The National Science Foundation has proposed a next-generation Internet with built-in security and functionality that connects all kinds of devices, with researchers challenging the government agency to look at the Internet as a "clean slate."

The NSF's Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) Initiative would include a research grant program and an experimental facility to test new Internet technologies, but the project is not yet funded, says NSF spokesman Randy Vines. "It's an idea under consideration," he says.

Researchers need to start thinking beyond the current Internet and consider radical new ideas for continuing challenges such as Internet security and ease of use, says David Clark, a senior research scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."I'm not at all picking on the Internet-the Internet does what it does well," says Clark, who has received an NSF grant to advise the agency on the GENI project. "But there are some things where you say, 'that doesn't work right.' "

As Clark envisions it, the GENI project would go beyond current efforts to incrementally improve the Internet. The U.S. Department of Defense has been pushing for adoption of IPv6 to replace the widely used IPv4, but the GENI project would go years beyond the current vision for IPv6, says Clark, a longtime Internet security researcher who served as chief protocol architect for the U.S. government's Internet development efforts during the 1980s. "I've had some people come in and say, 'Can we rethink the use of packets?'" he says.

Among the goals of the GENI Initiative would be new core functionality for the Internet, including new naming, addressing and identity architectures; enhanced capabilities, including additional security architecture and designing for high availability; and new Internet services and applications.