MIT panel warns of challenges of hyper-networked world

MIT panel says demand on the Internet, massive-growth of wireless nets and general lack of security are but a few of the future challenges pressing on the world's information infrastructure

A panel discussion held at MIT this week hailed major advances in networking technology, but warned that the challenges facing the world's information infrastructure are severe.

Most of the challenges stem from the rapid multiplication of demand, both in terms of user devices and data, according to IDC analyst Rohit Mehra, who moderated the MIT Forum discussion, which was held at the Tang Center for Management Education and entitled "Can the networks deliver?" Mehra was joined on the panel by Boston University professor Mark Crovella, Akamai chief strategist Kristofer Alexander and Veniam Works principal Roy Russell.

"We're now starting to talk about not millions any more, when we talk about user devices that are in play, but billions," said Mehra. "Of late, in the industry, we've started talking about how many devices versus how many human beings on the planet."

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Other ideas, according to Russell, include things like measuring the carbon footprint of a given stretch of road (by monitoring fuel consumption) and improved navigation and traffic avoidance.

BU professor Crovella, however, says that this hyper-connectivity is problematic, in particular at four central pain points. The first is the Internet protocol itself. The standard that makes a global Internet possible, as originally conceived, is essentially out of usable IP addresses, thanks to rapid growth.

It was never conceived of that we would have multiple Internet protocol addresses for every single human being on the planet

— Mark Crovella, BU professor

"It was never conceived of that we would have multiple Internet protocol addresses for every single human being on the planet," he said. "And you can trace some of the decisions that have been made along the way as being somewhat suboptimal."

For instance, according to Crovella, MIT itself was given 16 million IP addresses. "They don't need 16 million addresses to run the university," he said. Fundamentally, however, the problem is a simple shortage of possible addresses under the IPv4 standard. The newer IPv6 standard ups the number of possible addresses from a little less than 4.3 billion to 3.4 x 10^38 - more than enough to meet even the wildest growth scenarios - but it's not backwards compatible with the earlier system, making the transition a headache.

The second problem, Crovella said, is transport control protocol, or TCP. This system, designed to address network congestion problems and improve reliability, has a seemingly minor issue that nonetheless complicates its use with wireless connections, which are increasingly prevalent.

TCP monitors connections for packet loss - when it encounters them, it assumes this means the network is congested and throttles traffic accordingly.

"The problem is, as we've seen, we're moving to a world in which most data is sourced or synched on a wireless network," said Crovella. "And wireless networks have different properties, and they lose packets for different reasons. A wireless network can lose a packet for reasons that have nothing to do with congestion."

What this means is that wireless packet loss due to, in Crovella's example, a microwave oven turning on, could prompt the TCP to assume the network is congested and act accordingly.

The third problem is a lack of security at the highest levels of the global Internet. The border gateway protocol that governs traffic between big ISPs has no built-in security, the professor said, a fact that has been exploited in several high-profile incidents, including the Pakistan/YouTube outage in 2008.

Finally, according to Crovella, there's a shortage of available wireless spectrum available for large-scale network projects, which means that existing frequencies may have to be repurposed and new auctions held.

"For example, the white space between television channels is probably going to be used for home networking, and we're going to try and dislodge the frequencies that have been used in the past, but aren't being used anymore," he said.