NSF Tags $30M For Game-Changing Internet Research 119
coondoggie writes "So you want to build a better Internet? The National Science Foundation today said it would spread $30 million over 2-4 projects that radically transform the Internet 'through new security, reliability and collaborative applications. The NSF said its Future Internet Architectures (FIA) program wants: "Technological innovations and the requirements of emerging and yet to be discovered applications, the Internet of the future is likely to be different from that of today. Proposals should not focus on making the existing Internet better through incremental changes, but rather should focus on designing comprehensive architectures that can meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century."'"
Re:Time to disolve NSF? (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the point of the NSF. Besides, as this link http://nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10001/toc.jsp [nsf.gov] to their FY 2009 report shows, they already spend almost a billion dollars a year on education. Or over 30 times the value of this award. I really don't think you can claim that canceling this award and giving the money to the DoEdu (or even shifting it to the education side of NSF) would be better value for the money.
Re:Best to keep doing patches (Score:1, Informative)
Posting anonymously as I am working on one of the projects.
"Its a lot better for the world as a whole if we keep doing small improvements to the internet rather than a total overhaul"
Speaking for my project only, small improvements IS the entire point; leverage today's infrastructure to achieve better $performance_metrics. Sure, we want applications and devices to have security/trust/nachos, but leverage as much existing hardware and protocols as possible. For sure, the one thing we do not want is a "separate" internet. Those that want segmentation can simply refer to the fragmented social networking apps to see why this is a bad idea .Don't like social networking? Fine, drive from hawaii to CA by car (only).
Re:Likely to be different? (Score:4, Informative)