Dr. Vinton Cerf, PhD, Google Vice President, and Chief Internet Evangelist delivered the keynote speech at the SHARKFEST conference today at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. In his speech entitled, “Internet Standards and the 21st Century”, he reviewed how Internet standards have evolved over the past 35 years, and he described a long list of research topics to keep improving the Internet over the next 35 years. In his estimation, once you find a good solution to a problem it should be standardized – and the right number of standards is one, and only one.
The Internet keeps growing in all respects, yet that growth has not toppled the ‘Net for two reasons. First, the IP protocol is simple so it scales. This simplicity results in a “dumb net” with “smart ends.” Second, the IP protocol was designed to be agnostic to the large number of packet systems and interfaces below. At the time it was designed there were few host-to-host protocols, but many competing packet protocols – remember DDCMP, ARPANET, BBN1822, ALOHAnet, IPX/SPX, Ethernet, Token Ring, Token Bus, LocalTalk, ARCnet, and the list went on and on? IP was designed to stitch together these diverse nets into a quilt we now call the Internet.
But a funny thing happened over the last 35 years. Packet technologies consolidated to Ethernet and its standardized variants for specific media, while the number of higher-level protocols exploded. Well – it turns out that IP’s simplicity as a common meeting point of diversity allows it to support growing numbers of innovative applications. That is why it is still the one and only glue that binds applications and users on the ‘Net.
The two features of IP – simplicity and interconnection of diversity – enable the end-to-end principle also known as net neutrality. This not only encourages innovation and growth, it is also key to user freedom.
However, net neutrality is at risk. As long as there is competition there is diversity, which in turn adds value to IP. Vint pointed out that access network diversity is eroding as competition subsides with the advent of broadband access networks. In the 1990s Internet access was delivered via dial-up ISPs. It was easy for a customer to switch service providers since it only involved changing the phone number dialed. Today most of us have access to one or at most two access service providers – and Vint pointed out that two choices is too few to foster competition.
Lack of competition can easily push us down a slippery slope of eroding net neutrality. He noted that the recent scuffle with Comcast happened less than one year after they told regulators, “We would never interfere with user packets since that would not be in our best interest.” But shortly after that they began injecting TCP resets into user traffic to “protect the network.”
Vint acknowledged that cable companies do have some congestion problems, since their architecture relies on shared asymmetrical upstream and downstream bandwidth. That architecture presumed that the consumer would not be a sizable traffic generator – but many recent ‘Net innovations involve social networking and user generated content. In fact, YouTube currently receives 10 hours of video content from users every minute! That is a lot of uploading to just one service. It is users who are stressing networks and technologies, and we must find ways to manage technology evolution that does not hinder user freedom.
Vint concluded by painting a future of ever-more creative uses of the Internet with growing socio-economic effects. Ensuring user freedom provides the greatest source of Internet innovation and business value – and protecting that freedom is in the best interest of all.
