Who Will Fix the Internet? No One, Apparently 370
blackbearnh writes "It seems like everyone focuses on the latest and greatest killer Internet applications, but the underlying infrastructure that all of them run on is showing its age. That's the claim made by a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor. IPv4 is relatively ancient, and even stalled improvements like IPv6 aren't significant enough to matter, according to some researchers. With no one 'in charge' of the Internet, it's almost impossible to get any sweeping technical improvements made, especially since there's no financial incentive on the part of the ISPs and telecoms to invest in basic infrastructure. CalTech Professor John Doyle puts it this way: 'To the extent I've been working in this field for the last 10 years, I've been mostly working on band-aids. I'm really trying to get out of that business and try to help the people, the few people, who are really trying to think more fundamentally about what needs to be done.'"
Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
Let the porn industry fix the internet. They're responsible for most of the traffic.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
This looks like a job for... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I Thought We'd Been Through This? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Funny)
I haven't RTFA. But my little hopeful, idealistic vision for a next-gen internet is a mesh network with an ad-hoc routing protocol that can get your traffic from one side of the globe to the other, without address assignment that is centrally controlled by a hierarchy of government and corporate entities.
A solution I was thinking of was giving each device a (changeable) cryptographically secure address (ie. you generate a key pair, the public key is the address, the private key is your proof that you own that address). In the local area finding the destination could simply be a matter of asking the neighbors if they've seen it. On the global scale geographical routing could be used, with a registry mapping the public keys to their general spatial neighborhood (General so it was less of a privacy concern, say 16-256 km^2). My idea certainly needs more research, especially regarding decentralizing such a geo-address registry and making a working routing protocol that can find good routes over millions of nodes.
Re:I Thought We'd Been Through This? (Score:5, Funny)
ATDT 5601750
(beep beep boop beep bleep blep boop)
(squuuuuuooooosh)
(aaaaeeeh)
.
.
.
CONNECT 1200
I agree. There's nothing wrong with the internet, so why bother fixing it? As you can see I can access it just fine and I never needed to upgrade one single bit of my equipment.
+++
ATH
@&%*@... &*(&%(*... CARRIER LOST
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
I can just see the scene- The door bell going, the bored housewife answering the door, and some badly dubbed sys admin appears, announces he's here to fix her internet as a dodgy 70's funk soundtrack starts up...
Re:I Thought We'd Been Through This? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Christian... science ? (Score:5, Funny)
Your attempt to make us panic and throw a metric shitload of money into your inadequate research to end net-neutrality has failed. The average slashdot reader knows more about the intricacies of the Internet than you expect and can therefore tell you that doom's day is far off. We know that because the Terminators need IPv6 to keep track of their innumerable minions.
No IPv6 no doom's day.
Thank you for your time,
Average Slashdot Joe
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
sales
You...pay...for pornography?
Re:I Thought We'd Been Through This? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:1, Funny)
Quiet, you! The running joke is that the Internet (and home video before it) is for porn, and we'll have none of your "facts" and "statistics" to ruin it.
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
Admin: Excuse me miss, I'm here to fix your PPP WAN connection.
Housewife: Oh! My.. (blushes). Well, please come in
(The Admin lurches in, slightly sweaty and breathing through his mouth)
Housewife: Can I get you anything? Cake or cookies?
Admin: No, thanks, I'm lactose intolerant. Cookies give me gas. Where's your ethernet router?
Housewife: (deeper blushes) Oh, my. How about a drink then? Scotch?
Admin: I'd take a mountain dew. Diet though. I'm watching my weight.
(He pats an ample belly. The housewife's eyes grow wide.)
Housewife: I'll.... I'll get you something right away. (She hurries off to the kitchen)
Admin: (Calling after) Where's the computer?
Housewife: The computer?! It's, ahhh, in the living room.
(The Admin waddles to the computer, which is neatly set on a small, immaculately dusted table with pullout keyboard shelf. He rips the table out from the wall, kneels down and begins rummaging amidst the jungle of wires at the back. After some time he pauses, and turns around to see the Housewife standing over him with a glass of soda and a plate of potato chips. She has been there for some time.)
Admin: Oh thank's! (He's wolfs down the meager glass and munches on a few chips).
Housewife: You're welcome. Have you found the problem yet?
Admin: Oh yeah. (He's wipes his greasy fingers on his front of his shirt). I need to adjust your broadband for IPv6.
Housewife: I...see. And, what might that involve? Will I have to call my husband? He's at work right now.
Admin: Naww. It shouldn't take a minute. I've got your upgrade right here!
(He reaches into the fanny pack on the front of his tool belt and rummages around. The Housewife begins to feel faint)
Admin: Here it is! (He draws a small sleek black router from the pouch)
Housewife: And what's that for?
Admin: It's for your line. I just have to rejig everything.
(He back about and resumes his rummaging. The Housewife slumps back on the sofa and stares silently.)
Admin: All done. Can you check to see if it's working?
Housewife: What?
Admin: On the computer. Check to see if your internet is working. Open your browser and go to ipv6.google.com
Housewife: Oh! (See hikes up her dress and sits and the computer desk. As she clicks, she hikes the dress up intermittantly.)
Admin: Is it working?
Housewife: Oh! (Her voice is noticeably more sultry) Something went wrong. I seem to have come across some kind of... pornographic website. Could you take a look?
Admin: It's probably a virus. You should use Ubuntu. I could partition your drives for you if you like.
(He lumbers up from the floor and leans over towards the desk. As he presses against her and brusquely takes the mouse from her grasp, the Housewife finally succumbs and passes out.)
(When she awakes, she is lying on the floor with the Admin sitting at the desk.) /media. It should work seamlessly. Anyway, I have to get back to the office.
Housewife: What.. what happened?
Admin: (The admin glances at here, then turns back to the computer screen.) I fixed the problem on the Windows partition and installed Ubuntu Jaunty on a second partition. It should be working fine now. I've set up the dual boot to load up Ubuntu by default, but you can change it by editing the Lilo files.
Housewife: What about my computer files?
Admin: Everything's accessible from Nautilus. I've mounted your old drives as WINDOZE_OLD in
(He gathers his tools and makes for the door)
Housewife: Wait! What about my husband's files from work? What about his emails.
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Funny)
And then, if they get a wife, they're back to porn. Is circle of life. Or something.