsoft, Internet2, etc. would get to charge everyone for new products. Computer scientists are always dieing to scrap the status-quo in order to design and put their name on the next new thing. Scrutinize every word they say.