Lockheed Snags $31 Million To Reinvent the Internet, Microsoft To Help 326
DARPA has awarded a $31 million contract to megacorp Lockheed Martin which will, with some assistance from Microsoft, attempt to reinvent the Internet and make it more military-friendly. "The main thrust of the effort will be to develop a new Military Network Protocol, which will differ from old hat such as TCP/IP in that it will offer 'improved security, dynamic bandwidth allocation, and policy-based prioritization levels at the individual and unit level.' Lockheed will be partnered with Anagran, Juniper Networks, LGS Innovations, Stanford University and — of course — Microsoft in developing the MNP. Apart from that, Lockheed's own Information Systems & Global Services-Defense tentacle will work on amazing new hardware."
Re:Skynet (Score:2, Informative)
Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
From reading the actual BAA [fbo.gov], it sounds like this is not an effort to replace IP networks but to supplement them with additional protocols. In fact, the requirements explicitly state that MNP must carry legacy IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.
Re:China (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:5, Informative)
The military may be looking for a smaller packet size then IPv6 can offer. Think IPv4 with all of the cruft taken out. They might be able to get away with an even smaller address size then IPv4 since they have a finite number of things they want to connect. Ports seem to be a waste of bits, since you only ever use a few of those at a time. Shaving 10 bits off of the address and 10 bits off of the port would allow them to add security, prioritization, etc.
Some of these military data streams will be unreliable and every bit helps.
I believe the actual article indicates that it still has to be able to carry traditional IPv4 and IPv6 data... So I doubt if they're going to completely re-invent the wheel.
Sounds more like they want a new protocol to sit on top of IP... Maybe something to replace TCP and/or UDP? Maybe just bolting on some QoS and IPSEC in some documented, standardized way? Maybe a new multipurpose communication protocol to roll SMTP/HTTP/FTP/VOIP/whatever into one?
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow.
I am guessing you are going for a funny mod. I just don't see the humor however.
You don't by chance believe what you just typed do you?
The DHCP RFC was written and published in 1997, by a guy at bucknell university (bucknell.edu ?) in Pennsylvania. Windows JUST got a built in IP stack in 1995, and even then it was only a copy of the BSD IP stack. They didn't rewrite their own for a couple years later, long after DHCP was rolled out. Microsoft had nothing to do with it, other than again copying the BSD dhcp code and adding it to their IP stack.
Microsoft also never wrote samba. They attempted to sue samba to make them stop releasing software, but thankfully they didn't get away with it. Now if you mean the file sharing protocol itself of SMB, then yes Microsoft made that. However Microsoft never wanted anyone else to use it. So even if they 'did it right', you still can't thank them for that if you use it on a non-windows system today. Samba was created in response to Microsoft not sharing their protocol, which is how it ended up on unix systems to replace NFS.
It is also worth pointing out that the samba project was started long before SMB or even windows 95 existed, back in 1992, and provided the same type of service for DEC file sharing, that it provides for SMB windows sharing today and LAN Manager support previously. And before you ask, Microsoft had nothing to do with DEC (aside from possibly aiding their going out of business)
Basically you are giving credit to Microsoft for inventing something they didn't, and for giving something to unix that they fought tooth and nail to keep from being on unix.
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:3, Informative)
The second thing Microsoft did right was samba.
Microsoft did not create Samba, since Samba is an implementation of the SMB protocol for *nix systems. And SMB was not created by Microsoft either, but by IBM. But Microsoft did use the SMB protocol for the Windows File Sharing services. Other people had to reverse-engineer the protocol to be able to create Samba, which was expressly created to allow Unix systems to interoperate with Windows systems, which hardly was in Microsoft's interest.
it has became such a standard that even on UNIX boxes, it has edged out NFS.
It has? That's news to me. But still, if I understand correctly, the Samba team has created an overlay protocol on top of SMB to support such things as Unix file ownership and access rights, so that Samba could be usable even for *nix to *nix file access. This protocol is only used if both systems are *nix systems though. Without this support, Samba wouldn't be less useful for this scenario.
And really, "did right"? Then why have I always gotten such lousy performances from SMB transfers? Compared to FTP (even in Windows), I've never gotten above some 60% of the corresponding FTP transfer rate.
Re:Who wants to bet... (Score:1, Informative)
No Darpa isn't a corporation it's proof that communism works without cost overruns.