Clean Slate Internet: Is it Possible?

[Ivan Seeking]

...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." [continued]

http://kutv.com/national/local_story_103134443.html

 

[turbo]

http://kutv.com/national/local_story_103134443.html

It's a bit of hype, IMO. The fact is that since the Internet was conceived, CPU speeds, storage capacities, and bandwidth capabilities have risen (perhaps) exponentially, and the Internet is being used for stuff that wasn't even dreamed about at the time. The Internet is probably due for an overhaul, but given its penetration and broad reach, governmental and business interests would do their very best to pervert any replacement system to address their agendas, and that would be bad for everyone.

It doesn't matter where you live (though it appears to be worse in China than in the US), your government does not want its populace to have anonymous access to information, nor the ability to freely exchange ideas without being monitored. Right now, the Internet has problems (hackers tracking back on IP addresses and cracking firewalls, for instance), but as long as bandwidth expansions can be accommodated, it ought to stay. As soon as a new standard is proposed, it will be compromised with demands for monitoring access (all in the name of security), data-mining, pushed content, etc, as well as governmental controls and taxation on usage that governments deem "necessary" to tax, like assigning values to large downloads, VOIP bandwidth, etc. I hate to seem alarmist about this issue, but the conduct of governments and the businesses that own them force me to this viewpoint.

 

[Crosson]

I don't think anything will begin to happen until there is a competing alternative available with an already substantial history of high-security use. At that point a slow transition away from the 'orgynet' (as future generations may call it) is inevitable.

 

[-Job-]

As far as security goes, the problems are more at the end points than the actual network.

 

[BoredNL]

Internet 2!

woo!

Or should I say..

AHH!

 

[BoredNL]

I think that all those interested in this post need to look at this. It's http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm"

 

[setAI]

obviously the Internet will evolve [as it has done already]- but gradually- eventually every aspect of the currect infrastructure of the Internet will be replaced- I mean it shouldn't be too many decades before many people are living in the Internet totally- and it certainly cannot currently provide a substrate for human level intelligence or virtual realities equavalent to physical reality yet-

 

[BoredNL]

Wake up Neo..

 

[Thrice]

Yeah right and while we're at it let's scrap the electric grid. Shocking idea.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

What about this problem?

It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today.

If this is true, and with increasing demands, how long can it continue to work effectively?

 

[turbo]

If this is true, and with increasing demands, how long can it continue to work effectively?

The Internet runs on hardware and software that is constantly being upgraded and replaced, with faster routers, more bandwidth, more memory, larger faster servers, etc. It's not a static thing that was "installed" and stayed the same for years. As long as the people running their bits of the 'web monitor demands for bandwidth, memory, routing capacity and keep upgrading to avoid bottlenecks, it will continue to work.

 

[-Job-]

Yeah but the TCP and IP protocols for example, have stayed virtually the same. These protocols are where the challenge lies, as far as i see it, not the hardware.

 

[turbo]

They may pose restrictions that need to be addressed, I don't dispute that. But limitations in addressing standards do not rise to the level of alarm that the founders of the Internet might have experienced if they knew that we users would be posting and downloading files many Mb in size. In the early days, that would have scared the pants off them.

 

[BoredNL]

There's so much alarmist sensationalism nowadays.

That article was such bull. There was no specific reason given why the whole internet should be scrapped.. It makes no sense, if you ask me.

There's IPv6, which is natively supported by Windows Vista. And for more security, there's all sorts of ways to tunnel information through strong encryption across the internet.

 

[momentum_waves]

I'd venture that the physical construction & interconnectivity of the internet system should be considered separately from how terminal systems process the information.

 

[chroot]

I certainly hope no one thinks that 'redesigning the internet' means we'd need to get rid of of the entire physical infrastructure. The physical layer, which actually carries bits from one place to another over wires and optical fibers, would not need to be changed at all. Neither would application-level software like web browsers.

If you converted the 'net from using TCP/IP to using some other protocol, all you'd need to change are the routers, and the middle layers of software inside operating systems like Windows and Linux. In many cases you wouldn't even need to physically replace the routers; you'd just need to reprogram them.

The entire capacity of the 'net would not have to be switched to the new protocol in one fell swoop; either. Multiple protocols can usually coexist on the same physical layer, so you could gradually convert the 'net from one protocol to the other piecemeal, one hop at a time, until many years later no one uses TCP/IP anymore.

One should also be careful not to lump the insecurities and pitfalls of low-level protocols like TCP/IP with the insecurities of higher-level protocols like SMTP. Simply redesigning the application-level protocols would make an enormous difference in the 'net security, for example.

- Warren

 

[BoredNL]

remember gopher links?

gopher://gopher.com[/URL]

BBS's?

muwhaha!

I remember a time before the internet! I remember connecting to home PC's with my 2400 baud modem! A 1mb file would take HOURS and there was NO RESUME! (compile that problem with frequent disconnects, system crashes for no apparent reason, and all manual controls.. and you get.. a TON of fun! wee! *gag*)

I remember when a virus actually DAMAGED computer hardware!

AHH!

I remember when AOL was so horrible that you'd disconnect several times within the hour. And it cost $2 an hour! There was no such thing as dot coms, everything was hosted on .edu's and it was quite a joke to try to use. Javascript? What's that? 256 color images were the BOMB! A 4 second, terribly low quality clip that your computer could barely have the processing power to display was 25 megabytes and took days to download. Again, with NO resume, so if it failed, you had to start again! Only the obsessed had much of anything of a music collection and it cost literally thousands of dollars! It was all on CD's! If you got a cd with one good song on it, OH WELL! DEAL WITH IT!

I could go on for weeks here.

And some guy has the nerve to spaz about the state of the internet today?

I fart in his general direction!

 

[mezarashi]

It may as well be true that whatever technology has been used to run our networks is fatally flawed and needs an overhaul, but if my years in engineering have taught me anything, it is that commercialized technology is not always and most likely not the optimal technological solution.

This problem was highlighted me by a professor of mine who was doing research in radio modulation schemes. He had a scheme that was far superior to Bluetooth in every way, not to mention cheaper to produce, but no manufacturer would pick up the technology because there would be limited compatibility and because it was not adopted industry-wide.

This is why you see these industry consortiums like those for Blu-ray and HD-DVD, MPEG, JPEG, etc. Until such a consortium gets together and decides that it is time to "go to the next level", I believe we will need to continue to live with the ineffeciencies of our existing networking technology.

 

[Anttech]

As far as security goes, the problems are more at the end points than the actual network.

exactly.. BS hype..