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."
Wow, sounds like ipv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
LMCO and Microsoft: here's your protocol (hands them a copy of the ipv6 std doc).
US: thanks, that's great work! Here's your check.
Who wants to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this FUCKING JOKE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft, from all people? ignore all the jokes about his consumer OS. His server software is horrible bad!!. Maybe Visual Studio is a nice tool, his compiler is average, but good. Other than that, why o why? I sould not be tecnical merits, has to be something else.
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the f*** would anybody go to Microsoft? It took them over a decade to implement TCP/IP properly. Whatever you think of their software development, they're not exactly overwhelming developers of protocols.
Re:Could be a good them for them and us (Score:1, Insightful)
There's lots of non-military uses for wireless or satellite links. If you need to carry both operational and personal traffic, you establish multiple links and keep the networks separated.
The military's requirement for security is most certainly not unique, either.
China (Score:4, Insightful)
How the hell can you trust a corporation to handle the military security? No really, who the fuck had this brilliant idea?
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who wants to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
xml! (Score:5, Insightful)
if only! I sense XML based packets.
Of course! (Score:2, Insightful)
> Lockheed will be partnered with [snip]
> and - of course - Microsoft
> in developing the MNP
What's "of course" about this?
Really, this is no different from managers, company directors etc. who achieve nothing, or even drive companies bankrupt, yet still manage to obtain the next job to fuck up.
What the hell is up with these people?
Oh btw, any story on slashdot that somehow mentions Microsoft should automatically be assigned a non-removable tag: f*ckmicrosoft.
And finally: What's with the (extremely annoying) capitalisation of each word in a headline on Slashdot and many other places? That's bad practice and makes sentences (headlines too) less readable.
Re:How did they calculate exactly $31 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just surprised, no astounded, that a large military contractor (and microsoft) will do it for such a teeny tiny amount considering how much they usually charge.
Perhaps it is just for the IPv6 spec with the 6 crossed out and 7 in its place after all.
How does the whole Danger incident affect this? (Score:1, Insightful)
I wonder if any of the brass that signed off on this are having second thoughts after the Danger incident earlier this week. Or will "Oh shit, we lost all the data" be a good excuse the next time they can't find incriminating emails?
Also, apparently institutional memory only lasts for about 10 years in the military, because they've clearly forgotten about the USS Yorktown in 1998...
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/07/13987
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:2, Insightful)
"It took them over a decade to implement TCP/IP properly." What??? MS has made continually less and less useful implmentations of the IP stack with each build!
Re:China (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell can you trust a corporation to handle the military security? No really, who the fuck had this brilliant idea?
Do you have any idea of how the US military works at all? The military itself makes very few products. Just about everything from the bullets fired, the guns that fire them, the planes that carry the guns, the engines that power the planes, the radar that guides aims the guns, etc., etc., etc., was all designed and built by a "corporation", which simply met a spec that the military asked for. The military basically says, I need a plane that can go at least mach 2, can carry X number of pounds of air to ground or air to air weapons, has X% stealth capability, has a range of X miles, can land on a aircraft carrier, etc., etc... and costs about X dollars. Multiple designs are submitted by different companies that think they can meet or exceed spec, and the military then selects one or two to build a prototype and then selects one of those prototypes and then it has another contract bid to actually manufacturer the winning design.
ALL those things are being designed and built by a corporation that handles the military security. Even services for network design, and standard security policy and practices are usually designed and maintained by a corporation! Get a clue man.
don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
The taxpayer will pay for it, it will look great on paper but be overly complicated ($31m buys a lot of unnecessary engineering), Microsoft and Lockheed will patent it, they'll market the hell out of it, and they'll create a slow and buggy Windows implementation with Microsoft-proprietary "enhancements" that make it non-interoperable.
Then industry is going to settle on something different because the standard is patent-encumbered, too complicated, and doesn't work right anyway.
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft didn't implement TCP/IP. They took the BSD stack and tried to stick into Windows. When it didn't fit right, they tried again. And again. And again.
They were bound to get it right sooner or later.
Re:How did they calculate exactly $31 million? (Score:2, Insightful)
Like they did for Windows.
Re:China (Score:3, Insightful)
How the hell can you trust a corporation to handle the military security? No really, who the fuck had this brilliant idea?
Just about every American Legislature, Commander-in-Chief, Personnel Investigator, and military officer in the history of our nation?
I mean seriously, where do you think our military equipment is built and researched? There's not a factory somewhere with a bunch of army privates putting m-16's together. The vast majority of our military technology and equipment is produced and researched by private corporations. That's because the brightest minds get drawn in by the highest paycheck, and that's not usually offered by government/military positions.
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who wants to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you feel at all hypocritical posting that on the existing Internet, which came from earlier DARPA projects of the same nature?
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So...IPv6 then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sopssa, you have no point to make but you waste a lot of words making it.
Microsoft have a really bad history of implementing open protocols and are therefore not the right people to design a new one.