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Networking The Internet Hardware

National Projects Aim to Reboot the Internet 335

iron-kurton wrote with a link to an AP story about a national initiative to scrap the internet and start over. You may remember our discussion last month about Stanford's Clean Slate Design project; this article details similar projects across the country, all with the federal government's blessing and all with the end goal of revamping our current networking system. From the article: "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.'"
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National Projects Aim to Reboot the Internet

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  • by essence ( 812715 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:12PM (#18727419) Homepage Journal
    Is this one of those 'forced upgrade' things so hardware and software manufacturers can make a heap of money selling more stuff?

    And get ready for a whole heap more IP claims and big corps attempting to own the internet.
    • by TodMinuit ( 1026042 ) <todminuit AT gmail DOT com> on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:15PM (#18727443)
      It's worse than that: It's one of those research projects created to justify Ph.D's.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Yep, thats exactally what its about. Money ( isnt everything ultimately? )

      Its also about inserting more DRM'able protocols along the way.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        isnt everything ultimately?

        No. There are many, and often even stronger, motives than money. Which starts with such motives like fun and pleasure (which most people are even willing to pay money for), then there's love, hate, the desire for power, and the dream of a better world (RMS surely didn't found the FSF in order to get rich!). I don't claim that list to be exhaustive.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      "And get ready for a whole heap more IP claims and big corps attempting to own the internet."

      Who owns it now?
    • by melikamp ( 631205 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:42PM (#18727629) Homepage Journal

      Well, duh. The way the Internet is right now, there is no way to incorporate or monopolize any particular aspect of it, and that makes some folks very fidgety.

      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.

      Yup, some "needs" are just impossible to meet with the Internet in its present state. Like the "need" for a single agency to monitor all Internet traffic. Or the "need" for some folks to control every physical traffic channel. Or the burning need of one familiar industry group to be able to decide unilaterally which computers are "trustworthy" enough to connect to the Web. As it stands, anyone can set up routers, anyone can lay cables and install WAPs, anyone can run a root DNS, an email server, a search portal, or simply host a universally accessible website, etc., etc... What a nightmarish world for a monopolist to live in.

      • by Kamots ( 321174 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:39PM (#18727989)
        Where's +1 scary when you need it :(
      • by The_Wilschon ( 782534 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @10:37PM (#18728299) Homepage
        Fair enough. Scrolling down the comments, I see a good half dozen highly rated comments that say more or less the same thing as you: Watch out for the corporate and national "security" interests. But here's a different, and perhaps more interesting question:

        If they were redoing the internet from scratch, what is wrong with it that ought to be fixed? Can we hear some new-internet wishlists?

        The first things I can think of, off the top of my head, are things that are already talked about fairly often: bigger address space (ipv6), and revision to SMTP to make it more difficult to spoof addresses and easier to catch spam.
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by QuantumG ( 50515 )
          A simple bandwidth guarentee system is at the top of my wishlist.
        • by FrankSchwab ( 675585 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @11:01PM (#18728405) Journal
          It may say something about me, but the first thing I can think of off the top of my head is encrypted traffic. All hosts and all clients are expected to both support and use secure sessions. Sure, there might be a fallback for those underpowered devices that can't support RSA2048, and that's OK, but it should certainly be the exception rather than the rule. Next?
          • You'd have to implement this in a way which was completely agnostic about the encryption scheme (unless you were using a provably unbreakable scheme...) so that once your scheme is compromised in a bad way, you could move on up to the latest and greatest (now with more digits!) scheme.
        • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @11:13PM (#18728445)

          revision to SMTP to make it more difficult to spoof addresses and easier to catch spam.
          Any suggestions on blocking spam other than address spoofing? Because I suspect that is not a leading cause of spam. With tens of thousands of zombies sitting on the net, why bother?

          For the most part, I don't think spam is the Internet's fault. I think superfluous messages are the cost of ridiculously cheap and convenient communication. Spam a pain, but not worth locking the Internet down to combat it IMHO.

        • by melikamp ( 631205 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @02:06AM (#18729173) Homepage Journal

          If they were redoing the internet from scratch, [...]

          But that's the point. Why would anyone want to rebuild it from scratch, to "reboot" it? I can make a long list of wishes that could improve the Internet, like higher speeds, universal access, better email service, more addresses, better DNS, and so on. And the beauty of the Internet is just this: we can implement any of these changes whenever we want and however quickly we need them. We can do these things in a coordinated manner, over a single month, everywhere in the world, or we can do them host by host, on an opt-in basis, over a period of ten years. There is not a single reason to scrape the whole thing, unless there is a fundamental problem with the design. And, sure enough, there is such a problem, and I've outlined it above: no single aspect of the Internet can be effectively monopolized.

          RIAA, for example, can start their own DRM-net tomorrow, no one is holding a gun to their head. Microsoft can patch Vista to refuse connections to non-Vista computers. We'll see if that very secure design catches on. As others have noted, anyone can start using their own non-SMTP email server, either in isolation or with a bridge to the SMTP world. Anyone who wants a better Internet can just start with their own server or router and then spread the word (and people do that already with IPv6 and email, afaik). Anything more than that is an attempt by a single party to extract more value at everyone else's expense.

        • If they were redoing the internet from scratch, what is wrong with it that ought to be fixed? Can we hear some new-internet wishlists?

          OK, here are a few of my "ideal world" wishes. Deciding their technical feasibility in real life is left as an exercise to the reader.

          1. Encrypted-by-default versions of major protocols for e-mail, web browsing, etc.
          2. A serious attempt to provide universal, verifiable ID for both individuals and organisations.
            • This would automatically provide for single sign-in facilities
      • by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @08:27AM (#18730807) Homepage Journal
        Yup, some "needs" are just impossible to meet with the Internet in its present state. Like the "need" for a single agency to monitor all Internet traffic. Or the "need" for some folks to control every physical traffic channel. Or the burning need of one familiar industry group to be able to decide unilaterally which computers are "trustworthy" enough to connect to the Web.

        Actually, we've long had other networking protocols that satisfied all these "needs". In fact, pretty much every network ever invented has satisfied them, except for the Internet Protocol.

        The reason that IP won was that it's the only one that scales up to the size we have now. If you implement any of those "needs", you restrict your network to a small subset that doesn't violate that "need".

        Organizations tend to prefer nice, neat setups that are organized hierarchically and can be monitored and audited. This is very useful for a single organization. But it isn't workable for a universal system. That requires parallel, independent development of the parts. If there's a central authority with local veto power, the system can't grow past what that authority's management can understand.

        With any sort of central controlling authority, you can't have the explosion of development that has happened on the Internet. This can only happen if people have a way of developing what they want on their own. We can see this pretty clearly by comparing it the cell-phone system, which has the potential to give everyone full access everywhere and make the Internet look puny in comparison. But it's blocked by being limited to only devices and apps that the cell-phone companies' management approve and permit.

        For a "new, improved Internet" to succeed, it must make independent local development easier than the current Internet. If it has any sort of controlling central authority, it will just remain a niche player that can't be adopted by enough people and expand to replace the current Internet.

    • by vought ( 160908 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:53PM (#18728069)
      Is this one of those 'forced upgrade' things so hardware and software manufacturers can make a heap of money selling more stuff?

      Sure.

      Let's just rip up the entirety of Interstates 10 and 80 from coast to coast, replacing them with automated super car-like systems because of all the traffic in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
        Like a genuine,
        Bona fide,
        Electrified,
        Six-car
        Monorail! ...
        What'd I say?

        Monorail!

        What's it called?

        Monorail!

        That's right! Monorail!
    • by hobo sapiens ( 893427 ) <POLLOCK minus painter> on Saturday April 14, 2007 @12:40AM (#18728865) Journal
      Didn't you get the memo? They have been warning us for years. Internet cleanup day is near. Make sure you unplug your computer. If you don't, everything will be deleted, haven't you heard?

      Forward this on to everyone in your address book. This is serious stuff!
  • Tubes (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:14PM (#18727435)
    So they're replacing the tubes with pipes. I suppose that is an upgrade. :)
    • by omeomi ( 675045 )
      So they're replacing the tubes with pipes. I suppose that is an upgrade. :)

      Less flexible, though...
  • Just like IPv6 is going to be implemented... someday. It will never happen. I guess someone needs to bring it up that, boy, it sure would be a great idea, but frankly it will never happen. The Internet is so much more than just the US, there's no way you can have it scrapped. As is with most things in this world, it will continue along on this current path, and maybe something will be built along side it (eg Internet2 or whatever that University network is called) and eventually switched over, but you
    • by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:37PM (#18727603)
      Sure we can, just unplug the main computers and presto, the internet is no more. :)

      You are right it'll probably be a second, third or even fourth network. I can see the banks wanting a private network as well as diplomats, and the military, there is no reason why this couldn't be done.

      I think the whole 911/999 VOIP "crisis" is overblown, it would be simpler just to make local emergency only cell phones for the home or just have a emergency registration site for the VOIP providers I don't know why so many people are getting worked up over it.

      Now as far as setting up a new internet, the trick is to keep quite a few countries outside of the US and the majority of the EU from having a say how things are set up because far too many of them want way too much control over what people can do.

      • by kiddygrinder ( 605598 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:50PM (#18728051)
        I think you're being a little optomistic in thinking that the US doesn't want to control what people can do. Given enough time i'd pretty much expect the internet to become the christianet if it was just up to the US.

        Instead I think the entire thing should be organised by Yukoslavia, not because they'll be neutral about it, but because they never get a turn at having way too much power.
      • by Fred Ferrigno ( 122319 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @11:40PM (#18728593)

        I can see the banks wanting a private network as well as diplomats, and the military, there is no reason why this couldn't be done.
        This has already been done, many times over. In the dense financial areas, banks connect to other banks with dedicated lines. Remember the Internet was all about bridging many of these smaller private networks. (Thus the term internetworking.) And when you're trying to connect sites that are physically distant, you can leverage the existing internet infrastructure to connect them without having to run dedicated lines, creating a Virtual Private Network.

        All in all the physical core of the internet is pretty much agnostic to the type of data that goes through it. The Internet as we experience it could change quite radically without much impact on the way the core operates. Even if you create a "new" capital-I Internet, chances are it's going to have to be routed through the lowercase-i internet at some point, though you'll probably never notice.
    • by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @10:41PM (#18728315)
      That's exactly right.

      IPv6 addresses many of the current problems. IPv6 is a standard, supported by many vendors. IPv6 plays nicely with IPv4, so you don't have to break the world in order to deploy it. IPv6 has been around for years...

      ... and IPv6 adoption is negligible.

      Seriously, if we can't get people to adopt IPv6, what's the chance that people are going to adopt something more disruptive?

      I've seen some of these proposals, and technically they're interesting. From the perspective of getting the market to move in a new direction, things will have to get a lot worse before they're even taken seriously.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      We were supposed to switch over to Internet2 after ten years of reserved use for universities and private corporations. I wonder when the deadline for that is? I forget exactly what year they started it, but the ten years should be up very soon.
  • by Philotic ( 957984 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:17PM (#18727473)
    You are attempting to reboot the internet. Cancel or allow?
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      Allow

      A file is in use aborting
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Updating the Internet is almost complete. You must restart the Internet for the updates to take effect.

      Do you want to restart the Internet now?

      [ Restart Now ] [ Restart Later ]
  • what a stupid thing to claim, you can never claim your new redesign will completely satisfy all of peoples requirments, since requirments change. so far the current internet technology has done a brillant job of adapting to changing needs. about the only common protocol i could see that needs a revamp is smtp, which is a layer removed from what they are talking about anyway.

    this fucking REEKS of big money and government wanting to control people on the internet even more, it bug the hell out of them that w

  • by Marko DeBeeste ( 761376 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:21PM (#18727499)
    Now maybe we can finally get some regulation, control and respect for authority around here. And install some methods for ferreting out terrorists and music pirates. Ein Welt, Ein Furher, Ein Internet.
  • This is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:22PM (#18727505) Journal
    The Internet is basically fair, because when it was designed no one knew how insanely profitable and important it would be. At the time, no one cared about the net except the people who designed it, so they could do it honestly.

    Any new design will inevitably be corrupted by the interests of large companies, and of governments who would feel the need to have their ability to spy on and control traffic protected.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by el cisne ( 135112 )
      Damn right. Corporates and governments are eating themselves up inside now for that mistake. They would never have allowed it to come to this. It is way too open and uncontrollable by those in power and this can't be allowed.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by QuantumG ( 50515 )
        That's one way to look at it.

        Another way to look at it is historically accurate.

        There were many "locked down" information networks available for people to connect to before the Internet got popular. Like Compuserve, AOL, and others. For a period, the Internet was in direct competition with these big online information services (as were smaller bulletin board systems).

        The Internet won because it wasn't controlled.

        So any new Internet that tries to compete with the now Internet surely must be as free.
    • this sounds like something the MPAA/RIAA would push for.

      since the current internet allows p2p applications to "adapt" around any attempts to control their traffic, this new net would, of course, have numerous, onerous, overlapping lockdown and lockout schemes to keep joe user from violating the precious copyrights.

      of course, the big telcos dont object either, because they can then implement all the dirty tricks most people are currently fighting tooth and nail to prevent.

      this said.. if they try to push this
    • by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:51PM (#18728057)
      I certainly agree with this. I have heard of plans similar to this to force people to upgrade, and at the same time accept DRM loaded software. When we look at this, the current network protocols work just fine. TCP actually works pretty well, its not really something that is TCP does have a few limits built in I believe (i believe it is the window sizes), that might make it a bit limited with extremely high bandwidth connections, but those limits are far from being reached and it is more than adequate for video, audio and other things. New versions of TCP can be developed if needed, and those can be made to work side by side with the older protocols. To say that everything has to be scrapped is just beyond ridiculous, since what upgrades which are needed can be made incrementally and with backwards and forwards compatability. It would be completely wasteful of resources, since most router and equipment actually works pretty well. If needed it can be upgraded, but to say everything has to be thrown own, when it is functioning just fine, is beyond ridiculous. The current internet is working well, and with proper management it will continue to do so.

      One of the major problems with IP6 is the lack of really much of an expectation that it will need to interoperate with IPV4 for a very long time. One problem is, no one will upgrade to IPv6 since there are few websites that use it, and since no one is upgrading to IPv6, few websites are inclined to provide it. ISPs, with newer OSs if IPv6 is autoconfiguring, the users computer will automatically configure itself for IPv6. But to expect all ISPs to adopt IPv6, especially before IPv4 address space runs out, is just beyond arrogant. There has to be expected that IPv4 ISPs will be online long after IPv4 address space is maxed out, and IPv4 systems will need to be able to access IPv6 systems coming online then. Ipv6 accessing ipv4 hosts is simple, make ipv4 a subset of ipv6. One of the major problems is IPv4 being able to access IPv6 hosts, new hosts can be given v6 and v4 addresses, but this means that the address space problem has not been solved. But ISPs can be expected to continue using only v4 with some existing users, for some time after v4 address space is exhausted. There are ways for v4 to access v6, through a concerted effort of DNS servers and routers. When a v4 peer askes the local DNS server for a the IP address of a server which is v6 only server, the DNS server will return a fake v4 IP address to the v4 peer, and tell the router (which would have connections to the Ipv6 net) to to route all packets going to that fake IP coming from that v4 peer, to the IPv6 destination, converting the packets to Ipv6 as well. If a IPv4 peer wishes to access a Ipv6 peer by Ipv6 address, a neat trick also using DNS would be used, a special ip6 top level domain would be created, and ipv4 clients could request Ipv6 addresses by specifying ipv6 addresses as subdomains as of this ip6 tld. such as: 2222.2222.2222.2222.2222.2222.ip6 A portion of v4 address space needs to be set aside for this scheme for use for the fake IP addresses. Proxy servers could be provided by ISPs to convert Ipv6 hyperlinks to hyperlinks using the ipv6 tld notation. Newer web browsers could automatically do this for the user if they are on an ipv4 only network. Problem solved! This would require no changes on the user end, and the ISP could even use 6-over-4 to connect their routers to ipv6 networks even if they are not directly connected to an upstream ipv6 provider.
      • proper management (Score:5, Insightful)

        by falconwolf ( 725481 ) <falconsoaring_2000@yah o o .com> on Friday April 13, 2007 @10:03PM (#18728125)

        The current internet is working well, and with proper management it will continue to do so.

        That't the problem. The powers that be don't want the internet to work as well as it does. Instead they want to control it.

        Falcon
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TapeCutter ( 624760 )
        Even having ipv6 installed can break applications, a lot of older C/C++ code (optomistically) used a pointer to a single element when querying the O/S for installed protocols. It has always been possible to have more than one protocol structure returned by the O/S but it was practicaly unheard of before ipv6, when it started appearing quite a few bugs came out of the woodwork.
        • Yes, that is a real problem. The solution i presented in the above message, would allow older ipv4 apps to access ipv6 servers. the old applications are a major problem, one of the worst ones. the solution does require support on the ISP end, but that is easy enough to coordinate. But even with a ipv6 only ISP, the users OS (by providing a local DNS server and doing the routing and address translation as described) could utilise the scheme to allow local ipv4 applications to access the ipv6 network.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Could you elaborate on this? When I used to write networking code I never "queried" to figure out what kind of protocol was installed.

          IPv6 certainly did cause some disruption, but that was all caused by needing to support both AF_INET and AF_INET6 addresses. Once you switched from inet_addr() to inet_pton() and made sure to check sockaddr_in.sa_family_t, the rest of the code was pretty much the same.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Idbar ( 1034346 )
      More than that, and it has been said already, is the "QoS", which is in part a hidden "Pay for better service". Internet is fair enough, differentiation of services will become the future social discrimination.

      Other than that, if they plan to change for good reasons, nice. However, among all the protocols, what would prevail if is not a corporation based one? Would Vista come with SCTP or XCP support in the case they decide to change transport protocols?

      Maybe technology will take part, but as usual mone
  • I suggest you do the same.
  • by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:31PM (#18727543)
    I don't think any one group can say that we're going to scrap the internet and start over. Hell, the US government couldn't convert its citizens to the metric system and they're the ones that control the measurements. No entity controls the internet and that's what makes it so great. If someone thinks they have a better idea of how it should work let them create their own networks of computers and run their own protocols and standards and we'll see which one the consumers prefer. Probably the one they already have thousands of dollars invested in, are familiar with, and have *freedom* to navigate.

    Can anyone reference a national system that was successfully replaced? I heard rumor that a very small country changed which side of the road they drove on in the past ten years. The Internet is a global system - fat chance of any cold turkey changes.

    Besides which, lets assume that there is a massive change to the internet. There are plenty of geeks in the world with the knowledge and capabilities to set up their own networks and build an internet of their own. How many of us have wired and wireless internetworks between apartments, dorms, and neighboring houses already? It would just become even more prevalent.

    • by Eevee ( 535658 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:21PM (#18727883)

      I heard rumor that a very small country changed which side of the road they drove on in the past ten years.

      The trick was they did a staggered implementation--they had all the truck drivers change to other side first.

      I'll be here all week, try the veal.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Can anyone reference a national system that was successfully replaced?

      The currency of 13 European nations.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )

      Can anyone reference a national system that was successfully replaced? I heard rumor that a very small country changed which side of the road they drove on in the past ten years.

      Yes, I can. It might not be recent or entirely relevant, but the entire US rail network south of the Mason-Dixon line was converted [wikipedia.org] from broad 5ft gaguge to the "standard" 4'9" gauge that was used in the North on May 31 1886. The work was completed in less than 36 hours.

      No matter how you spin it, that's pretty darn impressive.

  • by 1sockchuck ( 826398 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:34PM (#18727569) Homepage
    The Internet Security Alliance has been talking openly about an overhaul of core protocols since 2004 [netcraft.com].

    "What needs to happen is a profound change in protocols and in implementation," ISA Chairman Bill Hancock said in that 2004 interview. "Getting people to talk about it isn't hard. I've talked to the geeks, I've talked to the executives, I've talked to everyone. It's a total issue of money. The realistic approach is to look at the economic impetus. ... We need some strong, highly-secure protocols, and they've got to be able to last a long time. The problem is that we have 655 million or so users of the Internet right now. Deploying security enhancements to that many users at once is a non-trivial matter. The problem is complex, big and will take a while to solve"

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      The problem is that we have 655 million or so users of the Internet right now. Deploying security enhancements to that many users at once is a non-trivial matter.

      I recommend bittorrent.
    • by grcumb ( 781340 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @10:45PM (#18728331) Homepage Journal

      The Internet Security Alliance has been talking openly about an overhaul of core protocols since 2004.

      People have been talking about this since 1998. On Halloween [catb.org] of that year, Eric Raymond had several Microsoft internal emails forwarded anonymously to him. They outlined how Microsoft could respond to the Open Source Threat. The single most telling quote runs like this [catb.org]:

      "OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

      At the World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam In 2000, Lawrence Lessig spoke clearly about the threat to the principle of the 'end to end' network (i.e. the Internet as designed). At that time he was speaking about the intent of the telcos to subvert it through WAP, but the prophetic nature of his comments are made visible by endeavours such as these.

      Make no mistake, folks: the shiny new future that's being laid out for us here will have none of the freedoms that we enjoy today, where access to information is concerned. This is something that needs to be opposed early, loudly and without compromise.

  • by Schraegstrichpunkt ( 931443 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:35PM (#18727577) Homepage
    The Internet won't be replaced this way, but it's still a useful exercise. You spend some money researching the "what if" scenario, get some results you didn't expect, and then you adapt the technology to the existing infrastructure.
  • by BillGatesLoveChild ( 1046184 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:37PM (#18727595) Journal
    What a huge waste of money. Sure they could build DRM and WGA and SonOfClipper in at the lowest level, but really, what's in it for the rest of us?

    You never know. The guys raising money for this will beat the pr0nography and DRM drum enough that some politicians will be impressed and throw some of (your) money at it. But are they going to convince business and the public for massive retooling costs, when in the end, we'll have something very similar to what we have at the moment.

    There are better uses for money. Try Cancer research or something else instead please.
    • On the contrary, it would be an awesome use of money for the folks like MS, **IA, and Bells who stand to benefit hundredfold if they assert complete control over some aspect of the Internet.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      You never know. The guys raising money for this will beat the pr0nography and DRM drum enough that some politicians will be impressed and throw some of (your) money at it.

      Without pr0n, the "new" internet will go nowhere. Pr0n drives innovation!

  • ...all with the federal government's blessing...

    I'll bet it has. Make sure all that surveillance and control architecture is in place before people get to use it, right?

  • Gradual transition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:41PM (#18727625)
    We're at a point where total reboot/scrapping of the Internet is as likely as waking up tommorow and finding all of IPv4 scrapped in favor of new shiny IPv6.

    There's more loss in scrapping everything and starting over than it is to improve existing solutions in a compatible manner.

    Another example: everybody knows the x86 instruction set and interface sucks. It so sucks, that for quite some time AMD and Intel don't produce x86 chips anymore. Have you felt any revolution or "scrapping" going on"? No because all modern chips will take the x86 instructions and translate them internally, so on the outside the chip works with x86 software.

    This is how progress works: if something is used massively world-wide, and something sucks about it, expect slow gradual transition, where the offending problems will be tucked away in a compatibility, emulation, translation layer and earth keeps spinning.
    • There's more loss in scrapping everything and starting over than it is to improve existing solutions in a compatible manner.

      Really? Then explain why Verizon is installing fiber all over my town, instead of just improving modem speeds...

      everybody knows the x86 instruction set and interface sucks.

      "everybody" is wrong. The instruction set and interface isn't too bad. x86 couldn't have been so successful if that was the case. It's CISC CPUs that suck, so with P6/K-6 (anything AFTER the original Pentium), ev

  • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:45PM (#18727651)

    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.'"
    If the internet could get a brand new start from scratch, they would just fuck it up worse than it already is. We would get built in key escrow, built in DRM, built in centralized eavesdropping, built in censoring functions, etc.

    And there would be unforeseen side-effects. I don't mean the easily foreseeable abuse-of-power kinds of side-effects, I mean the exploitation of such fascist features by the criminal element who today does things like spam and run bot-nets.

    We would end up with a marginal improvement in performance, a huge loss of individual freedoms and equal or worse levels of personal risk and annoyance.
  • I can see a lot of good coming out of something like this. It's like asking "what would I build assuming I had all the money in the world? Then you get as close as you can with the money you have, and that's the best you can do. We can do the same thing with this: "If I knew then what I know now, how would build it?" Then we can go out and shoot for the best can get out of what we have. It's basically goal-setting.

    On the other hand IPv6 is kinda the result of this already. Read it very literally: Inte
    • Read it very literally: Internet Protocol version 6. We've already revised the Internet in some big ways, and no one even cared.

      Yes, but that was a long time ago, when the internet was very small and lonely. From wikipedia:

      Version numbers 0 through 3 were development versions of IPv4 used between 1977 and 1979. Version number 5 was used by the Internet Stream Protocol (ST), an experimental stream protocol. Version numbers 6 through 9 were assigned to experimental protocols designed to replace IPv4: SIPP

  • Is this even news? I thought this was already in progress with IPV6 and internet2...
    • by omeomi ( 675045 )
      I don't think Internet2 is intended to ever leave the university setting and become public...
  • it it ain't broke - don't fix it...
    • by guruevi ( 827432 )
      The problem is that the Internet IS broke, it doesn't have the money for such overhauls. I agree that we should change something about it, but rebooting is a bit harsh. Rather, start implementing IPv6, force it through, remove DRM & patents and we can start.
  • Inevitability (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tymbow ( 725036 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:16PM (#18727849)

    I wondered how long it would take before the topic of re-designing the Internet started making general rounds.

    No one really owns it, and governments can't really control it. How long did we think that would last? I'm sure there are plenty of true benefits that would emerge, but we all know what we will really end up with is a DRM infested wiretap paradise that only serves the financial interests of corporations and the control aims of governments. Mind you, whether its an incremental upgrade or a complete replacement I think these aspects of the Internet will become inevitable - it's just a question of how long it will take.

  • There can't be a sudden "oh, here's something new" because of how strictly society is coupled with the current internet. It could, however, be part of a gradual evolution with the internet... something which I think we can all agree *has* been happening (think of the internet you were introduced to compared to the internet you know now).

    And all of that "it needs to be more secure" sentiment really needs to be seen as "the current hackers are getting bored, let's make it interesting." It's the digital ag

  • by PhysicsPhil ( 880677 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:34PM (#18727957)
    Ctrl + Alt + Del always worked for me.
  • by commisaro ( 1007549 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:36PM (#18727969) Homepage
    I think they should consider replacing the current series of tubes with something that more closely models a big truck. That way I wouldn't have to wait until next Thursday to get an internet from my office.
  • by Distan ( 122159 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @09:40PM (#18727995)
    The biggest shortcoming of the current internet (to me) is that anonymity wasn't designed in from the ground up.

    Hopefully, this "next big thing" will be designed so there is no information (like IP address) that can be used to trace an internet persona to an actual person or geographic area.
    • by cdrguru ( 88047 )
      Yes, and then you can be sure that everyone is completely aware of there being no consequences for anything on the Internet.

      This means any criminal act that would be prosecuted "off the net" would be a free ride if the Internet was used. No fraud prosecutions, you can threaten anyone in any manner, post naked pictures of your neighbors and try to scam people to your hearts content.

      Isn't there enough crime on the Internet already?

      Would just a little thinking hurt you too much?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by falconwolf ( 725481 )

      The biggest shortcoming of the current internet (to me) is that anonymity wasn't designed in from the ground up.

      Hopefully, this "next big thing" will be designed so there is no information (like IP address) that can be used to trace an internet persona to an actual person or geographic area.

      More like they'll design it so no body can hide. All of your communications, whether political speach or not, will be kept in a file with your name on it. J. Edgar Hoover [wikipedia.org] and COINTEL [wikipedia.org] all over again. The NAZIs an

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Hopefully, this "next big thing" will be designed so there is no information (like IP address) that can be used to trace an internet persona to an actual person or geographic area.

      You probably wouldn't want what you're asking for. To my house there is exactly one line. I could of course be sharing it inside the house or running an open WiFi net, but beyond that it's quite limited who the traffic is for. Any serious attempt at anonymization I've seen have been based on relaying information, which means I'd h
  • by krygny ( 473134 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @10:59PM (#18728383)
    ... I saw a HD TV. I forget who the exhibitor was but, IIRC it was analog composite video, 1024 interlaced, 4x5 aspect ratio. Both the TV and camera were enormously expensive, but I remember thinking I would have one in just a few years and I couldn't wait for the standards to be revised so it could be brought to market. It took 30 years for me to have something comparable.
  • Fine by me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @11:20PM (#18728497) Homepage
    Truly. For years we've had governments and other special interests clamoring for change because they fear the digital age. In part due to this, we've lost more and more freedoms while the sheeple of the world are led by the ring in the nose ( which they are not even aware of ) into believing that everything is ok; Nothing going wrong here.

    So let them redo the internet into a new corporate-friendly version. Let them rape us six ways from sunday. After working in the industry as I have, I could just as easily walk away and leave it to other more patient and gullible folks to handle.
  • Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KonoWatakushi ( 910213 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @11:25PM (#18728517)
    What is really needed is widespread adoption of encryption; this would prevent the hoards of greedy and evil entities from pushing "solutions" to problems which don't actually exist. The purpose of the network should be to move data, not to enforce policy, or spy on people. Things such as VOIP are recent enough that they should never have even existed in an unencrypted form. At this time, any fundamental redesign of the Internet will likely only make the situation worse.

    Thankfully, this is a problem that can be solved at the edges of the network. If you are a developer of a networked application, you should embrace encryption, no matter what you are sending. Only after a significant part of the traffic is encrypted will the Internet truly be an end to end network as it was originally intended. This is a good thing, and is the primary reason why the Internet has flourished to date.

    Until then, more and more intelligence will be stuffed into the network, and it will offer no benefit at all to the users of that network. It only serves to further the special interests of large corporations and government, and will continue to be severely abused. It only serves to make the network more expensive, and one thing is for certain; it won't move the data any faster.

    Only after this becomes a reality can we really concentrate on making the network faster and better, rather than inventing new ways to squeeze more money out of people for the same crappy infrastructure.
  • Am I the only one who remembers seeing this same bit 'o news last month:

    Researchers Scheming to Rebuild Internet From Scratch [slashdot.org]
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @02:19AM (#18729221) Homepage

    Much of what's in there is the classic telco dream - virtual circuits, charged by usage. What's being proposed is not the next Internet. It's the next ISDN.

    Remember what went wrong with ISDN in the United States. The US telcos tried to use it as a way to get away from flat-rate pricing for local voice calls. That made it a non-starter for voice. The data pricing was so high it wasn't even feasible for data in the era of dial-up.

    The Stanford "clean slate" document [stanford.edu] is basically "ISDN 2.0". Or, at the bulk level, "ATM 2.0".

    • "Flows as first-class citizens. One innovation that we believe to be important is the recognition of flows in the network. We believe flows should be treated as first-class citizens, perhaps replacing the packet as the predominant unit for manipulation inside switches and routers." Virtual circuits. They're BAACK. The excuse is congestion control. The real reason is billing.
    • "The current Internet has not converged on a balance between regulation and competition; observe, for example, the fact that six of the seven largest national ISPs in 2002 have since undergone corporate restructuring. They are simply not profitable." Ah, now the agenda appears - find some way to reduce buyer power and increase prices. That's what this is really all about. Overall, the communications industry is in better shape than the airline industry or the auto industry.
    • "The Internet provides no support for determining the value of a packet to the sender, receiver, or service provider." That's what telcos really want, especially the wireless ones, who just love how much they can overcharge on a per-bit basis for SMS messages.
    • "Finally, the lack of economic primitives in the current Internet makes charging for traffic, and micropayments in particular, a challenge to implement." Telco thinking again. Ever notice how all the enthusiasm for micropayments is from people who want to collect them? There's nobody running around saying "If only I could send 5 cents to anybody I wanted..."

    From their own words, the agenda is clear - create a billable Internet where the price of each service can be cranked up by the service provider to the point that maximizes the provider's revenue.

    There are times when I'm embarrassed that I graduated from Stanford computer science. This is one of them.

  • by hxnwix ( 652290 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @03:04AM (#18729399) Journal
    If you're a whitehat, you get internet A.
    If you're a blackhat, you get internet A.
    If you're an asshat, you get internet B.
  • Don't do it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @07:07AM (#18730315) Journal
    The idea of "updating" the internet makes me feel very much the same as when people talk about rewriting the US Constitution: we have a brilliantly conceived but outdated thing which could use an update to meet current circumstances impossible for the originators to have envisioned.

    However, in the same vein, I'd be totally against it: I simply cannot see in the current world the ability to pull together an equally brilliant group of people who could do the task with an equal political objectivity. Indeed, as the internet is an acting infrastructure and not simply a set of rules on paper, it would be even more necessary to pull together resources from various who all have very different and conflicting biases. The BEST one could hope for would be something "designed by committee" ala the shuttle or the EU constitution. At worst, you're going to have interests conceding power in various facets to each other to suit their various needs. How would you like the internet *designed* by the RIAA? By the Republicans? By the Illuminati?

    Thanks but no. I'll keep the creaky, leaky thing we've got. At least at it's CORE it's a fundamentally good thing. We just have to keep patching it.
  • by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Saturday April 14, 2007 @05:38PM (#18735673) Homepage

    I'm sick and tired of waiting thirty seconds or more for somebody's slow ass Web server or puny pipe to feed me my porn!

    This is nearly as bad as twenty or thirty years ago sitting at a green screen dumb terminal waiting for the mainframe to respond. At least then the wait times were shorter!

    Not to mention the times the sites are totally down, or "you do not have permission to access this page" because some moron misconfigured his Apache Web server. (Remember that idiot in some Southern city who thought the site was hacked because the Apache configuration page was up instead of the home page?)

    Run stats on your goddamn Web sites! Then buy another box or pay for more bandwidth! Or better yet, get the fuck off the Net because you don't know what you're doing!

    Are you listening, /. goofs?

    Anybody who thinks the Net is ready for "software as a Web service" is out of his goddamn mind. No company in its right mind would ever trust company business to the Net as the only option. It's hard enough to get the stuff on the company servers to work right. Trust somebody ELSE to do it right? It is to laugh,

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