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Web Creators Call Internet Outdated
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:22 PM
from the we-need-better-tubes dept.
from the we-need-better-tubes dept.
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.'"
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odd... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Geez....
Wow.. just wow (Score:3, Funny)
Leave it alone! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Leave it alone! (Score:4, Funny)
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Response (Score:5, Funny)
Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, there really isn't anything that wrong with the Internet. Sure, it may not work perfectly, but how can you ever expect to connect so many diverse systems together in one unregulated mass and have it work perfectly? If you want a better system, go use Internet2 and leave the rest of us alone.
Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Funny)
My junk mail folder seems to disagree with you.
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Insightful)
Any system that allows unsolicited contact is going to be open to abuse by marketing departments as all the other communication channels have shown. While DNS and other things aren't as secure as they could be, the structure of email on top of the internet is what allows for most of the abuse. Change the protocols and regulations for email and you'll get less (or at least more accurate) spam without changing the structure of the internet at all.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:4, Insightful)
And I always thought IP meant INTERNET protocol...
(meaning: to change IP is to change the Internet. Changing protocols running on top of it isn't)
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Informative)
Without getting too network-geeky, while they are both protocols they operate on different levels of the OSI model [wikipedia.org].
SMTP operates at the highest level (Layer 7); it has absolutely no concern for how messages are delivered, it is only concerned with how to format those messages, how to parse and read them, etc. Once it has the message formatted as what you would recognize as email, it passes it down to lower OSI levels and stops caring. You can completely gut TCP/IP and SMTP will continue to function; likewise you can completely alter SMTP without TCP/IP even caring.
TCP, on the other hand, is a Layer 4 protocol. Layer 4 is where the actual work of sending data takes place once the connection is established, and ensures reliable transmission.
IP is a level lower, on the Network level (3). Basically speaking, it figures out how to send the data. It does the job of routing.
While it is a matter of semantics, the lower you go down the more of "the Internet" one could argue it is. I would consider it fair to say TCP and IP both make up "the Internet" (though they do not have to--this was by choice). Things like SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. are services that run on top.
(These explanations are greatly simplified of course.)
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A teaching tool (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming the Internet for spam is like blaming roads for drunk drivers.
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Re:Netcraft confirms (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, chalk it up to a bit of 'tin foil hat-ism' on my part, but, I can definitely see MANY governments wanting a hand in a redesign of the 'internet'.
Accurate identification of all using it (no more anon. access/abilities). Heavy filtering of content (gotta protect the IP of our corporate 'sponsors').....and that silly way the current internet lets most anyone connect their own computer, and be a PEER amongst all the other computers...nothing really special needed to hook up any type server you want to run, and have it be just as accesible as a room of servers from MegaCorp, Inc.
Sure the current system isn't perfect, but, in many cases those imperfections many seek to fix aren't physical...they are the ones that are more theoretical. This current internet lets Joe Q. Citizen do a little too much, speak a little to loudly....while I mourn at the loss of the "wild west" days of the internet already to a great degree, I'd hate to see it disappear entirely.
I personally am a little afraid of what some would like to fix about the current tubes we're running on.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The series of RFC's for each protocol.
FTP, SSH, SSL, HTTP(s), DNS, IPsec, PPTP, PPOE, PPP, ATM, Sonet, Frame Relay, xDSL,
T-carrier, V.35, Ethernet, it is truly too many to list.
Organizations IANA, ICANN, ITU, ANSI, and several others.
People may think it is unregulated, but it trust me it is regulated.
Not to mention what the major long haul providers implement
via there own machinations.
and consumers begin to dabble in online video.. (Score:5, Funny)
he was meant to say pRon?
Seems like someone misses being important. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the factorial of 300 million? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll let the "average person" part pass (since I just don't know any better), but the megabits in question are at the last mile--there's a bottleneck where all those last mile circuits feed into an uplink that doesn't have nearly as much bandwidth as they do in the aggregate. And that's by design; the whole point of a communications network like the telephone network or a packet-switched network is to make the most of a limited resource by sha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As you noted, everyone has scads of last mile bandwidth, which is comparatively cheap to build-out. If the content is THAT MUCH in demand, just cache it closer to the people who want it. This is the entire reason that companies like akam
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
where are products completely ineffective? i sure don't want to go there.
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Umm.... Wow
What video in your email would an attachment. What would happen is it would get transmitted to your computer slightly slower than other types of data like streaming video or audio...
Which means that your voip phone, streaming music, and or streaming video wouldn't get interrupted by you downloading your ma
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not just allocate a piece of the available IP multicast bandwidth in the same way that pieces of the Electromagnetic Spectrum are licensed out. Sure it wouldn't be on demand, but people have been getting by without ondemand television now for 50+ years. Add to this the fact that the ability to have ~1Tb of harddisk is not difficult...and you've got yourself a nice internet connected DVR.
jusathought.
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QoS is the reason you're able to get megabits of bandwidth. It's the reason VoIP works at all (that's phones over the net). Without QoS filtering those video containing e-mails would use up all the bandwidth you need to watch live videos or have phone conversations. Every
Re:Faster protocols (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Faster protocols (Score:4, Funny)
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I think it is a therapeutical thing. [backuptrauma.com]
Web != Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Vice of Google thinks differently ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like he is not engaged in a (recent) startup.
CC.
Another stupid "advertisement article" (Score:5, Insightful)
To tackle the problem, a slew of start-ups are producing gear and software to accelerate Internet traffic or to increase the network's capacity. These include companies run by Messrs. Roberts and Bosack, as well as Riverbed Technology Inc. and Big Band Networks Inc. Other companies, such as BitGravity Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc., are creating "parallel networks" -- essentially scaled-down versions of the Internet -- to escape the glut of traffic on current networks.
Of course, the gentlemen crying wolf are the same people who run companies who can sell you stuff to fix the problem. There's no new problem here. The tubes, according to business people, always seem to be in a sorry state, about ready to crumble the moment the wrong person clicks one more time on that link promising Brittney Spears porn. And yet, I have been able to get my email every morning since 1993 when I got my first email account.
Typical fearmongering article designed to drum up new business. Mod me up, give me my karma now, and move along, nothing to see here.
Re:Another stupid "advertisement article" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Poor planning (Score:2, Insightful)
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There is only one reason anyone would want (Score:5, Interesting)
To establish borders and break the very thing that gives the internet so much potential and effect.
A world where no one could blog about monks being killed. A world where people fighting tyranny can't be heard from. and yes, a world where you can't watch porn.
The solution according to Roberts (Score:5, Insightful)
"Last month, his start-up, Anagran Inc., introduced a piece of gear called the flow router that he says can help modernize the Internet. The equipment analyzes Web traffic to discern whether it is an email, a movie or a phone call and then carves out the bandwidth needed for transmission."
No thanks.
The solution according to Bosack:
"Last month, his company, XKL LLC, unveiled a system that allows businesses to connect to underground cables that have nearly 100 times the capacity of current telecommunications pipes."
That would be really nice, how about making use of all the dark fiber first.
All in all, we see the people who were involved in the creation of the Internet now got into the private business and use all possible means of pushing said business forward. It's almost sad they did so good job the first time, that now they have created solutions in search of a problem
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that is referring to dark fiber. Throughout the article fiber is referred to as if it's some new revolutionary thing that runs on sun magic and will make molasses pour fast.
I wouldn't worry about not making that connection though, it's almost impossible to even tell what the point of the article actually is. Is it a biography? A review of new tech? A warning of impending danger? Who knows! It's just vague sentences strung together!
Reliability (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as you're running packets over copper, or fiber, or radio waves, or any other physical medium, you're going to have the possibility of packet loss. Oops, I unplugged the cable.
I always thought that was the brilliance of IP: once you admit that packets will always be unreliable, you can build a platform on top of that which does what you want. Pretending it can be 100% reliable is a fantasy, and it doesn't help us build better networks.
The web is the same way: no database geek would have ever thought of throwing referential integrity out the window. But Tim realized that there would always be the possibility of not being able to connect, so we have the 404 page, and the web is flourishing.
If Larry has an idea for a way to guarantee packets arrive, that's great, but somehow I doubt it's physically possible. And as long as we don't have it, the best way we know how to build networks is to allow for the possibility of failure, and deal with it.
Even web clients are smart enough to say "Sorry, can't seem to connect to some-server.com right now", but if cable TV goes out all I get is a blank screen. And if my network starts to get flaky, I can pause an online video and come back later when it's fully downloaded; I can't do that on TV. Is online video really that bad? On everything except bandwidth, we're doing pretty darned good, and bandwidth is being solved as we speak.
P2P Intelligence? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not sure how you could work out which peers are considered local. Maybe hop count could do the job, but I don't know how effective that is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
So the solution is to start having ISPs analyze my network traffic ? How about NO ? No thanks. I'd rather they just implement multicast, and don't use lack of bandwidth as an excuse to start spying on the users. Heck, traffic analysis obviously won't work with encrypted content, so shall we have to choose between privacy and quality of service? I for one do NOT welcome our existing overlords snooping more on what we do, and I would prefer it if they stick to net-neutrality and actually implement protocols like multicast, that have been designed to deal with the bandwidth issues.
What does Hollywood think? (Score:3, Funny)
Phone companies (Score:3, Interesting)
But noooo, there's no money for that because the telecomms have spent all their infrastructure money on "QoS" and spying equipment.
Instead of upgrading the capacity they buy hugely powerful equipment to analyse these vast data flows and selectively reduce the quality of service.
The problem with the Internet is the big telecom companies making selfish business decisions instead of the correct technical decisions. (see Bell Canada peering)
I say we buy up the fiber for a new network and run it publicly like the roads.
Customer owned fiber is the way to go.
http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/customer.html [canarie.ca]
The foundations are based on obsolete assumptions (Score:3, Interesting)
If only we had... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, if only we had some method to control the transportation of packets. I envision it starting with something like a handshake between two hosts so each would know that the other was ready. Then you'd want to assign sequence numbers to each packet so the recipient would know if a packet had been dropped. The recipient might have some way to acknowledge each packet, so the sender knows that the recipient received it. And there might even be some way for either endpoint to tell the other that it's finished with the conversation, allowing timely cleanup of network resources.
Nah, I'm dreaming. If such a magic "transport control" protocol were possible, surely the inventors of the Internet would have figured it out by now.
Congestion and all that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having been around at the beginning, I should comment on this.
There are some fundamental problems with the way the Internet works, but hardware has saved us from having to solve them. The biggest problem is that we still can't deal effectively with congestion in the middle of a pure datagram network. We know what to do out near the edges (look up "fair queuing", which I invented), but in the middle, where there are too many flows and too little transit delay, that doesn't work.
The practical solution to the problem has been cheap long-haul bandwidth in the backbone of the network, with routers to match. Early users of the modern Internet may remember the days when MAE-EAST and MAE-WEST would choke on traffic and the whole backbone would start losing half the packets. That was solved by cheap fibre optic links. Today, we have a network where the "last mile" usually saturates before the backbone does. This is what makes the whole thing work. But we never did get a good technical solution to that problem. We have some good hacks: the congestion window in TCP and "Random Early Drop", which together sort of work. At least where most of the traffic is TCP. We still don't have equally effective ways of throttling UDP traffic.
Roberts is a virtual circuit guy. He founded Telenet, which was a virtual circuit system. (I was recruited by Telenet when they had 13 employees, but turned them down.) Telenet was a flop commercially; it didn't scale up well. Telcos love virtual circuits, because they create connections they can bill. And they keep trying to get virtual circuits into the network. X.25, ISDN, ATM, and PPPoE are virtual circuit systems, and they all came from telcos. Roberts is still pushing variations on his virtual circuit scheme.
There are continuing attempts to get some kind of billable virtual circuit thing into the network, and those attempts consistently come from telcos. There was a scheme tried for using multiple PPPoE connections over ADSL links to provide multiple classes of service, with the good ones being more expensive. That didn't fly. The whole "net neutrality" thing is about this. What telcos really want is to be able to charge based on the "value to the consumer". The wireless phone people do this, and cash in big - SMS messages cost more to send than photos. The wireline telcos see themselves being cut out of the revenue stream as video moves to the Internet. They want to create a place where they can step on the hose and cut off the flow unless you pay them extra.
I wrote the classic RFC on this [faqs.org] too many years ago. Read the section "Game Theoretic Aspects of Network Congestion". It's still valid. But, as I said above, we don't have to solve the theoretical problem as long as throwing cheap backbone bandwidth at it works. Cheap backbone bandwidth will continue to be available unless some monopoly situation develops that prevents backbone bandwidth from being provided near cost.