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123webguru News Desk
Net Pioneer Wants New Internet
One of the fathers of the internet wants to be a daddy again.
David Clark, who led the development of the internet in the 1970s, is working with the National Science Foundation on a plan for a whole new infrastructure to replace today's global network.
The NSF aims to put out a request for proposals in the fall for plans and designs that could lead to what Clark called a "clean slate" internet architecture. Those designs, Clark said, could be tested on the National LambdaRail, the nationwide optical network that researchers are using to experiment with new networking technologies and applications.
Two NSF program directors in the agency's Networking Technology and Systems program refused to speak on the record about the $200,000 grant the agency gave Clark to explore his "clean slate" internet idea. Nor would they comment on a broader initiative taking shape at the NSF, of which Clark said his research is a component.
But Clark hinted that the agency is poised to take a leading role in developing new internet technologies.
"There are (program directors) at the NSF who are willing to rally the academic community," said Clark. "They are saying, 'Let's break some eggs.'"
Clark, who served as chief protocol architect for the government's internet development initiative in the 1980s, wants researchers to re-imagine the infrastructure that connects computer users around the world.
The problem with today's internet, according to Clark, is that its 30-year-old design, which allowed for the development of exciting new applications (the world wide web, e-commerce, file sharing, you name it), is now stifling further growth.
A new architecture could allow for ubiquitous embedded wireless communications devices and sensors. It could also provide for more secure and convenient forms of commerce. A super-high-speed internet could even allow people a world apart to collaborate inside elaborate 3-D virtual arenas, a process called tele-immersion.
As for today's internet, new applications and protocols meant to address security issues and wireless and ubiquitous devices may not be enough to solve its underlying problems.
"Systems rigidify over time," said Clark. "Each of those incremental changes has interactions with the others. And each is harder to add than the last one. After a while, the effort-to-success ratio (becomes untenable)."
Another internet founding father, however, questioned whether the academic community really needs to start talking about building a new internet from scratch.
"Anything you can do all at once, you could do with incremental changes," said Robert Kahn, who helped design the architecture for Arpanet, the precursor to the internet. (Kahn is now president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives.)
Even Clark agrees with those who say the internet currently serves most of its users quite well. But he said applications and technologies introduced incrementally to the existing system, such as those springing from engineering working groups and the Internet2 research consortium, cannot solve the internet's fundamental architectural problems.
"The idea then was to build a cost-effective network 10 times faster than what we had at the time," said Clark. "But Internet2 is not architecturally different than the internet.”
Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT, said he will use his NSF grant to talk with other researchers this summer who could potentially submit proposals for new internet designs.
Clark, in the abstract that got him the grant, asks the question, "Can the research community devise a fresh, new design for an internet -- a design that takes into account both the wisdom in the original design and what has been learned since, a design that takes into account the requirements the network now faces and those we can predict in the future -- and demonstrate a network with sufficient appeal and merit that we might persuade the world to move to it?"
Clark said he would like to see two things addressed in any replacement for the current internet. The first is a coherent security architecture. The second is a healthy economic infrastructure for network service providers, who will need a bigger piece of the pie in the new internet than the one they are getting now if they are going to help pay for building it.
Clark is arranging a workshop this summer to bring together network architects and computer security specialists. He said he wants to encourage security specialists to think more about architecture, rather than simply their next anti-virus software upgrade.
"Look at phishing and spam, and zombies, and all this crap," said Clark. "Show me how six incremental changes are going to make them go away."
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