Sure, the Internet is just one notch down from the air we breathe on the list of things we can't do without these days, but Stanford University researchers say the 'Net could be a whole lot better.
''How should the Internet look in 15 years?'' asks team leader Nick McKeown, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, in a statement. ''We should be able to answer that question by saying we created exactly what we need, not just that we patched some more holes, made some new tweaks or came up with some more work-arounds. Let's invent the car instead of giving the same horse better hay.'
Stanford researchers will present their ideas for a more secure and application-friendly network at an event called Clean Slate Design for the Internet at the school on March 21.
Among McKeown's cohorts on the effort is electrical engineering Professor Bernd Girod, a pioneer of Internet multimedia delivery. Vendors such as Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and NEC are also involved.
The researchers already have projects underway to support their effort: Flow-level models for the future Internet; clean slate approach to wireless spectrum usage; fast dynamic optical light paths for the Internet core; and a clean slate approach to enterprise network security (Ethane).
Stanford says the project complements the National Science Foundation's Global Environment for Network Innovations ( GENI ) effort to build a better network research platform (http://www.geni.net/) as well as the Future Internet Network Design program for (http://find.isi.edu/) developing new Internet architectures.
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That's a fine collection of
That's a fine collection of metaphors, homilies and buzzwords. What's the actual reasoning?
More meat, less sauce, if you please.95% fact free article.
95% fact free article.
Teh comments were nice.
Teh comments were nice.
Agreed--all the same, I'm very curious to see it
This idea seems like an attempt at modern World's Fair. Sure, people look back on the Home of Tomorrow and chuckle; I wonder what poignant, but possibly humorously short-sighted, "inventions" we'll see come out of this.
If the final product is nothing more than a vague write-up, it will be a let down, but maybe they'll take some risks and leap in a thought-provoking, if not prophetic, direction.
Then again, maybe one can't mock-up an interface (let alone a screen capture of the Browser of Tomorrow) if the belief is, in 15 years, there won't be an "interface."
Missing ingrediants
There are a few essential things missing from the Stanford proposal. I didn't see anything to suggest that they are looking for this to be a truly international collaboration. If it isn't, that would be a very short sited omission. Also needed are the inclusion of social scientists capable of making some value judgments and decisions about how the proposed new internet can encourage social inclusion and break down the digital divide, and political scientists who can suggest how the proposed new internet can enhance democracy and international harmony.
Missing ingredients
I made a mistake in my web page address, corrected now. See my blog "The Internet is Broken" http://www.magma.ca/~gtaylor/BrokenInternet.htm for my complete reaction.
Social Scientists?
Despite, or perhaps because of, my formal education and degree in the social sciences, social scientists would nearly the last group I'd look to for value judgments . The better practitioners are keenly aware of their limited role.
It's a fine discipline for making observations and framing questions. That's exactly the correct role for them in a study group on information access.
On the other hand, asking what the Internet should look like in 15 years probably not the right question. It has a major assumption – that the Internet is the right model – and it has a minor assumption – that we can come to an actionable conclusion about the nature of communications and information availability 15 years hence.
During a discussion of five-year networking strategies, I asked a strategist what it is that he believed people would be communicating about in five years. He didn't feel the question had much importance and/or hadn't given it much thought.
I'm still trying to figure out how we plan networking strategies when we don't know the nature and goals of the communications and the identity of the communicators. And I'm not sure that we can make even the vaguest guess about these issues 15 years out.
If the answer is simply that we build fast and ubiquitous networks, then we've limited this to a technology discussion. That discussion, my friends, is limited indeed.
reinventing the internet...15 years from when
the internet is a biological force well beyond the sum of its parts. not one person, group or continent could rightfully or accurately dictate the direction it should take. the inherant nature of the web is the opposite of control or direction.
one big wiki.
we are not talking about founding fathers here, but if we were, they wouldn't dare touch this one.