Posted on 04/13/2007 12:01:58 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.
The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.
The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."
No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.
Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."
One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.
There's no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising, "a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "They'll be wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue."
The National Science Foundation wants to build an experimental research network known as the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI, and is funding several projects at universities and elsewhere through Future Internet Network Design, or FIND.
Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the universities pursuing individual projects. Other government agencies, including the Defense Department, have also been exploring the concept.
The European Union has also backed research on such initiatives, through a program known as Future Internet Research and Experimentation, or FIRE. Government officials and researchers met last month in Zurich to discuss early findings and goals.
A new network could run parallel with the current Internet and eventually replace it, or perhaps aspects of the research could go into a major overhaul of the existing architecture.
These clean-slate efforts are still in their early stages, though, and aren't expected to bear fruit for another 10 or 15 years — assuming Congress comes through with funding.
Guru Parulkar, who will become executive director of Stanford's initiative after heading NSF's clean-slate programs, estimated that GENI alone could cost $350 million, while government, university and industry spending on the individual projects could collectively reach $300 million. Spending so far has been in the tens of millions of dollars.
And it could take billions of dollars to replace all the software and hardware deep in the legacy systems.
Clean-slate advocates say the cozy world of researchers in the 1970s and 1980s doesn't necessarily mesh with the realities and needs of the commercial Internet.
"The network is now mission critical for too many people, when in the (early days) it was just experimental," Zittrain said.
The Internet's early architects built the system on the principle of trust. Researchers largely knew one another, so they kept the shared network open and flexible — qualities that proved key to its rapid growth.
But spammers and hackers arrived as the network expanded and could roam freely because the Internet doesn't have built-in mechanisms for knowing with certainty who sent what.
The network's designers also assumed that computers are in fixed locations and always connected. That's no longer the case with the proliferation of laptops, personal digital assistants and other mobile devices, all hopping from one wireless access point to another, losing their signals here and there.
Engineers tacked on improvements to support mobility and improved security, but researchers say all that adds complexity, reduces performance and, in the case of security, amounts at most to bandages in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.
Workarounds for mobile devices "can work quite well if a small fraction of the traffic is of that type," but could overwhelm computer processors and create security holes when 90 percent or more of the traffic is mobile, said Nick McKeown, co-director of Stanford's clean-slate program.
The Internet will continue to face new challenges as applications require guaranteed transmissions — not the "best effort" approach that works better for e-mail and other tasks with less time sensitivity.
Think of a doctor using teleconferencing to perform a surgery remotely, or a customer of an Internet-based phone service needing to make an emergency call. In such cases, even small delays in relaying data can be deadly.
And one day, sensors of all sorts will likely be Internet capable.
Rather than create workarounds each time, clean-slate researchers want to redesign the system to easily accommodate any future technologies, said Larry Peterson, chairman of computer science at Princeton and head of the planning group for the NSF's GENI.
Even if the original designers had the benefit of hindsight, they might not have been able to incorporate these features from the get-go. Computers, for instance, were much slower then, possibly too weak for the computations needed for robust authentication.
"We made decisions based on a very different technical landscape," said Bruce Davie, a fellow with network-equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc., which stands to gain from selling new products and incorporating research findings into its existing line.
"Now, we have the ability to do all sorts of things at very high speeds," he said. "Why don't we start thinking about how we take advantage of those things and not be constrained by the current legacy we have?"
Of course, a key question is how to make any transition — and researchers are largely punting for now.
"Let's try to define where we think we should end up, what we think the Internet should look like in 15 years' time, and only then would we decide the path," McKeown said. "We acknowledge it's going to be really hard but I think it will be a mistake to be deterred by that."
Kleinrock, the Internet pioneer at UCLA, questioned the need for a transition at all, but said such efforts are useful for their out-of-the-box thinking.
"A thing called GENI will almost surely not become the Internet, but pieces of it might fold into the Internet as it advances," he said.
Think evolution, not revolution.
Princeton already runs a smaller experimental network called PlanetLab, while Carnegie Mellon has a clean-slate project called 100 x 100.
These days, Carnegie Mellon professor Hui Zhang said he no longer feels like "the outcast of the community" as a champion of clean-slate designs.
Construction on GENI could start by 2010 and take about five years to complete. Once operational, it should have a decade-long lifespan.
FIND, meanwhile, funded about two dozen projects last year and is evaluating a second round of grants for research that could ultimately be tested on GENI.
These go beyond projects like Internet2 and National LambdaRail, both of which focus on next-generation needs for speed.
Any redesign may incorporate mechanisms, known as virtualization, for multiple networks to operate over the same pipes, making further transitions much easier. Also possible are new structures for data packets and a replacement of Cerf's TCP/IP communications protocols.
"Almost every assumption going into the current design of the Internet is open to reconsideration and challenge," said Parulkar, the NSF official heading to Stanford. "Researchers may come up with wild ideas and very innovative ideas that may not have a lot to do with the current Internet."
___
Associated Press Business Writer Aoife White in Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Stanford program: http://cleanslate.stanford.edu
Carnegie Mellon program: http://100x100network.org
Rutgers program: http://orbit-lab.org
NSF’s GENI: http://geni.net
Trying to get the cat back in the bag perhaps?
Starting over is the only way for the Federal Government to build in technology to monitor all Internet traffic for their own purposes. It grew unexpectedly fast and got away from them, and they hate it. ;)
If it will shut down Free Republic, they’re all for it.
They won’t say that in the article, of course, tho they call spammers and hackers out.
"...and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known."
Let’s see, this is from the Asspress writing out of Brussels, the home of the EU. Professional liars writing for the globalists.
“doesn’t satisfy all needs”
Like keeping conservatives informed over the msm’s need to keep people in line along lib-think, I suppose.
Can I keep my screen name?
Oh joy.
Has AlGore been informed of this?
If your ideas are so great, build your better mousetrap and let it grow when it wows the world.
(crickets)
Algore will be devastated.
—
Ya beat me to it. ;-)
Of course they will also add a use tax and a permit or license for access.
“the Internet doesn’t have built-in mechanisms for knowing with certainty who sent what.”
Central issue.
This is what they can’t stand.
In the Sixties and into the Seventies the Left was chanting Power To The People!
Now that it’s actually here, many wish to rethink just who in the people gets the power!
Of course they need to scrap the internet. It is last bastion of freedom that most govts have no control over.
Introducing Big Brother v2.0
Yes, but it could be improved greatly with just a few simple adjustments.
1) Disconnect China and a few other pestholes. Their government would be happier and we would be spared much of the hacking and spamming. Some places in Eastern Europe and South America would not be missed. These are usually NOT script kiddies doing the massive indentity thefts. It is an industry.
2) Initiate severe and ruinous penalties for abusers like spammers, hackers, zombie farms, Drive-by installers and the like. Stop considering them cute, and start treating them like vandals and thieves. Hurt them. Fatally.
Lacking those actions, we may as well take it down and start over.
Misleading title: if such a new ‘internet’ came into being, it would certainly be brought up in parallel to the current Internet, not replacing it unless it were clearly better to all concerned.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Yep, this is what scares the gov't ... no control and monitoring of the information passed through the internet.
Partial credit. 'net version 2.0 would not be controlled by the U.S. but by the U.N. -- take their idea of social correctness, add in 'security' to make sure everything you send or receive can be identified, and voila' a perfect system for commerce and control.
Oh, and of course they'd have to tax everyone.
Yes, let’s get the Government involved. That ALWAYS makes EVERYTHING better!
Actually, they might not mean “who” as a person, but “who” as an endpoint.
One of the most central debates in the IPv6 engineering debates was “can we use the 128-bit address as a definitive endpoint ID (EID)?”
As a result of mobility concerns, the answer eventually became ‘no’.
It is this ability to pick IP addresses at will that are valid within your network mask as your “source IP address” on packets you use for attacks that bedevils TCP/IP. For example, if you’re placing crank calls to my phone, the phone company knows exactly where those crank calls are coming from.
With the design of IP as it exists today, there is little way to say with certainty “This attack came from this exact IP address, traveling through these other networks...” because you can make up your source IP addresses with ease.
Next are issues in TCP — TCP doesn’t handle very high speed networks well, and it has too many non-terminal states in the state machine that lead to DoS attacks with things like half-open TCP connections, etc.
The issue of attaching a name to an endpoint is an issue far above the concerns of most of these people, but it will likely be a point of interest once they have EID’s nailed down.
Will we stay logged-in?
HMMMMM...
Could this be a late April Fools joke???
I mean really, why would this be true if the military is just now testing a new orbital internet router...At least by 2009 like they say...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6551807.stm
To me it would be such a waste of technology if they launch this, test it sucessfully, implement a working system through it, then scrap it...
But then again my sarcasm tends to get the best of me...
Kinda like what “irony” does to me as well...
But what do I know...huh???
The ‘net would speed up considerably if they’d just disconnect Nigeria.......
Everything and everyone must be monitored.
The perfect way for them to get total control over the Internet. They will be able to monitor EVERYTHING we do. Nothing like having “big brother” looking at everything we say on line. It’s all about control, and they KNOW that’s the only way they can control us. Not only that, but you KNOW they will expect the American taxpayer to pay for it all. As usual!
This is all doublespeak for internet regulation, censorship and curbing free speak.
Just another way for the govt wants to control the info flow and tax all users.
The truth is, the Gummint was involved in what you’re using now. TCP/IP as you’re now using it was a product of DARPA, a research agency tied to the DOD.
The funding for several things we take for granted now in networking are fall-out from government research or defense projects.
The real danger is of the whole thing being sucked into academia, where nothing is done quickly, and often much of the projects done in academia show severe lack of real-world engineering.
The best way to get this done, IMO, would be a partnership between government/academic/industry people. The engineers in the private sector keep the academics honest, because the truth is, the academics will never ship products. The private sector companies can say “Yea, well, that’s very nice, but we’re not going to ship that, we’re going to ship this other thing over here.”
And that suddenly puts a real crimp in the airy-fairy ideas of academics and government people.
The government and academics keep industry honest on open standards and conformance with open standards.
And every country on earth will agree to that?
No way! Fuhgeddaboutit. Now that the dimwitocrats have woken up to just how bad the free exchange of ideas is for them, they’ll want total control next time around. Besides, but I thought Internet 2 was already up and running for university users (and ultimately will be available to everyone) and was meant to address many of these issues. Maybe I should read the entire article!
They’ll just tunnel the new IP through IPv4 or IPv6. No problem. That’s how the IPv6 network started — by encapsulating IPv6 in IPv4 packets.
Actually, much of the spam, attacks, etc are launched out of China, Korea, eastern Europe/Russia.
Nigerian scams rate pretty low on the traffic counts.
No. When we start over, I'm taking yours.
I know I have a hard time finding enough free porn on the Internet. I hope they can fix that.
Like free speech.
There have been similar infrastructure updates to, say, make color TV broadcasts possible ... and the same goes for digital broadcasting.
Of course the government types will cause difficulties ... but it seems to me that the technical types are the ones driving the train here.
China won't. Like I said..Good Riddance.
And who is looking for "Agreement"?
I don't care whether China et al agree or not. I want their packets dropped, and I want them gone.
Despite the Eurosquealing, WE made the Internet. And now WE are the ones getting our computers broken into and zombied, the ones being spam-choked, and the ones being looted by identity theft.
Let them disagree all they want, to each other on their intranet.
Congressman Nostrilitis (D-CA): "Mr. Internet, is there any reason why we should permit you to run unfettered throughout the world?"
Internet: "Well, I..."
Nostrilitis: "I will do the talking here!"
That sounds good, but I don't know if it'd work.
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