Researchers look to scrap the internet

[Big Gaz]

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.

[georgej]

I have no problem with any of that.

As long as any new software is free and of course the existing "internet" is transferred in its entirity to whatever its replacement is.
And of course, everything is tested before the changeover. Microsoft won't be put in charge of the project - will they

[Blade]

Originally Posted by georgej

Microsoft won't be put in charge of the project - will they

God help us if they are! It will be 3 years late in arriving, non-backwards compatible with Internet 1.0 and require a pc spec'ed so high that even NASA would be proud of it.

[jeffers]

Well in theory this is a good idea, and it needs doing, cos it's a mess atm really...but it's a hell of a job

[PAULM03]

Originally Posted by jeffers

Well in theory this is a good idea, and it needs doing, cos it's a mess atm really...but it's a hell of a job

I'm almost certain that if they try to design an internet they'll fcuk it up. Look at how complex it is. The current one works because it's completely open and has just had bits added on here and there, so it's grown as new technology and innovations have become available and clever people have found ways to incorporate them.

If you make a new internet from the ground up there'll be too many interests to please and you'll end up with a compromised, second rate, shadow of an internet that will IMHO restrict what people can and can't do to the point where the innovators will find something else to do and the whole technology will be just left in the hands of the few big players.

I really don't like some of the ideas I've heard for internet 2.0. Take preferential bandwidth for instance. The telcos want to be able to sell faster bandwidth at a premium. So if you take google - they're so rich they could always buy the fastest bandwidth meaning that any upstarts would struggle to get on terms with them, regardless of whether their search was superior. That's got to be a bad thing. The security would also mean you could say goodbye to your warez, and illegal music and film downloads too.

I'm sure we'll be hearing an increasing noise over the next few years about how the internet is starting to creak under the weight of use etc. etc. yadda, yadda,yadda. Don't believe a word of it, it will all be propaganda aimed at getting people onto a new, and in many ways vastly inferior network.

Just my 2 cents

[jeffers]

Originally Posted by PAULM03

The security would also mean you could say goodbye to your warez, and illegal music and film downloads too.

That's a very good point actually. I'm sure the music industry would have a big say in the development of security, and these things wouldn't be so easy (if at all possible) to get.

Leave it as it is.

[PAULM03]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6944176.stm

The rumblings are starting.

Alternatively, the ISPs say they would have to limit access to services.
One option that would allow them to do this would be to use so-called traffic shaping. This involves delaying packets of information sent across the network until congestion has eased.

I wonder which 'packets' would get priority? Wouldn't be tthe ones whose company has paid most to send those 'packets' would it?

[AJ]

allow them to traffic shape ??

Most ISP's already traffic shape, and as well they might. P2P traffic is killing the internet dead. I have friends in ISPs that all quote figures in excessive of 95% of all packets on the web today being bit torrent. I've heard serious people discuss numbers as high as 99.8%

Bandwidth related pricing is required to prevent the system from collapsing, in the past it was an all you could eat buffet, but some people are taking trucks and loading up on food.

All Broadband plans, will run at line speed, with charging done on a usage basis, say £1 per GB of data transfered

[PAULM03]

Originally Posted by AJ

allow them to traffic shape ??

Most ISP's already traffic shape, and as well they might. P2P traffic is killing the internet dead. I have friends in ISPs that all quote figures in excessive of 95% of all packets on the web today being bit torrent. I've heard serious people discuss numbers as high as 99.8%

Bandwidth related pricing is required to prevent the system from collapsing, in the past it was an all you could eat buffet, but some people are taking trucks and loading up on food.

All Broadband plans, will run at line speed, with charging done on a usage basis, say £1 per GB of data transfered

Killing the internet dead?
How? My connection is working perfectly fine. How much of the absolute available bandwidth do you think the internet is using? Take the Far-East for example they have 100 MB connections for a fraction of the cost that we pay. How could that be if the net was really clogged up?

So what if 95% of interent traffic is P2P? Would it matter if 99.999% was P2P? People are paying their money to buy the bandwidth, it's theirs to do with as they wish.

What I disagree with is the ISP actually deciding which data gets priority.

[AJ]

It's all about the back haul from the exchange though, the 8mb connection that you might have at home is a meaningless number, if they oversell the connection from the exchange to the internet 100 times, in reality you have an 80kb connection.

The backbone is choked. If people want a real uncontended internet connection

So what if 95% of interent traffic is P2P? Would it matter if 99.999% was P2P? People are paying their money to buy the bandwidth, it's theirs to do with as they wish.

People ain't paying for bandwidth though

[AJ]

Sorry, phone went whilst I was typing, let me finish my point with an example

Let's assume you have 100 people on a 10mb internet connection. but from their local exchange threre is only a single 10mb connection to the backbone. So in essence the telco / isp has put in this single connection then sold it 100 times, hoping people will not use it at the same time.

The costs are calculated in a fashion that 80 people using it will pay for the equipment and line costs, last 20 people he sells it to are the Telco/ISPs profit. This is how it works. It's like the NHS, if everyone decided to have a heart attack tomorrow the system would collapse (even more).

Let's go back to our 100 people on their connection, what if 2 people between them are using 95% of the bandwidth, on a consistant basis. Is it right that they only pay 2% of the cost ?

I don't agree that ISP's should traffic shape for copyright violations, but they have a right to ensure that everyone gets a fair bite of the cherry, if they can identify p2p traffic taking up all their bandwidth they shoudl limit it.

The only way forward is usage based charging, with people paying a flat fee of about 10 a month for service, with a per GB change after that a pound a GB would be reasonble I think