You Won't Recognize the Internet in 2020 421
alphadogg writes "As they imagine the Internet of 2020, computer scientists across the country are starting from scratch and re-thinking everything: from IP addresses to DNS to routing tables to Internet security in general. They're envisioning how the Internet might work without some of the most fundamental features of today's ISP and enterprise networks. Their goal is audacious: To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management. Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets. This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments."
Get real (Score:4, Insightful)
Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
"To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management."
I see. They want to end the real protection of free speach that anonymity provides.
O rly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I will recognize the net in 2020. People always overestimate the rate of change in the future.
Installed Base (Score:5, Insightful)
More security = less freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
But they will not be done right. they will make sure to build in anti-"doing wrong" features such as blocking unprotected audio and video formats
As long as they want to build an internet... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that values personal freedom over corporate or government control, I am for them.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the future Internet is developed in an apolitical, academic context like the current one was, we'll be fine. If corporate interests and security-obsessed regimes are able to lobby for certain "features," though, distorting the process, then we're in for some major problems.
Security starts at the ends (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the Internet switching fabric that is the problem, it's the end nodes. None of our PCs is provably secure. It's highly likely it won't be by 2020 either, as it appears the money is going into the wrong places in research. Capability Based Security [wikipedia.org] has been around since the 1980s, and yet it's not even being funded to try to get it ready for widespread use by 2020.
Until the ends of the internet are secure, it's not going to be secure. It almost seems the money is always being spent in places where it won't really help the end user, but will allow more control by the authorities. (Or maybe I'm just a bit paranoid?)
Just not trustworthy (Score:5, Insightful)
. This is the part I worry about, it sounds like what the **AA's would love to have, an Internet without anonymity, one where everything is trusted.
Much like the trusted computing module put onto motherboards, I simply can't have faith in "trusted" Internet. Remember your TPM has nothing to with you being able to trust anyone, and everything to do with you not being trusted with your own computer.
It may not be the researchers intent, but this sounds a lot like a euphemism for centralized content licensing management. The Internet community has been burned to many times, with trust becoming a euphemism for DRM and licensing. These researchers need to understand, that if nothing else they are going to have an image problem, even if they have no intentions of centralizing content management. One way to further look into this to see if this indeed the case would be to look and see what companies are helping to bankroll the research. Depending on the company, they will expect (demand) that things are built in a manner that they would as resolving their licensing issues.
Deja Vu (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why, we could redefine everything, from a new addressing scheme to network management protocols, and we could define a software stack with specific functions performed by each level of the network code.. from packet construction to routing and switching! And get this... for flexibility, we'll allow each layer to communicate directly with its corresponding layer in another application! You'll be able to use the same network code for local shared memory communications and global internet communications! There'll be a new addressing scheme with no shortage of addresses, performance will be better than it currently is, and most of the problems related to security and routing of traffic will be solved!"
"Best of all, the new model for the network will be very logically organized, not the mishmash of software and standards that have organically evolved from the old ARPANet protocols and de facto standards. It will be easily understandable through common sense acronyms and simple models."
"It'll be so superior to what we have now that it's a no brainer.. everyone will obviously convert to it right away, with no one left behind."
"So, you should watch closely and start admiring the folks writing this standard now, and start teaching it to college students so they're prepared to deal with the New Internet when we're done."
Pfft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model [wikipedia.org]
If the internet is unrecognizable in 20 years it'll be because of some great innovation from a random guy in his college office, or someone working on a private project during spare moments at his job, or an amateur coder who works on an idea beyond the limit of sanity to turn vision into reality. It won't come from a bunch of bureacrats and government servants setting out to make "The New Internet (tm)".
Erik
Right (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what they said in 1999, isn't it? We have Facebook and Twitter and x10000000000 web pages and lolcats, but everything else is the same.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
They also want "content-centric networking" where all content is identified and controlled. Even "an alternative architecture that removes the intelligence from switches and routers and places these smarts in an external controller", your router or switch is no longer your own but controlled and remotely programmed by others.
The article stinks of creating an internet that matches the 20th century media model, where a handful and rich and greedy decide what is to be presented as the majority opinion. The struggle was to be expected, after all you can have the uncontrolled masses sharing and discussing there opinions.
Here's betting that their controlled, censored, monitored, restricted, "Big Brother" network dies on the drawing board, as the majority seek to protect their thoughts and opinions.
Re:Get real (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, I would just like to see encryption techniques switch over to one of the methods that have been mathematically proven unbreakable instead of continuing to rely on the primes method which still has that Riemann hypothesis staring at it.
What other planets? (Score:3, Insightful)
What "other planets"? Occassionally people will talk about travelling to "other planets". What "planets" are they talking about?
You can't land on Jupiter, Saturn, Nepture or Uranus because they are just gas. Mercury has a temp of around 1100 C and Venus is 900 degrees with a sulfuric acid atmosphere and atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than earth.
So that just leaves Mars. So why don't they just say Mars instead of "other planets"?
Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management.
We don't want that.
Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets
None of that has anything to with the first part of their statement. Changing protocols and changing packets won't change the fact that you need the physical hardware at the location. The current internet does not have a problem extending connectivity to the remote regions of the world, or even to other planets. The only thing stopping THAT is the physical wires, servers, switches, etc. that have to be set up.
Before you go on about limitted address space, keep in mind that if we pushed those kinds of projects (the second type) the more we'd be pushing towards IPv6 - and even now we have some silly workarounds like NAT. In fact, I think if they redesigned NAT so it wasn't so... annoying to use, we'd get more use out of that than any other internet protocol they are probably working on.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
in soviet russia... (Score:2, Insightful)
... the internet recognizes you!
and five years after we invent & roll that out (Score:3, Insightful)
...the rest of the world will hate us for controlling "their" Internet.
(sorry, just read a Digg thread and I'm bitter about dumb people right now)
Tom Caudron
All those gilded, pumped up words to hide (Score:5, Insightful)
one single fucking dirty word : control.
love the way how they pump up the stuff noone needs - exabytes of content, more 'reliability'. reliability of what, exactly ? reliable in which way, precisely ? it awfully resembles shitty catchphrases senators use to push their sinister private interest agendas in senate. 'good' abstract words which noone should object to - reliability.
'identity management'. what a nice way to say 'control'. its like naming a damned private interest feudal law Digital Millenium copyright act. now see, there's the phrase 'digital' in it and it also says 'millenium'. that cant be something bad right ?
so it goes like this. of course, unless we net people, eff and similar organizations starten up and take the initiative to create public opinion rather than waiting for some private interest to screw us all up by brainwashing the public.
And not even that imaginative. (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Another radical proposal to change the Internet infrastructure is content-centric networking, which is being developed at PARC.... Instead of using IP addresses to identify the machines that store content, content-centric networking uses file names and URLs to identify the content itself.
Kind of like how the Web works.
We're trying to work around the fact that machines-talking-to-machines isn't important anymore. Moving content is really important.
Which is done by machines-talking-to-machines.
Peer-to-peer networks, content distribution networks, virtual servers and storage are all trying to get around this fact.
Actually, no, they're the methods you'll have to use to build your utopian Internet, even if you hide it behind a new name. Also, how do virtual servers get around that fact?
Jacobson proposes that content — such as a movie, a document or an e-mail message — would receive a structured name that users can search for and retrieve. The data has a name, but not a location, so that end users can find the nearest copy.
There's a name for that "name" -- a URI.
Now, maybe what they're proposing will improve things, but if so, it's going to be incremental -- it's still going to talk IP under the hood. The bold claim that we "won't recognize" the Internet, that this is a "radical idea", is unwarranted hype.
I mean, if I understand what they're actually proposing, the most radical interpretation I could give it is ideas that have already been in Freenet for years.
Learn a lesson from "the Jetsons" ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is based on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) [wikipedia.org] a military research project to use packet switching over a network instead of circuit switching. I doubt they envisioned it becoming so innocuous. It wasn't until Tim Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org] introduced HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and subsequently released it royalty free that the Internet's World Wide Web was born. And the rest, as they say, is history. This "new" internet initiative is probably to try and put the genie back in the bottle.
Welcome to the beginning of the end (Score:4, Insightful)
To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management
Once it was possible to obtain a car (if you could afford it), sit at the wheel and roam about the countryside, feeling the wind in you hair and scaring the cows. Eventually this became so much the image of freedom that the theme from the "World of Motion" exhibit at EPCOT was called "It's fun to be free." Today you need to license the car (pay fee), license yourself (pay fee), maintain both licenses (pay fee pay fee), keep you car street legal (pay maintenance), learn and abide by an insane amount of legislation (and I don't know anybody who has never had a ticket, no matter how careful they are), pay insurance... Owning a car today is a chore, driving is a necessity but it's far from fun; the moment it becomes fun, you're breaking some law. I know, this protects everybody, blah blah blah, I agree. But it's not fun.
The same mindset, for similar reasons, is now being ported to the Internet. Good bye freedom, good bye fun. Hello taxes, licensing and obligations. Sad.
Re:O rly? (Score:2, Insightful)
I communicate via a handheld computer that can crack a variety of encryption schemes (more or less as many as the average single computer.) I get into my car and start it without ever taking the key out of my pocket (it knows I've got the key in my pocket when I hit the button on the door.) I have access to the greatest library ever constructed at the speed of light. Well, close enough for my purposes anyway.
People don't overestimate, they simply predict poorly what new wonders will come next.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
You basically say: I am this person, and here is the signed certificate that proves it. And if i'm not this person you can be sure that the person you're dealing with has my ID card (and it's probably stolen).
Actually what you're saying is: "I am this person, or a thief with this person's card, or a hacker with access to this person's data or a hacker with access to your data to compare with this person's or the guy who manipulated the master database last month or the guy who hacked this person's ISP, or this person's cable guy/maid or this person's son or a russian mathematician who found a flaw in your identification system."
Which is a degree of security perfectly achievable by the current internet.
Security Theatre (Score:3, Insightful)
... to Internet security in general ...
Guaranteed, they won't increase real security, but they will increase security theatre.
Stuff that's very public, annoying, and utterly ineffective, like background and credit score checks as part of Cisco CCNA certification, maybe an official scarey looking badge or uniform for internet security personnel, maybe some very public raids against random citizens, etc.
Heres a thought ... Americans used to be "citizens". Now we're merely "consumers". Maybe with the new internet we'll get a new name like "surfers".
In other words, the world's wealthy fear the net (Score:4, Insightful)
Any "new" internet will be all nicely traceable and controlled. You'll need an ID to log in and your physical address will be in the international database. Your health inquiries will all be reported to the insurance guilds and if you make too much noise about the wrong politician/financial professional, your porn surfing habits will be accidently "discovered" and reported by a media owned "news" site.
Re:Get real (Score:4, Insightful)
Get real, the aim is to create a croporately-controlled network on the server-client model. The “new”, “improved” intertubes will be stritly one-way, and will incorporate DRM down to the packet level to make sure that the croporate masters get paid for every shred of content consumed by the great unwashed masses.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:5, Insightful)
It also protects your job, your social status and your life if you do not conform to the status quo. The first amendment only protects you from the government, not every consequence of expressing your freedom comes at the hands of the government. Nor can you fight a bullet in your head after the fact.
Re:What other planets? (Score:4, Insightful)
While strictly speaking not planets, there are lots of other "heavenly bodies" that one might land on. The most obvious is Luna, although Titan and some of the other gas giant moons hold a degree of promise. Then there's the possibility of sending data to other planets but not to their surfaces - Venus' atmosphere may be hot and corrosive, but its orbital space is essentially clear. Suppose we wanted to send a manned orbital observation craft to Jupiter (for whatever reason) - would connecting it into this network not count as extending this Internet "to other planets"?
Re:Get real (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, the aim may be to create a government-controlled network on the server-client model, where the "new," "improved" intertubes no longer provide even the slightest hint of anonymity and will incorporate inspection down to the packet level to make sure that the government "anti-terrorist" agencies get to inspect every subversive thought of the great unwashed masses.
Basically, whether you're a "big corporations are ruining America" lefty, or a "Obama is reading my email" right-winger, there's something for everyone to hate here. And just because someone has an outrageous theory about a conspiracy (on the right or left) that doesn't necessarily rule a conspiracy out.
Re:Get real (Score:5, Insightful)
At least none that don't have full support for governmental control.
I'm afraid with this newly designed, improved internet...that a major side effect is that it will become less free, and more controlled. What makes the current internet great IS the freedom you have on there. If you work at it, you can still be anonymous. You can connect your computer and become a true peer with anyone else in the world. You can set up your own server (ok, these days you generally have to get a business account, but that's not THAT bad for $$) and you can publish to your hearts content.
These very things that make the current form of the internet so remarkable and useful...are the very things most governments (even the US government which should not be freedom suppressing, but, currently likes to be) absolutely hate....and I'm sure are very sorry they didn't see coming. They can't put the genie back in the bottle, but, I guarantee you that they WILL be working for more controls in the 'new' internet. Yep, along with all that 'security' will come traceability, even better storage of data on the individual, etc.
Frankly, I prefer to take my chances on the "Wild West" model of the internet rather than have more control placed on a better version. I keep wondering in the end who it will be better for? I don't think the answer to that is the common end user.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More security = less freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh yeah, SSL tramples all over your freedoms.
Repeatedly calling me an idiot doesn't do anything to prove your point.
Re:Their goal is audacious? (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one, reject the notion that the identity on my passport is more "real" than the one I post on Slashdot (and a few other sites) with. We should do away with the concept that having more than one identity is some kind of deception.
Re:O rly? (Score:4, Insightful)
But not the net in 2050. People overestimate the near future and underestimate the far future.
Re:Get real (Score:3, Insightful)
like a central cert that uses a crazy large public key system to communicate a symmetric key and they require proof of residence and you use this system to say "I refuse to connect to anyone that doesn't use one of these signed certs".
Add a 3 strikes clause to having your cert revoked and a 5 year renewal. Your ISP catches you as part of a bot-net 3 times, you cert gets deactivated. In order to reactivate your cert, you must pay a certified company like "Best Buy" or any one willing to get certified, to clean your computer and sign off saying it's bot-net-free.
While a host like facebook/your bank/etc may not care about you having a valid cert, I may care that you got your cert deactivated and I don't want you connecting to my computer directly or some email system saying, "Hey, your cert is deactivated for bot-netting, I'm going to refuse all your emails for possible spam reasons; get your computer cleaned"
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
The "Web" had nothing to do with the expansion of the internet other than providing a "killer app" that most ordinary people would be willing to use. The "internet" was growing very well without HTTP and HTML, including sharing documents and providing methods for people to download/upload materials.
It annoys me to no end when I see people who should know better to make the assumption internet==web.
One funny experience I had was at Comdex when I cornered "salesman" trying to sell some set-top box that would connect "to the internet". I gave him a well-formed URL that would work on any web browser commonly used at the time... and his little box simply barfed up a sort of syntax error instead. It was an FTP site instead of a web browser, not that anybody remembers those kind of servers any more.
Even more frustrating is when firewalls presume that port 80 is the only access port you would ever use... or convincing IT security guys that you might want to use a port other than 80.
Re:More security = less freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I won't be thrown in prison. For all the wailing going on here, our society (in the United States) is at least as open as it was 50 years ago. Probably a great deal more so a when you consider things like suffrage and the treatment of the disabled.
There are lots of places where things need to get better, but the notion that things have gotten worse is simply hilarious.
Re:Let's see here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn right. And let's not even touch the point that we DO NOT WANT our identities to be linked to our internet activities. There is not a single person in here who'd want that.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
The "Web" had nothing to do with the expansion of the internet other than providing a "killer app" that most ordinary people would be willing to use.
That's like saying desktop publishing had nothing to do with Apple becoming the De facto standard for graphic designers in the 80's other than providing a "killer app" that designer's would be willing to use. While the Internet was well on it's way to a bright future to say HTTP had nothing to do with it's success is just plain denial.
Look back 10 & 20 to see the what next 10 brin (Score:3, Insightful)
Being 40+ years old now and watching technology my whole life starting computers at 7 it's something I am very in tune with.
If you want to see how it's going to change in the future you can just extrapolate from the past.
First let's point out that the internet is a common method for moving datagrams (IP packets, block of data up to 1500 bytes at a time), much like the postal service ships individual letter. On top of this stream connections using (TCP) are created and most of what we see is built on this.
The point is, there are no limitations over what can be sent, or the format.
So telepresents, virtual reality, haptics, Remote control of UAV's, skys the limit on what can be sent over this network.
I remember the Internet clearly as it was 30 years ago. As a hacker breaking in to it was the most LEET thing you could do back in 1980.
I wasn't till 1987 before I finally got my first legitimate access to the Internet.
Let me put a little time line down to put things in to perspective.
1969 CompuServe started.
1972 C Programming Language invented.
1980 -- there was no TCP/IP even is was NCP, no unix servers and it was the DARPANET. It was all 300 Baud Modems! UUCP and Email was there.
1983 BSD 4.2 Unix came out with first tcp/ip stack in . C++ first developed.
Modems and BBS's ruled at this time (sort of like when dinosaurs roamed the earth)
1984 Apple Macintosh first released.
1985 "thin" Ethernet first comes out (uses BNC Coax)
1987 Perl released.
1988 Linksys founded. First Internet Worm get's loose, create massive panic! (Robert Tappan Morris)
1990 -- there was no www, html, , it was telnet, ftp, gopher, Archie First Internet search engine starts.
10Base-T first comes out.
1992 Wais search engine starts.
1992 Tim Berards Lee came out with www and html.
1993 Mosaic the first "graphical" web browser. Before this it was all console text based !!!!!
WiFi was invented. Linux and FreeBSD first Released. Lycos search engine starts.
1994 14.4K modems first started to appear. WebCrawler search engine starts. VRML web based virtual reality.
1995 Yahoo and Altavista search engines start. Vocaltec first VOIP comes out. JAVA released.
1995/6 is when the internet boom started. 28.8K modems appear.
1997 Google & E-Bay started. 36.6K and 56Kmodems appear. PHP first comes out. Netflix starts. 100Base-T first comes out.
1998 Voip is 1% of all phone traffic.
1999 Napster first comes out. DSL & Cable Modems first become available. Metricom Ricochet service comes out. Blogger.com goes online.
Gigabit Ethernet first comes out.
2000 Dot com Crash.
2001 Metricom dies.
2002 Bit Torrent takes off. Wifi Starts to take off for consumers.
2003 Skype first comes out.
2004 Facebook goes online.
2005 Youtube goes online.
2006 Twitter founded.
2007 Hulu Starts
2008 Netflix start streaming video.
2009 HD videos are being streamed from Youtube.
Well as you can see things in the past 10 haven't changed all that much.
I expect the next 10 will not bring any radical surprises unless your living under a rock.
I expect telepresents, and augmented reality to be the next big things.
I am going to try to keep filling this in and post on my blog johnsokol.blogspot.com
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, since IPv6 supposedly does away with the need to use NAT, it's perfectly likely that you can be tracked more effectively via your device's IP address, unless you can find effective measures to avoid that.
Not only does it 'supposedly do away' with the need, those supporting it also make using NAT out as blasphemous. THAT makes me a bit skeptical.
Re:Get real (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'm afraid with this newly designed, improved internet...that a major side effect is that it will become less free, and more controlled."
Um, that's a "side effect" in the same way instant death is a "side effect" of leaping into the path of a speeding train. In other words it's an inevitable and completely predictable outcome.
Which is why I really cannot understand the chorus of people who think that having the government (any government) own and operate all your Internet connectivity is such an awesome idea. He who pays the piper calls the tune.