Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Japanese Researchers Aim to Replace the Internet

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Aug 20, 2007 07:29 AM
from the optimized-for-giant-robot-transfer dept.
The Internet IT
Gary writes "Japanese communications minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday that Japan will start research and development on technology for a new generation of network that would replace the Internet, eyeing bringing the technology into commercial use in 2020. The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Japan aims to replace the Internet by Anonymous Coward
[+] Web Creators Call Internet Outdated 243 comments
ElvaWSJ writes "Several networking pioneers are dissatisfied with the Internet's underpinnings, and some are offering remedies to ease the strain that bandwidth-hungry services put on technology networks. Along with other projects here in the US and around the world, numerous companies and organizations are looking to rewrite the underpinnings of the internet. This piece looks at new concerns from old hands at networking, with comments from folks like Larry Roberts and Len Bosack. 'Mr. Roberts's concern over the Internet's infrastructure stretches back years. Even while at ARPAnet, he says he was unsure how long the technology could work, especially since the system didn't ensure that information packets would arrive at their destination. His fears crystallized in the late 1990s when he saw companies begin to use the Internet to make phone calls and consumers begin to dabble in online video.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Japanese Researchers Aim to Replace the Internet 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • Doesn't this already exist [internet2.edu]? I mean, seriously, how many parallel projects do we need to do the same thing?

    • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 20 2007, @07:38AM (#20291889)
      Agreed. This is totally redundant, and there's no reason to do it - just like other companies writing operating systems when Windows Vista was being developed.

      Wait, bad example...

      • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Oswald (235719) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:03AM (#20292033)
        My fear is that it's a perfect example. By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable. "Faster" and "safer" will have a tough time overcoming "empty".

        • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:4, Informative)

          by NickFortune (613926) on Monday August 20 2007, @09:00AM (#20292445) Homepage

          By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable.

          You're going to have to explain that one a little, I'm afraid. "Lock in" doesn't just mean "used by a lot of people". The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.

          But I don't think TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) is owned by anyone as such, so it's not like we're going to get forced to pay more for a protocol "upgrade". Nor could some hypothetical owner force us all to use any such upgrade - so there's no fear there.

          As for arbitrary restrictions, the Internet already lets you run any protocol you can devise over TCP/IP without the need for permission or approval. That may change if the anti-net-neutrality crowd start a program of aggressive traffic shaping, but that's hardly likely to be improved by a new proprietary Internet; more likely we'll see DRM on every hop, and no new usages permitted without a five year committee process.

          So, to summarise: please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.

          • please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.

            i think the parent post is referring vendor lock-in, specifically provider lock in.

            if you have no real choice in who provides your internet access you have take what they give you or choose to live without internet access. with all of the shenanigans (filtering, capping, throttling, etc.) that american telcos and cablecos have threatened to pull (or are actively pulling) thanks to the lack of competition in the residential broadband market, perhaps a non-american competitor to the internet as most americans know it is just what the doctor ordered.

            with that said, if they really wanted to impress me they would make such a network accessible from the US.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by NickFortune (613926)

              if you have no real choice in who provides your internet access you have take what they give you or choose to live without internet access.

              Point taken. However, that's not a shortcoming of the way the internet is currently designed. If I wanted to get a second phone line, I could open an account with a second ISP and have two gateways into my home LAN. That would take a little more vendor support for the average user, but there's nothing in the current implementation preventing such a usage.

              I do appre

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by teh_chrizzle (963897)

                Reinventing the infrastructure is not going to solve the anti competitive nature plans of some large carriers, and at best it will only provide a feature that we already have.

                i'm certainly quite skeptical of any research project with such a lofty goal, and the point of my post was to clarify what i took to be the parent post's idea of vendor lock in, which you identified (correctly so, in my opinion) as a business/implementation problem rather than a technical one. i am certainly not a nascent-japanese-r

                  • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                    by teh_chrizzle (963897)

                    The "Internet" is protocols and servers and routers. But the problems you've describes are about the wire - and you'll have to use that same wire to connect to any other network, unless you want to spend a lot of money, anyway.

                    excellent point. very well said. whatever rivals the internet may have to transcend wires.

                    Well, I think it would be a lot easier to censor, a lot more vulnerable to pharming attacks, less resistant to inter-ISP squabbles where one decides to drop the other's packets, and you'd st

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by NickFortune (613926)

                  That's assuming there is more than 1 ISP around where you live. Which is not always true. Especially if you need more than basic service (i.e. higher bandwidth). Besides, spying on you can be mandated for all ISPs (it already is in some countries, no?), so having a "choice" won't change much anyway. Next up is mandated filtering, also for all ISPs.

                  Yes. However, these are mainly political issues not technical ones. If your ISPs have been allowed to form a cartel, if the government mandates ISP level sur

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by FireFury03 (653718)
            The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.

            I think you've gone a bit too far with that definition. Vendor lock-in is just where a single company controls a protocol and no third parties can use it in an unrestricted way.

            The company doesn't have to abuse this position - the mere fact that you _have_ to use that company's services constitutes ven
      • This is totally redundant, and there's no reason to do it - just like other companies writing operating systems when Windows Vista was being developed...

        Wait, bad example...

        Of course it is. You called Vista an operating system.

        Operating systems make computers work, vista makes Gates rich.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MightyYar (622222)
      I don't see anything wrong with trying different approaches to the same end. Perhaps they disagree with compromises or design decisions that were made with Internet 2.0?

      • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mikael (484) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:03AM (#20292035)
        The internet is built over a series of seven layers - the . [wikipedia.org]

        The idea of splitting everything into layers is so that any one system could be changed without having to totally rewrite everything else - if you want to replace your dial-up modem with a wi-fi card, all you have to do is replace the drivers. If your ISP wants to replace their router network with an ATM network that's easily done without affecting you. If someone came along with a better router management protocol, that's easily done.

        The original Internet did have redundancy and resistance against breakdown built in. Unfortunately, many network companies found it cheaper simply to route separate logical networks along one connection, rather than have multiple and completely separate connections. Thus, we end up with a hard-wired minimum spanning tree network, that fails as soon as one link goes down.

        Let them go ahead with this idea, but by the time they complete their literature survey, they will probably find out there is very little that they need to change.

        • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Retric (704075) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:42AM (#20292317)
          I know this is /. but did you read the article you linked?

          Noting actually uses the OSI model it's just an abstraction to help people understand how networking works. The Internet uses the TCP/IP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model [wikipedia.org] model of Application, Transport, Network, and Data link layers.

          PS: The internet has redundancy as a mesh of networks even if many of those networks have single point's of failure. On second as you speak with such conviction on subjects you know little about you might belong on /. Welcome to the party.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by mikael (484)
            Yes, I did - I've also worked on networking products (network probes and LAN analyzers). Even had one of those protocol charts above my desk, so I've got a good idea of how "the tubes work".

            The Japanese have always had these grand computer initiatives (the last couple were "The TRON project" [super-nova.co.jp], and Fifth Generation computing (AI, Expert Systems, Automated Learning).

            The TRON project was an attempt to have computers be able to have a standard communication protocol:


            First, there is the problem of reliability. Ha

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Kadin2048 (468275) *
                Not to put words in the GP's mouth, but there are a few transport-layer protocols that I've come across which go in different directions from TCP and UDP.

                There is a list over at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], although I don't know if it's really close to exhaustive.

                A lot of them are aiming for some sort of [wikipedia.org] middle ground [wikipedia.org] between TCP and UDP. They want the statelessness of UDP but some of the congestion-control and error correction of TCP, but without having to reinvent the wheel by building their own error-correction on top of

      • Re:Doesn't this already exist? (Score:5, Informative)

        by bockelboy (824282) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:20AM (#20292151)
        The Internet 2 is a consortium maintains a high-speed backbone across the US; the costs are subsidized by the government so universities can communicate each other at 10Gbps rates without having to go out to the commercial Internet. A small portion of the funding goes to some middleware projects.

        However, most NSF-funded networking projects use the I2 as their testbed, but they're not necessarily a part of the I2. For example, GENI - the US effort to redesign internet protocols from the ground up - will run in parallel with I2. GENI is the US counterpart to this Japanese effort (although it's hard to tell from the light-on-details article).
    • As many as it takes to get one that's free of private interests.
    • Unless they figure out how to ensure redundancy, they will have reinvented the wheel. The reason the Internet is unreliable is that the last two nodes on the graph have only one connection. Why do we have only one ISP, and why do ISPs only have one upstream provider? Economics. Let's see them solve that one.

      Furthermore, we've been about to implement IPv6 for years now.

      Even furthermore, their ultra-secure shiny modern internetwork will still have to connect to the kludgy 1980's rustbucket the rest of us use on our Windows-based computers, which means it will be pwned in a few minutes just like the original.

      It's the Silver Bullet Syndrome. They think they'll invent a secure network, when all they'll be doing is achieving a bit of obsecurity.

    • From what I'd understood, Internet2 is a fundamentally different network - first of all, it is not de-centralized like the Internet; add the fact that AFAICT it is not (yet) open to general public, and despite the name, it doesn't seem to be a replacement.

      Granted, I may be missing some important points, as Internet2 doesn't exist in Croatia, but whatever... I don't mind the development of different networks; may the best and fastest one (both in transmission and wide deployment) win.

    • I mean, seriously, how many parallel projects do we need to do the same thing?
      Well. One is American, one is Japanese...

      It's called competition. At some point someone makes a bundle of money that the others don't make.

       

  • hmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BuR4N (512430)
    In normal cases when you see news like this I would be tempted to say that this is something that will never materalize, but Japan have a trackrecord of going their own way with for example mobilephone networks. WIll be interesting to watch if they getting anywhere with this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by dsginter (104154)
      Did anyone else picture an ethernet cable jammed into a can of Folgers [folgers.com] when they read th title?

      We've secretly replaced Yoshi's 100Mbit internet connection with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if he notices!
    • First - wire their own country for it.

      Second - provide gateways and translations from the old Internet to their new version.

      Third - provide the specs in an Open standard so anyone else can also implement it.

      Fourth - provide the specs for tunneling their new Internet through the old one until the new Internets are connected to each other.

      At the very worst they end up with their improved version for their own people. (If it really is improved.)
  • I guess the next wave of the internet will be based around much freakier porn than today's internet.

  • Who's gonna pay for that? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BibelBiber (557179) on Monday August 20 2007, @07:39AM (#20291893)
    The thing i snobody wants to pay for it. Compare this to the AOL and CompuServe networks that were available for a long time. Competing with the free internet. They don't exist anymore. Just because anybody who owns it can put restrictions on you. It's not gonna work.

    • Re:Who's gonna pay for that? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy (12016) on Monday August 20 2007, @07:51AM (#20291955) Homepage
      You are completely ignoring what everyone is thinking.

      how much DRM are they gonna shovel onto this thing? The current Internet setup is near perfect because of it's flaws. It is why it took off like a bat out of hell. "fix it" like these researchers and corperations want it and it will be Cable TV. Bland and icky.

      They want to shove so much DRM into the internet as well as have all your packets signed by your information, etc...

      I have a suggestion for the researchers, give up now, it will be a failure. good god look at how long ipV6 has been around and it is still being ignored. I think I read my 100th article about how we are running out of IP addresses that was worded identically to the one I read in 1999.

  • I bet this is going to be the same as the old one, except that all the addresses will comply to the following syntax: pika.youraddresshere.chu
  • I remember the last time the Japanese announced that they were going to change the whole face of computing, with this [wikipedia.org] project. After a few years, it was going to be the only hardware/operating system/networking combination that anyone would ever use. I wonder how they're getting on?

    • As of 2003, the TRON system (or more specifically the ITRON derivative) is one of the world's most used operating systems, being present in millions of electronic devices.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iamdrscience (541136)
      TRON has been a ridiculous success being one of, if not the most popular embedded operating systems in the world, meaning that it probably has more devices running it than the number of PCs running Windows/MacOS/Linux/etc. combined. Sure, I think it would be difficult to argue that it has changed "the whole face of computing", but really, is that anything to scoff at? I mean, how many technologies are there that have?
  • Once upon a time, France had complete domination of network information communication thingies [wikipedia.org].

    France probably laughed too, a big gutteral Gaulic laugh: "Silly Americains, think you can replace the Minitel? I fart in your general direction!"
    • You're taking the wrong lesson from Minitel. The real lesson is that pan-national will always triumph over local. See how far OSI got, even in the countries that mandated it (such as, of course, Japan).

      ian

  • Replace it with what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jollyreaper (513215) on Monday August 20 2007, @07:47AM (#20291935)
    Whatever they replace it with has got to be a) self-aware b) housed in a really cool-looking robotic body c) flail phallic, cybernetic tentacles on command and d) be preoccupied with conquering neighboring nations and cowering schoolgirls. I predict it will be called EcchiNet. Nuclear war and terminator endoskeletons to come later.

  • Japanese version? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yvan256 (722131) on Monday August 20 2007, @07:57AM (#20291997) Homepage Journal
    The american internet is made of a series of tubes, right? Well, then we can guess that the Japanese version will be a series of tentacles.

  • Costs (Score:3, Funny)

    by peterpi (585134) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:04AM (#20292037)
    Great. We can ask them how much it's going to cost [slashdot.org]
  • Anyone seen serial experiments lain? I think the Japanese are the last people we want inventing any internet....bazaar, to say the least, but strangely gripping, in a cultish kind of way.

    Good music though.

  • NSF is already doing this (Score:4, Informative)

    by Danathar (267989) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:16AM (#20292119) Journal
    http://www.nsf.gov/cise/cns/geni/ [nsf.gov]

    "With support from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), researchers are working together to design a bold new research platform called GENI, the Global Environment for Network Innovations. As envisioned, GENI will allow researchers throughout the country to build and experiment with completely new and different designs and capabilities that will inform the creation of a 21st Century Internet."

  • Not likely to work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Monday August 20 2007, @08:19AM (#20292149)
    The problem that all these people who want to replace things like e-mail or the Internet run in to is the whole thing that makes these technologies great is interoperability. The great thing about the Internet is that you hook in to it anywhere and barring your ISP or government having blocks up, you can talk to everything. You can switch ISPs, areas of the world, devices, etc it all doesn't matter. It's not like we didn't have networks before the Internet, what we didn't have was a network that everyone and everything could work on.

    So if you are going to replace it, you have to do it with something that works with the Internet. I am not going to sign on to a new network, no matter how good you say your technology is, if I can't access what's already out there. Of course a big part of what people want to do when creating a new standard is to cut off the problems that the old standard had, and thus it becomes incompatible and thus isn't workable.

    I mean the problem with a new e-mail system isn't designing one that's resistant to spam. That's easy. The problem is designing one that is resistant to spam but not incompatible with existing, unsecure, e-mail. You aren't going to get people to switch otherwise. It doesn't do me any good to have a spam proof technology if all the people who need to contact me don't also use that.

    Same deal with the Internet at large. I don't care how cool your new network is, if it doesn't provide me with access to everything on the Internet, and give everyone on the Internet access to servers I run, then it really isn't very useful to me.

    Really, the Internet, for all its flaws, is here to stay for a long time I think. It's not that we couldn't do better, it's that we aren't willing to redo everything from the ground up and switch over. Same shit with plenty of other things. With modern technology, a HVDC power grid might be a better system than what we have. However that's not what we have, and we aren't going to replace what we do have entirely, so we keep adding to the existing system. The Internet is much harder given that you are talking about a network that spans the whole world (and that you actually can convert AC to DC and back).

    It's a nice thought that "Hey, let's just tear down all this crap and rebuild it right, based on the better knowledge we have now," but it usually isn't at all practical in reality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by marcello_dl (667940)
      Replacing the internet is not possible. Either everybody switches overnight, or there is a period where these new networking tech/protocols must communicate with the old ones. So they essentially become part of the internet, nevermind it won't share the TCP/IP stack. Besides, a compatibility layer is needed for existing internet apps.

        • Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mathonwy (160184) on Monday August 20 2007, @11:12AM (#20293681)
          erm?

          Ok, I admit that networking isn't my strongest suit. But... am I missing something? What do you mean "the fact that the internet cannot cope with anything other than ascii"? The internet is just a protocol for routing information from point A to point B. That information is stored in bytes. By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is anything language-specific about those bytes.

          Are you confusing "the internet" with "the web"? Web pages do assume (by default at least) an ascii encoding, I believe. But that's not something that needs to be solved by changing the internet, that's something you could fix just by modifying browsers. Which, surprise surprise, is something people have already done. Heck, for that matter, what's up with your original premise, that they want to "have things in a language that they can understand, using characters that appear on their keyboards"? Most Japanese web sites ARE in japanese... Most web browsers DO support unicode encoding...

          Are you possibly just talking about the URLs themselves? They don't have unicode support I guess, although that's something that could [I think?] be handled just by supplying a unicode-enabled custom DNS?

          Don't get me wrong, research is generally a good thing overall, and as you point out, who knows what useful things they'll come up with along the way. But most of your reasons for why reinventing the internet might be a good idea, ring hollow to me. That, and the tone of your post feels like you have a specific bone to pick with either one of the previous posters, or possibly just with america in general?

          Personally, my main concern with a "new" internet is the climate in which it would be born. The current internet had the benefit of being created for non-comercial use in mind, and was deliberately designed with open access in mind. It's structure is deliberately set up in a fairly idealistic way. It has a crazy-low barrier for entry if you want to put something on it. I find it fairly unlikely that a "new" internet would be as open. Corporations in Japan (or America, for that matter) are unlikely to make that mistake again, and given the current environment (again, in both japan AND america) I find it exceedingly unlikely that any new creation on that scale wouldn't be at least partially beholden to corporate interests.

          (And yes, I know, our current internet's high-ideal design is steadily eroding before the face of a never-ending series of attempted power grabs by various groups. But at least it's.... taking them longer? At least such attempts are bandaids on an unfriendly design, as opposed to having the whole thing designed to be friendly to corporate control from the get-go?)

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by janrinok (846318)

            before it gets translated to their stupid characters

            And that is what is wrong at the moment - people like you don't accept that there are other nations, with other languages and alphabets, and with other desires for how the internet develops. For example, changing DNS so that it can cope with other languages would enable other countries to have meaningful names in their URLs. Many of these people cannot read English - nor should they have to. So being able to use their own words, in their own language, using a native keyboard would be a great step forwar

              • Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

                by janrinok (846318) on Monday August 20 2007, @01:10PM (#20295131)
                The 'http://' and '.cn' are not Chinese characters - they are ASCII. I'm not sure how a DNS server in, say, Iceland would cope with receiving URLs written purely in Chinese, Russian, Korean and Arabic. The easy answer is that the current specification requires 'http://' and '.cn' to be written in ASCII. But to many around the world, those characters are as meaningless to them as the Chinese characters are to me. That is why there is still room for the system to be improved so that any language can be used without recourse to ASCII. Doesn't the fact that Slashdot won't even accept the URL underline this point?

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.