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DARPA Aims to Redo the Internet Protocol
Xaleth Nuada writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) is looking to redo the entire Internet Protocol. With the DoD increasingly adopting network-centric warfare the shortcomings in the current IP have become resoundingly clear. Everything works fine for static hardwired networks. But not for dynamic wireless ones. The benefits for your average geek? How about REAL wireless networking? Easier network set-up? Increased wireless security protocol? Increased reliability in sending information?" Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles. :)
Given the scale of the re-work proposals (replacing the Von-Nuemann architecture...), I'd be surprised if there wasn't some effort made to embed snooping and tracing into all packets transmitted. This *is* the DoD after all!
On the other hand, given how slowly IPv6 is making its way into the wider world, we probably don't have too much to worry about for the time being!
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
"Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles."
I read that as:
"Don't forget about the sudden explosion of extended-temp jobs flooding the market as the Internet decides to change over..."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Upgraded to IPv6. Sigh.
They'd best be careful, or this "Protocol 7" will inadvertently cause data from dead people to leak to the Internet...
Can I hear someone say IPv6?
Someone has not got enough to do....
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles. :)
Yeah man, but massive incompatability and upgrade hassles are what keep some of us employed! GO DARPA!
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
And when will this new Internet Protocol be rolled out...
shortly after IPv6 adoption?
I don't see Satan reaching for his winter parka just yet...
Easier activity tracing, easier monitoring, easing censorship of "bad" websites, easier disabling of internet access to undesirables.
Please! Anyone but Microsoft!
-Oy Vey
Combine voice, data, video, and security.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
A new Internet Protocol? Isn't that called IPv6? They put a lot more security features in that time; if they need more now, why didn't they get it right back then? And what should convince me that they will this time?
Now, off to RTFA.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
what does it mean by REAL Wireless networking? isn't 802.11 wireless? i'm confused...
DARPA did help lay the foundations for the Internet. They may be in a good position to bring positive innovation to the IP protocol. Just as long as enough of us /.ers can see through any hidden embedded packet sniffing credit card stealing email reading we're watching you protocols, we should be GREAT.
Im a former Marine myself, and I fondly remember what a nightmare it was just trying to get everyone to have the same crypto loads for existing voice communications hardware. Im really curious as to how they propose to keep the network secure. On the other hand, the possible benifits are huge. Distributed sensor networks in particular could be revolutionized by this.
"Hand me the bullet-shooty-thing and a box of little hurts" -Overheard on a USMC Rifle range
Perhaps they can include, as a side project, a revamp of some of the transport layer protocols. How about something to replace SMTP with a protocol designed to help lessen the wide-spread proliferation of Spam? Perhaps we should all just switch to Jabber and get rid of that whole email thing.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Given the choice between adapting to bits of the old with patches and workarounds on top, and completely redoing something and starting from scratch, I'd rather see the latter - especially with something so embedded as IP.
Doing the former only puts it off, and will force a change further down the line, which leads to the possibility (likelihood?) of a rush job.
While we're at it let's kill off SMTP too and make a spamless email system =)
(Witness the MacOS9 -> OSX migration for a 'complete rewrite' success story)
Let's just all pray the military dosn't call this SKYNET.
Yay! Sounds like a great idea... get the government involved with solving all the technical problems.
Watch congress get involved! Watch how the project ends up championed by the "experts" at Microsoft (because they pay the dough and it's the only name the congressdrones know). Watch how the whole project ends up propritary and billg forces the government to pay $50 per node. Finally.. watch how the whole system ends up unreliable... so we end up with a system that is not free, expensive, and less reliable than before.
Keep the government out of the center of it... let them contribute to the community like everyone else and MAYBE we will get something that works that everyone can use without selling their soul.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Yeah, heaven forbid we learn from our previous attempt and start fresh. We should aspire to do like Microsoft - maintain backward compatability above all other goals. Seems to work for them, right? It certainly makes things more secure...
.sigs are for post^Hers.
impliment the existing solution to problems with IPv4 before creating a new solution to old problems?
Well, one of the improvements IPv6 does is better support for ad-hoc networking. Are they saying we need something even better than what that?
Or are they just talking about IPv6? IPv6 is just that -- Internet Protocol version 6.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
DARPA takes aim at IT sacred cows
By Joab Jackson
GCN Staff
ANAHEIM, Calif.--Now that the Defense Department is embracing network-driven warfare, it is taking a hard look at radically improving, or discarding altogether, some fundamental computer and network architectures.
Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science are hampering reliability, limiting flexibility and creating security vulnerabilities, program managers said this week at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's DARPATech conference.
Among the IT holy grails that DARPA wants to see revamped are the Internet Protocol, the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection model--which defines how devices communicate on today's networks--and the von Neumann architecture, the basic design style underpinning almost all computers built today.
Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable, said Col. Tim Gibson. He is a program manager for DARPA's Advanced Technology Office, which is leading efforts to radically redefine computer architecture.
"You go to Wal-Mart and buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work," Gibson said. Yet people usually do not expect the same of their computers. "We don't expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem."
"If a commander expects a system to have a problem, then how could they rely upon it?" Gibson said.
Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.
"The packet network paradigm probably needs to change," Gibson said. "I'm not advocating throwing out the Internet Protocol completely, but we must absolutely have some mechanism for assigning network capabilities to different users and that capability has to scale to large numbers of devices automatically. The commander wants to be able to send a message and have it delivered, completely, accurately and on time."
Another limitation with the IP approach is the inability to dynamically build networks. The military wants to quickly set up ad hoc networks.
"Static networks are no good for tomorrow's battlefield, because everything will move around all the time," Gibson said. "What we need is dynamic scalability. Today's networks are stationary and have a static infrastructure that provides service to static end-nodes. Moving the node outside its standard service area requires reconfiguring something. Moving infrastructure always means reconfiguring something."
As a result, DARPA wants to fund development of new protocols or enhancements to the existing IP that will allow nodes, such as computers, to automatically sign on to networks in their vicinity.
Another aspects of the networking that DARPA wants to revise is the seven-layer OSI stack, long held as the basic foundation for building network protocols.
The OSI model was not designed for wireless communications devices, said Reggie Brothers, a DARPA program manager.
"The OSI model served us pretty well for the stable, predictable world of wireline communications," Brothers said. "Mobile networks are nothing like that. They are unpredictable and highly variable. We need to think of different layers of the stack to relate to one another directly, like a mesh, instead of one level up to the next."
The increased complexity of the network stack would let nodes enter a network quickly and without human intervention, Brothers said.
The von Neumann architecture will also come under scrutiny from DARPA.
"It is time to ask the harder questions about the ways of computer architecture we've been using for the past 30 years. Is it time to scrap the von Neumann architecture?" asked Anup Gosh, program officer for the Advanced Technology Office.
This architecture, which defines the basic essential parts of
Can somebody try to tell these guys it's a little too late to put the genie back in the bottle. We can't change SMTP to stop spam and they want to change the whole TCP/IP thing. Good luck changing it in the next 30 years.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Insert obligatory Terminator joke here.
stop complaining- it'll work on the old IP systems via tunneling. Was that really so hard?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
design goal 1: SNOOPING
The days of DARPA leading the liberation of humans through information is long gone. As poison like John "Iran-Contra" Poindexter's Total (Big Brother) Information Awareness serves to their discredit, they're mainly the wedge of the NSA into our lives in the infosphere. Forget "information liberation": your information has been nationalized.
--
make install -not war
I would imagine the upgrade of civilian equiptment would be something like the way they're doing Ipv6. Compatibility has been in software for a while now (Well, at least BSD and Linux). They're still several years away from upgrading, so I assume that when they do upgrade, if your hardware is older then 5 years, you're fscked. But because it's phased in gradually, how many people are going to actually have problems? Sort of like how USB was in computers long before USB devices became prevalent
just like it has for IPv6.
People will only upgrade if it's absolutely painless or absolutely necessary, we should've learned this by now. I have friends that still use analog cell phones, just because it's easier not to switch.
-- atomly
"... Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles. :)..."
Come on man, you are talking to geeks here; we know what it'll entail, but nice non-forward thinking comment anyway. Seriously, with attitudes like that, it'll be a fucking miracle that the world upgrades to IPV6 in light of anything short of impending apocalypse.
On a side note: please keep your "editorial" comments to yourself.
DARPA invented the Internet Protocol before, and within a few decades the technology was widely deployed. Unfortunately, this time around, things won't be so easy.
Before, it was competing against a vacuum. Now, it's competing against ubiquitous IP. They may develop some cool stuff that works on a battlefield, but it will never get widespread usage, commoditization, and economy of scale that IP has. If they come up with new features that work great, somebody will find a way to get similar functionality built on top of good old IP.
IP isn't perfect, but it's good enough that there's no way to displace it, given its free nature and level of entrenchment=.
Let's move to the OSI model. We all know the seven layers of the model, so why not use it ? ;-)
Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.
Who is this guy really? Thats not what IP is for - foolproof delivery of packets is handled by connection-orientated protocols like TCP. Sure, it might not get the *right away*, but the flexibility of packet based routing is something that has made networks as reliable as they are today (despite the huge amount of moaning that people do about them).
Mind you, as people have pointed out before, IPv6 has been waiting in the wings for a while now, and a military request for change might be the kind action needed to kick other people into gear.
I wonder if it is a security issue as much as a desire to have an excuse to mess with the internet , control it more & limit what we can do on the internet for ourselves.
Right now, it is one of the only good open-door communication channels.
What would be built into a new protocol to limit this?
Voice is data, video is data, they all run over IP and therefore can be considered data just like anything else.
What we don't have is security built into IP. IPSec is a good beginning, but its more of an afterthought. Not nearly as good as what they could do if security were an integrated part of the native IP protocol.
we must absolutely have some mechanism for assigning network capabilities to different users
Sorry, but the network capability of running a web server hasn't been assigned to you. You are blocked at the protocol layer.
Sounds like they don't want the Internet to be a network of ends anymore and control who can do what with the network. Nice experiment, this unrestricted free speech on the Internet, but we've decided we don't want you to have that. Be consumers, not producers.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Unfortunately, if the certificates are stored in DNS then the private keys must be available for validation. (And if a spammer has access to the private keys, then they can generate valid public keys.)
I don't understand this. Email users are given a cert containing their email address. The email address is thus bound to a key pair. Directories contain the certs which contain the public keys. Users sign mail using their private key. Mail servers/gateways verify the sig using the cert and public key. The private key never leaves the user's machine.
Hijacking a machine still doesn't give automatic access to the private key (although the password protecting it may be obtained in time - keystroke logger, etc.).
Certs and PKI still do not provide a rosy solution - the usual issues of cert revocation (CRL lists, OCSP), expiry and management still apply.
The other point is, I believe even if you have the private key, you cannot easily create the public key from it as the author says (that's one of the hard problems).
Just how is changing IP going to improve reliability? TCP gives you pretty good reliability. It works when the physical medium does, and not too saturated. What more can we expect?
Posters recognized by their sig,
Economic systems on money?
Marriage between... Ok, probably not that...
Uncle George W. can better keep track of your activities online.
Internet 2?
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Actually, the article is misleading. They're looking into ad-hoc networks (Gnutella is a good example of a simple ad-hoc network).
By definition, ad-hoc networks have a dynamic topology, and there has been lot's of research in that area in the last few years.
You could implement an ad-hoc network on top of other technologies (ip is not the best one, though).
Google for "adhoc networks" for more info.
I'm not sure why the von Neumann architecture is such a security problem. I mean, the problem with computers not working isn't how they're built per se--turing machine, post machine, hell use cellular automata--it's that the mathematical theory says "it is impossible to write code (in general) that is guaranteed to be bug free". You could change the von Neumann archiecture, sure, but you could just as easily 'write an interpreter' (though with hardware) for the architecture. Either way, if you're writing code, you're going to have bugs.
SMTP is an application layer protocol, not transport layer. While it would be nice if somebody with sufficient backing could change SMTP and get everyone else to implement it, the DoD is not really the people to do that.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
M O/ BAA04-11/Grant.html
Federal and Non-Profit Funding Opportunities
http://www.fedgrants.gov/Applicants/DOD/DARPA/C
* Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) 04-11 Control Plane;
* Closing Date: 12 January 2005;
* Full Proposals for First Selection: 09 March 2004;
* POC: COL Tim Gibson, DARPA/ATO;
* Funding: $1-6 Million depending on application
* Program Objectives and Description: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Advanced Technology Office (ATO) is soliciting proposals under this BAA for an Internet Control Plane protocol (hereafter called the Control Plane Program). The purpose of the Control Plane Program is improving end-to-end Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) wide-area network performance between the Continental United States (CONUS) operating base and forward deployed tactical units. The technology the program seeks to develop is the ability of individual hosts (end-points) to learn essential characteristics about the network path between themselves and their transmission partners.
* Eligibility: Unrestricted
They blame the packet nature of the network for lots of the problems but I see not other perposal given. How on earth do you build a network as large as the internet based on a non-packet archetecture? I am studing computer science right now at school and haveing completed two telcom courses and nobody has ever discused a conection-oriented technology that or even a conection-oriented concept that could cope with a network as large as the internet with as many hosts. Do any of you in slashdot land have a clue how they might even start to go about doing this? The other posibility is its a new twist on a conectionless network but how on earht is that possible with out some sort of packet archetecture to send over it, otherwise you'd have no way to change path with conditions and changeing conditions are UNAVOIDABLE on any network I have ever seen.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yes, but the serious question is whether or not this so-called IPv7 will incorporate the Schumann resonance, tap into the collective unconsciousness of mankind, spontaneously create a little girl complete with family, and allow its creator to become some sort of god-like revenant.
Maybe I'm just watching too much anime...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...that Duke Nukem: Forever will be adopting this protocol for the multiplayer mode.
All the US Govt haters. You know, they only DESIGNED the current internet for us. And they give out cool schwag like NSALinux and stuff.
;-) What would you trust? NE2k driver by some random polynesian company, or somebody who works on the computers at NASA?
And USgovt.. Yeah, they at NASA hired ol' Mr. Becker to make our lan drivers
Understand then decide.
what, you think this won't be included? Think clipper, DES, and the like. Remember the grief Phil Zimmerman went through?
It sounds to me more like some general had a brief introduction to computing theory, but didn't relate it to any real current technology.
The alternative to Von Neuman (Code and Data in the same memory) is to have code and data in seperate memory areas. This makes it very difficult to make computers where the code can change. Sure, there's no buffer overflows, but there's no security patches either. It might be fine for embedded devices, but I'll not have it on my desktop. The Page (or Segment) executable flag of more modern memory management units does the job fine, without all the hassle.
The OSI model is already not used anywhere except to compare proposed network models to; it's way too complex.
He talks about replacing packet switching so that messages are delivered on time & with certainty. Presumably he means some kind of virtual circuit switching, but he also talks a lot about constantly shifting ad-hoc networks. Circuit switchinfg & ad-hoc networks don't mix well. You have to know what the path is going to be before you can reserve it. It's probably better to just turn on the QoS and AH already implemented in IPv6.
I almost took the bait!
I can now recharge all my previous employers consultant rates to upgrade to the new system. Muhuhu!
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
Excuse me? This could be GREAT! Think about it. If this catches on (which I dubious about considdering how well IPV6 took off) the upgrade cost will go into the pockets of companies like Cisco and Nortel, and the physical/virtual change over will be done by people carrying new switches/routers and deploying new servers to run on this network, not farmed out to comanies half a world away.
Let's hope they succeed. This could do for CCNE's what y2k did for Cobal programmers.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Hmmmm good way to obsolete most older technology and force people into 'upgrading' into more controllable ( read DRM ) systems ..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As some would put it, "tl;dr" ("too long; didn't read"), but from what I have read, I understand that the DARPA intends to update the entire Internet protocol, mainly because its structure compromises the security of the Army's confidential information mainly on the battlefield. If the Internet's current structure is what may be posing the Army Forces problems, why don't they just update the protocol and use this updated, more secure protocol on a private network of their own, instead of risking causing chaos on the "Interweb"?
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
This is a reply to yesterday's spam article.
They could mean ad hoc wireless networking. If they are looking for something that could help them communicate in the field, ad hoc wireless networking has great applications for them--basically, an ad hoc network does not have predefined hosts, access points, or what have you. Every node in the network communicates with the nodes around it (they could be a mixture of some wireless nodes and some wired nodes). There is no predefined leader, but the nodes themselves pick which nodes will act as temporary leaders to keep routing information, among other things. There are many different algorithms for determining these leaders, and the leaders can be changed if necessary due to nodes moving, entering an area, or leaving an area.
More information can be found here (Google's html version here.)
I am clearly fatter than you.
What if a non-US country's military decides to "Redo the Internet"? Will it be labeled as a threat to US interests? (as usual, e.g. galileo vs. gps)
The article seems to have two different main points. Firstly that the entire networking model (7 layers) is inappropriate for "reliable" networks. Secondly they suggest that the entire model for building computers is wrong, and that somehow they need to use hardware to isloate programs.
The issues they address in the first point were issues which I felt were meant to be addressed by IP6, has/will it fail? I always understood IP6 as being designed to (optionally) have secure connections, qos and an ip address structure to allow for floating nodes. Would IP6 not stand up to delivering messages in network time for the entire US military structure?
The second issue seems simple to me, yes it will be much more reliable if you use a seperate computer for each task and allow them to communicate, but can you tolerate the lack of flexibility and is it even possible to do anything meaningful without adding lots of parts and weight (the more parts, the less reliable). I can imagine building a chip which actually contains 8 386s and 32M or ram split into 4M per 386, then have the disk controller map the device in an 8 way split so they can't touch each others data, a network chip could act as a switch to all the information, providing qos etc. buses to expansion could be mapped to cpus, but is it worth it or are you better off building two different but functionally identical systems so if one fails the other shouldn't? Also it's still one machine, as soon as you actually split it out into a meaningful number of machines weight, size and handling all become a problem. It would be lovely if you could sew tiny bluetooth enabled cpus w/mem into all the army gear and then they cluster together into a super cpu which reads the soldiers thumbprinted data device to figure out what to do, but would that actually require any sort of fundamental shift in how computers are made to achieve?
To me this article simply states that they haven't managed to build a good enough network yet, and want some cash to do it, and that they haven't managed to build a reliable os/app combination to deal with their needs yet either! Just the talk of "One of the limitations inherent in this approach is that when an application malfunctions, it can affect other programs" made me think they need to look harder at their OS. I will be surprised if the end result isn't IP6 (perhaps a modified army version) but you never know! I wonder what OS they'll go with though?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Now I'll have to upgrade my bongos.
Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.
Erm, hello? Isn't that what TCP is for?
Another limitation with the IP approach is the inability to dynamically build networks. The military wants to quickly set up ad hoc networks.
Microsoft has had this in varying degrees of workability for several years. Maybe they should put down their picks/axes and talk for a bit.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
Uh, ever heard of the two armies problem?
Does Al Gore know about this?
The military wants secure and reliable communications, period. From a military standpoint, it might be nice to monitor your adversaries, but not if it means that your adversaries can monitor you. Any intentional weakness in a communications protocol could be exploited by an enemy, making it unsuitable for military purposes. Since the military's opponents are other militaries, they have to assume that the enemy has the resources of an entire country behind it, and plan accordingly. Insecure comms makes the military's job harder. For the military, keeping YOUR comms secure is the first priority; monitoring or disrupting the other side's comms is a bonus.
Law enforcement, on the other hand, is going up against individuals or small groups. The stakes are lower and the adversary has far fewer resources. Insecure comms makes their jobs easier, because they need to monitor the other side a whole lot more than they need to worry about having their communications monitored. Hell, virtually all police departments still use unencrypted radios, despite the fact that scanners have been available to the general public for 30+ years.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I think we should implement RFC 3514 and end all security problems once and for all. ;)
the silly slashdot answer:
Simple. A beowulf cluster of profiting one-time-pad quantum computers.
the sly and dodgy academic answer:
(being in academia myself, and not in networks research...)
Sounds like an interesting topic! Perhaps take this opportunity to do some research into the field and hook up with one of your telecom/network profs for a potential undergraduate thesis idea.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
Just a few items that comes to mind:
- The US military needs this for their own use, it does not have to be forced down over the rest of the spam-enjoying (right?) population.
- Asymmetric warfare analysis shows that it is better for the US to fix bugs or information leaks or other holes in software rather than keeping them secret for possible later use. Ref. NSA and their SELinux effort for evidence.
- the above also means that adding extra backdoors will likely backfire. The NSAKEY has the tin foil crowd in hysterics already.
- Encapsulation means you can run IPv7 (to give it a name) over the ordinary IPv4 and then roll out for the rest of the net to use once everyone tires of spam and breakins.
Also they wanted to do "something" with von Neuman architectures. Well, as anyone who has worked with DSPs I can assure you that alternatives are out there and in active everyday use, DSPs like for instance the Motorola DSP56300 that uses super-Harward architecture (one instrution and two data busses). Just why this is such a big deal I do not understand.
Not that I would mind then looking at it; after all compilers (especially GCC) have problems in optimising bus allocation (should this array be on the X or Y bus?). Yeah I know some claim compilers surpass human assembly programmers. Strange ten that people like me are paid (well too!) for hand optimising assembly on DSPs.
Reexaminig VonNeumann?
Discarding the packet based design that is the core of the internets success?
If instead of idiotic quotes like that, if the article had discussed scalability changes to TCP (such as allowing it to perform better over highloss/highletency links) I might have taken it seriously. Even then, I would have expected IPv6 extension headers, not a total replacement...
Such as IP over "Avian Carriers" :)
Don't forget existing ad-hoc routing protocols that work fine with IPV4 or IPV6, like
dynamic source routing (dsr)
destination sequenced distance vector (dsdv)
temorally ordered routing (tora)
ad-hoc on demand distance vector (dsdv)
comparison paper
Some of these are even used in reasonably large real world networks.
-jim
Here's a copy:
DARPA takes aim at IT sacred cows
By Joab Jackson
GCN Staff
ANAHEIM, Calif.--Now that the Defense Department is embracing network-driven warfare, it is taking a hard look at radically improving, or discarding altogether, some fundamental computer and network architectures.
Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science are hampering reliability, limiting flexibility and creating security vulnerabilities, program managers said this week at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's DARPATech conference.
Among the IT holy grails that DARPA wants to see revamped are the Internet Protocol, the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection model--which defines how devices communicate on today's networks--and the von Neumann architecture, the basic design style underpinning almost all computers built today.
Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable, said Col. Tim Gibson. He is a program manager for DARPA's Advanced Technology Office, which is leading efforts to radically redefine computer architecture.
"You go to Wal-Mart and buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work," Gibson said. Yet people usually do not expect the same of their computers. "We don't expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem."
"If a commander expects a system to have a problem, then how could they rely upon it?" Gibson said.
Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.
"The packet network paradigm probably needs to change," Gibson said. "I'm not advocating throwing out the Internet Protocol completely, but we must absolutely have some mechanism for assigning network capabilities to different users and that capability has to scale to large numbers of devices automatically. The commander wants to be able to send a message and have it delivered, completely, accurately and on time."
Another limitation with the IP approach is the inability to dynamically build networks. The military wants to quickly set up ad hoc networks.
"Static networks are no good for tomorrow's battlefield, because everything will move around all the time," Gibson said. "What we need is dynamic scalability. Today's networks are stationary and have a static infrastructure that provides service to static end-nodes. Moving the node outside its standard service area requires reconfiguring something. Moving infrastructure always means reconfiguring something."
As a result, DARPA wants to fund development of new protocols or enhancements to the existing IP that will allow nodes, such as computers, to automatically sign on to networks in their vicinity.
Another aspects of the networking that DARPA wants to revise is the seven-layer OSI stack, long held as the basic foundation for building network protocols.
The OSI model was not designed for wireless communications devices, said Reggie Brothers, a DARPA program manager.
"The OSI model served us pretty well for the stable, predictable world of wireline communications," Brothers said. "Mobile networks are nothing like that. They are unpredictable and highly variable. We need to think of different layers of the stack to relate to one another directly, like a mesh, instead of one level up to the next."
The increased complexity of the network stack would let nodes enter a network quickly and without human intervention, Brothers said.
The von Neumann architecture will also come under scrutiny from DARPA.
"It is time to ask the harder questions about the ways of computer architecture we've been using for the past 30 years. Is it time to scrap the von Neumann architecture?" asked Anup Gosh, program officer for the Advanced Technology Office.
This architecture, which defines the basic essential pa
Actually, the cause of spam can largely be sought in faulty protocols. SMTP doesn't verify who you are, so spammers are very difficult to trace. If this were changed, I think there would be a lot fewer spammers.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Oh, the moaning, oh, the bitching.
:)
Has it occurred to anyone else that DoD might not be out to reform the Internet in any way? They are out to build a network model to serve their own needs, but they have no need to reform the rest of the world.
Now, if they make this revolutionizing new network protocol/infrastructure public other people might want to adopt it because it's neat. But me being a hardened cynic, this will most likely only find use in privately owned networking ponds...Kinda like a certain version pf IP we all know of
It made me come dangerously close to reading the article.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
They can always secure layer 1 and 2 then use DHCP, DNS plus some standards for the adhoc/mobile stuff.
l evant_to_me
No need for a new internet protocol.
I doubt they're talking about joining a different network every millisecond/second right? So clever use of DHCP and DNS should be good enough.
Scenario:
Device with valid layer 1 and layer 2 network interface hardware (wireless/wired whatever) connects to network A
DHCP server assigns IP, gets device's name, registers device with DNS e.g. device1.here.
device1 talks to relevant server e.g. https://dodserver.here/listofdevices?type=type_re
(device1 can confirm server identity with signed cert and server can confirm client identity with client cert)
Finds neighbour2.here
device1 talks to https://neighbour2.here/getinfo?blahblah=1
Gets info.
device1 talks to https://neighbour2.here/setinfo?blahblah=2
Sets info
device1 leaves network A and joins network B
and repeats process. Or even joins both at the same time.
Given a low latency network connection this can all be done in seconds. Faster if you can reuse TCP connections.
--
A military person talking about foolproof delivery of messages is either:
1) Ignorant/stupid/lying/bullshitting
2) Is talking about sending messages using some fancy technology most of us don't have yet - e.g. doing fancy stuff with pre-sent quantum entangled bits or something.
---
I suppose people who haven't heard of or understood wheels would probably want to reinvent them.
Especially if persuaded by con-artists trying to get DoD funding (e.g. pots of taxpayer money).
--Mike---
Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science... "It is time to ask the harder questions about the ways of computer architecture we've been using for the past 30 years. Is it time to scrap the von Neumann architecture?"
This is the only interesting part of the article. I couldn't care less what they do with the OSI layers. As long as someone writes about it as well as Stevens wrote about TCP/IP, it'll take me a month of reading and programming to get under my belt. We all learned Pascal, then C++, then C++ again when the standard came out, then Java, and Lisp, and Smalltalk, and Perl, andd Python, and C#, and a half-dozen more languages as the need came up. Now, you have to learn a few new networking layers and protocols. No big deal -- you should be pretty damned familiar with learning different implementations of stuff you already understand.
But, replacing the von Neumann architecture means changing just about everything I know. That's big. Everything is von Neumann. All the computational models, all the theory, all the basic underpinnings of what I know... it's all pretty much out the window once von Neumann goes. It's not just a dozen evenings at home with a book and reference implementation to relearn all of that stuff, either. It's relearning nearly all the Computer Science I know, and probably learning a whole bunch of new Maths to go with it.
That's gonna hurt.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
DARPA and the military aren't interested in rebuilding the internet, they are interested in rebuilding IP.
They want to rebuild IP because they have a need for a better system. They need secure, reliable, ad hoc networking so that battle groups can communicate with each other.
These are private WANs. Not the Internet! The Military is not going to send real time battlefield data across the public internet, and real time battlefield data is what this thing is all about. The military launches and rents satellites for that sort of thing, they don't send it across uunet.
When they create a WAN, they have to have some mechanism to talk. Right now it might be IP, but in the future they want it to be something else. Something better for THEM.
The US Military couldn't care less if the rest of the world, or the internet itself, started to use whatever they come up with.
As far as those attacking technical limitations, when they started working on the original internet I'm sure everyone was saying, "Fault tolerant distributed networking with dynamic routing? That's impossible, why are they bothering" The point of DARPA is to do science and advance the field beyond current knowledge.
They may succeed, and they may fail. But they shouldn't just not try.
...when he invented the internet?
Map the cells in the state tables to appear as conventional RAM to the host, and reprogramming becomes as easy as a memory write. Bad cell?, just route around it. The fact that it's all state driven allows you to build an automated rerouter almost trivially.
post Von Neuman computers are going to be wicked fast, if they can build IO to keep up with them.
--Mike--
They are of course fully entitled to invent as many protocols as they need for their own use, and it is probably a good thing, but unless it goes through the RFC process, it will never be accepted for general use by the public.
This is really a big non-event.
That's right, privacy. With an entirely new internet protocol, you can be assured that government pressure will play a part in the demise of privacy on the internet. Not that you had much of it anyway.
I could be way off base here but I doubt it. Has anyone heard of the new protocol actually providing more privacy than before?
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles.
Yeah, just like that PCI bus clusterfuck. What a nightmare that was. Was ISA really so bad that we all had to buy new motherboards and expansion cards? Oh wait, yes it was.
Sometimes if you want to move forward you have to pick up your feet.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I don't suppose they could make it decentralized so that we can get rid of Icann, Network Solutions, and the root name servers - (and hopefully AOL).
And anonymous/encrypted, so that if people trade p2p or talk bad about their government - they don't half to worry about an ip trace leading to their door being busted down and getting their teeth kicked in unless they want to reveal where they are.
Just my 2cents.
Now that I have read the article, I finally concluded it's full of shit. I'll break it down bit by bit:
... the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection model''
..."''
``Among the IT holy grails that DARPA wants to see revamped are
Well, they can't. It's just a model, an abstraction. It's not like networks are actually built by looking at the OSI model and carefully following it. It's more like you build your network infrastructure and protocols, and then the OSI model says that you can call your wires the physical layer, the software that does something with the network the application layer, etc.
``Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable''
Well, that's their judgment, but what does it have to do with the Internet protocol?
``"We don't expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem."''
I guess many people do, but I don't. I buy my computer and expect it to work. If it doesn't, I'll return it and get a working one or my money back.
``Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.''
Right he is. Reliability is in TCP, and this is why most application protocols build on TCP. The unrealiability of IP is there on purpose, so we don't have the overhead of TCP when it's not needed, and that if we come up with a better alternative to TCP, we can use that instead without having to throw away IP. Conversely, we can exchange IPv4 for IPv6 and implement TCP on top of that. It's called modular design, and generally considered a Good Thing.
``"The packet network paradigm probably needs to change," Gibson said. "I'm not advocating throwing out the Internet Protocol completely, but we must absolutely have some mechanism for assigning network capabilities to different users and that capability has to scale to large numbers of devices automatically. The commander wants to be able to send a message and have it delivered, completely, accurately and on time."''
Ok, fine, so you need a real-time protocol. I can see how that wouldn't work with IP's best-effort (read: unreliable) delivery, without further guarantees. However, there is nothing in IP that says it _has_ to lose packets. If you find a way to guarantee timely delivery of packets (my bet is that you can't), then you can layer IP on top of that. Of course, you don't _have_ to use IP, but if you opt for a different protocol, that doesn't mean that I have to drop IP too.
``Another limitation with the IP approach is the inability to dynamically build networks. The military wants to quickly set up ad hoc networks.''
I don't think that's true. Just like there is nothing in IP that _prevents_ guaranteed delivery, there is nothing in it that prevents building dynamic networks, either.
``"... Moving the node outside its standard service area requires reconfiguring something.
Yes, necessarily. However, the implication seems to be that IP somehow cannot handle this. Again, there is nothing in IP to prevent this. You could simply broadcast a message to discover nearby access points, and attach to the one with the strongest signal. Periodically, or when the signal gets weak, you broadcast again.
``As a result, DARPA wants to fund development of new protocols or enhancements to the existing IP that will allow nodes, such as computers, to automatically sign on to networks in their vicinity.''
Like ZeroConf? That would be a Good Thing. More power to them.
``The von Neumann architecture will also come under scrutiny from DARPA.''
I won't comment on that. I don't know what exactly the Von Neumann architecture is, and besides it is off-topic in my discussion on network protocols.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Sure.. it's called the Internet Protocol.. but that doesn't mean it's gonna replace what we're using now..
Anyone who thinks that the DOD will run drones with publicly available IP addressing schemes, has been spending a little too much time behind the ole peacepipe..
This will probably use a propriatary signalling method.. special packet sizes with some form of encrytion built right into the protocol at layer 3.. if not layer 2..
just because the DOD builds a new network.. doesn't mean we all get access to it.. it's no longer 1970 here folks.. the DOD doesn't need berkley anymore..
Either the people interviewed have no clue at all, or the
reporter didn't. My guess is the latter. In any case I can't
make a spot of sense out of that article.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Thanks for the lesson.
--Mike--
Need to make sure you don't get lagged? Get a bigger pipe, or throttle the file transfers at the firewall. Don't make the rest of us suffer because you got cheap!
--Mike--
I don't understand why there seems to be such a problem. If Yahoo! & AOL worked together on this, then @ least all mail going between those 2 sites could be verified. Thus, if somebody sends a message from 1 of those 2 places to the other, then that means that that mail is really from somebody, even if it is a spammer. Any other mail pretending to be from there can be deleted.
As this gains success, they could expand the efforts to include other companies.
testing out my trending skills
Keep in mind when DARPA talks about adhoc networks and such, they also have stuff like this in mind...
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles. :)
I suppose the question is, Is the end result worth the time invested to get there? I think it is.. if we could have true IP security, better email to stop spam, etc... Yeah, it's a lot of work up front, but the end result is very nice to have and makes the whole system work better as a result. Linux is a very good example of this theory. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass to setup and configure for someone who has never done it before, but the end result is a secure, stable OS. You get out what you put in basically.
~Segfault
Most companies don't even use the full power of their current networks, installed in the late 90's or early 00's. Would they be willing to throw out all the old stuff to get the new stuff? I doubt it...most of them are still hurting from over spending in the first place.
$8.95/mo web hosting
I love the new DARPA design. It makes everything you do on a PC easier, faster, and more fun. -A
-Lod
I guess I'm just not full of enough information to understand this.
I wouldn't mind an internet that took a minute
or two to send e-mail. I would like an internet
that well... nevermind. *sigh*
The article makes sense if you think in terms of CS (computer science) instead of IT. The IP protocol is what he's talking about, and it has all the problems he describes (both version 4 and 6).
From a consumer, there are some room for improvement (not just needed for military). Think of the headaches of wireless VOIP, mesh networking, p2p, etc. yes they all work, but there are workarounds due to the fixed node-to-node setup of IP. A lot of cool things could be made a lot easier by thinking outside the box a bit now that we've gained experince from the old model. there are tons of projects being thought up which have to tackle the IP nature of networks. If the low-level protocol handled a lot of it already, we could have those projects up and running and then some.
I'd love a protocol that didn't rely on a centralized DB of addresses to allow stuff to talk. That's one of the first things IP demands. How about networks routing based on data the nodes provide? That's just one idea of a different type of network...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Sounds like the DoD has some simple requirements. I thought some of these were taken care of by ip6?
The main requirement seems to be self-configuring mobile networks and services.
I suppose nobody wants to renumber IP addresses every time a battleship moves from one theatre to another. Imagine having to move a whole division from one place to another, and having to reconfigure all the appropriate devices. What a nightmare. Plus, you wouldn't be able to find anything anymore.
They could move to zeroconf/rendevous for their network service naming, which is a bit better than a static address/conf file.
But they still have routing issues. Maybe they should adapt the cell network routing? Cell providers seem to have a better idea about how to dynamically route information to devices that change location often. Phones have a unique address which is tracked by the network...or at least it behaves that way.
Then there's the security side. How do you authenticate/authorize someone when they try and join the network? You don't want to lose a laptop then have someone be able to watch your operation. Biometric stuff won't work so well, because they can always cut off a hand and use it without the user attached (ugh).
Pretty interesting problems, really.
You used revenant in your sentence. I had to look it up to see what it meant. Then, after a long absence my memory returned.
Consider a swarm of several thousand minimissiles, each with an assigned target. As some are shot down, the others negotiate in real time to shift targets so that highest priorities are met, including in response to new threats that emerge after the swarm was lost.
....
....
Now -- try doing that with IPv4 or even IPv6 model, painstakingly assembling frames into packets and packets into messages
The architecture issue is a whole nuther matter. Consider the use of neural nets to filter noise from information in shifting signals, as tracked by a matrix of thousands of sensors
DARPA couldn't care less about your pr0n surfing, guys. The game is much bigger than that
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles. :)
So, Microsoft won the contracting bid on this one, eh?
First -
/.), back in June 2003 the DoD already mandated that IPv6 would become THE standard for DoD information systems (note; NOT the Internet). The DoD Global Information Grid will be IPv6 compliant by 2008 and all products procured by the DoD will be IPv6 compliant and will not support IPv4. This is a good thing for the DoD and could potentially be a good thing for the Internet because of the end-to-end security designed in IPv6. Tin foil hatters need not worry - the DoD does not listen in on your pr0n surfing packet traffic in IPv4 now, they certainly won't with IPv6 (it would indeed have to be a VERY slow analysis day at NSA, too).
For those with a short attention span (pretty much all of
Second -
The DoD has always recognized the need for fast and secure wireless communications in the battle space. The DoD needs have always boiled down to these basic requirements -
Real time, on time, reliable, and secure.
Note that TCP/IP does not always guarantee real time or on time but is reliable in delivery. Security? IPv4 was not really designed with security in mind - rather, the idea was to ensure that the information arrived intact to be reassembled.
The real problem is the wireLESS systems that are stove-piped into the GIG. Battlefield bandwidth is still a problem with most field radios (SINCGARS and EPLRS) that transferring large amounts of data is a slow process on a battlefield that requires up to the minute information. This is the real reason that the USMTF and JVMF messages still exist in this day and age. Field radios were designed with vocomms in mind, not pumping large data formats across FH channels with limited bandwidth. Mind you, these radios must operate in extreme conditions on a battlefield, so an 802.11b/g card won't cut it in terms of broadcast power nor encryption standard with WEP.
So, if your bandwidth is limited, you must either make the messages smaller and have less overhead, or make the OSI stack smaller and with less injected junk in the frame. Either way, the newer C4I systems are using more up-to-date formats and tools to get information to and from the battle commanders and the soldiers.
Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science... "It is time to ask the harder questions about the ways of computer architecture we've been using for the past 30 years. Is it time to scrap the von Neumann architecture?"
Sigh... I guess it's back to building the Analytic Engine... Pass me the lathe, will ya...
I can't stand the fact that my cable ISP does not allow my machine to be a server, I want the capability that all my machines and applinces can be on the net and I don't need not stinking ISP seb site account. Also, what's with all the slow uplink speeds?? shouldn't the technology by now allow same upload/download speeds? We are really getting ripped off here!
Most people seem to miss the fact that the R in DARPA stands for Research. Research is not done by accepting the status quo. If ARPA had not invested in the original network research, who knows were we would be today!
TCP/IP is not perfect for every use. If DARPA can find a better set of protocols to slide into layers three and four of the OSI model, more power to them.
Internet protocol suite
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
network-enable our supply of bouncing bettys.
Landmines work so much better if they can talk to each other...
I wish we (The USA) weren't so military focused.
Why does this have to come out of improving
the friggin' "Battlespace". If 10% of the money
spent on the military was spend on civilian research we'd have some pretty cool stuff!
From thinking about this dynamic network concept for a minute, I wondered exactly what technology or idea they could use such that routing tables for how to get to a device would change as instantly as the device changes. For wireless, what happens when the device moves between two access points with different network addresses? In order to maintain the shortest/fastest path to the device, does the network communication follow the device between points such that it hops between each point until it gets to the device? Or do the routing tables for how the communication gets to the device have to change as instantly as the device did from pointing to one access point to another and then propagate this change out to the remainder of the network so that the "on-time" nature of the network is preserved and the communication isn't trying to catch up to the end-point?
Logical_1
it's a lot easier to see if a network spec's security was weakened than a crypto algorithm.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
Hmmm... let me see.... my logrotate dumps a lot of stuff everyday that my fw blocks, mostly portscans, people trying to see if my machine is an open mail server (to send spam -- don't get me started on spam), or to see if it has some vulnerability or, worse yet, if it's not already 0wn3d. Yes, it *is* broken. We're *way* due to fix it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
My dream is that a redesigned Internet Protocol will continue to be lean and mean, and not over-bloated with "if we only had this feature then we could do that".
There is a massive connection oriented network that has been deployed for years. It's much older than the Internet. You probably use it every day. You might have even used part of it to post your message to slashdot.
Ever hear of telephones?
On a more relevant note, ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks are connection oriented.
~m
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Where have these guys *been* for the last, oh, *fifty* years? One guy doesn't know that guaranteed delivery isn't IP's job because that belongs to another layer, and seems to be unaware that adaptive routing has been in the Internet for decades; another apparently never heard of the memory mapping and protection that's been standard in most computers longer than many of today's hotshot programmers have lived. DHCP and the built-in address initialization stuff in IPv6 (cribbed from earlier work in OSI, btw) are apparently unknown at DARPA.
Did I miss something?
Make room for IP RELOADED
sooo many people wish they could re-make the internet to make it more like tv.
the medium is the message.
In contrast to this the structure of mobile (data) networks I know is hierarchical and basically all traffic of the network is concentrated at a single point. In order to transport the traffic from this single point to the mobile IP packets are encapsulated in a tunneling protocol and directed to the proper radio cells. In the mobile phones the encapsulated packets are decapsulated and e.g. transmitted to a laptop.
Therefore traffic enters the network basically always at the same point, regardless of where the user is located. By means of implementing this behavior in a possible next version of the IP you lose a lot of advantages which are available with IPv4 as there are error protection by means of re-routing or a equal distribution of the traffic all over the network.
Mobile IPv4 and IPv6 already provides much of the features present in a cell network. But there are few problems:
- Using (e.g.) WIFI it is very hard to get the same quick handover performance which is available in cell networks
- Since WIFI operates in an unlicenced band you can not give guarantees about the delivery of the traffic.
- Routers have to be equipped with the Mobile IP stack and need to track every single user
IMHO the requirements of a new protocol for military use are very different from these offered by cell networks.Since this is a DoD project, its primary use will be for military networks. Perhaps there will be a trickle down to an "Internet 4" system through technology sharing. I don't see this changing the internet we currently use anytime soon. What it will change is how battlefield command systems and forward deployed units will communicate with each other. Establishing a network connection via traditional microwave, satellite, wired, and wireless (this is the key....wireless) will now exchange data using the DARPA protocol instead of IP.
How nice would it be to have a soldier (or any other unit you wish to deem a "node" on your network) be able to "uplink" to the required military network (battlefield or otherwise) simply by broadcasting to the network. No need to configure a DHCP Server (in the case of dynamic allocation) to dish out an IP address...there is no more IP. I think that is what DARPA is attempting to achieve. They want the military to have a secure, easily scalable, and always available network infrastructure. How they plan to accomplish this...who knows, although it would probably be something similar to IPv6 where everything (network accessible device) has its own hardware created identifier. Perhaps like "DNA" for the hardware. Anyone own stock in Motorola? No? Perhaps it's time to buy some.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Do they really think that everyone is just going to sit back and allow them to do this? Computers and Networks havent changed in a long time, and they way they work now is probably better then any other way. Some protocalls could use a little revising, I admit, but replacing the whole thing would just make half the world unable to connect with everyone else. And DARPA would want to control this of course. Personally, though SMTP and a few other protocalls could use a little revision (and I'm sure RFCs are being drafted) the TCP/IP protocall is a good way to send data from here to there. Maybe I just misunderstood the intent of the article.
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
he says about himself:I don't know what exactly the Von Neumann architecture is...
You say about him:Slashdot: where the people that know a little act like they know it all.
He already ADMITTED AS MUCH and didn't even know it.
This is DARPA. They're announcing job opportunities for creative minds to rethink the basics and writeup the results and get paid for it. This is what they DO.
Word to the wise:
How to Write a Request for Proposal (RFP)
www.internetraining.com/
Uh - what are those DARPA folks smoking lately?
Sure the old divided by zero is easy to trap, but what about those stack overflow? is the hardware going to generate non existing memory and allow the stack to grow forever?
this is a terrible idea to have DARPA involved with the internet. I personally don't want my tax dollars powering some big tic tac toe machine.
Would you like to play a game?
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
But the ones who would design it now do.
They saw it on slashdot.
IPv4 and IPv6 have a slight ugliness people have come to take for granted. This could be fixed for IPv7.
:-)
The concept of "ports". Ports are actually in-host entity identifiers, while the IP address itself is an in-network entity identifier.
There should really be only one type of entity identifier, especially when it is 128-bit long.
The idea is that the last few bits of an IP address would typically serve the function of a "port". This way, a DNS server could translate names to much more specific entities than full hosts. It would allow hosting multiple FTP servers on the same host, for example, without the clients having to connect to different ports. It would dissolve the need for the silly ad-hoc workarounds with virtual web hosts.
This kind of addressing also allows much simplification of applications that would no longer need to use multiplexing over their connections. Instead, each application could allocate addressable "entities" and the multiplexing can be handled by the network layer.
Finally, it would eliminate the need for the UDP protocol entirely, as in-host identifying becomes part of the network layer itself.
TCP-layer becomes simpler as there is no need to handle in-host addressing as well.
Lets eliminate ports, for a simpler network protocol
First they let the Evil Professor Poindexter loose with the Total Information Awareness project, and now we have some useless piece of singing meat in a military uniform trying to tell us that the problem with reliable and timely delivery RFC 2822 messages is going to require pitching out the whole Internet architecture?
Is there anyone still working for my government who isn't a Zippy the Pinhead parody?
--
Mobile IPv4 has been addressed by adding new packet types for handling change-overs.
IPv6 addresses most of the other limitations.
I don't see what DARPA needs to add. Except wide-scale adoption of existing standards.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Given the seven layer model, what layer could become a hardware secured version? Is there a part of the process that could be converted or redesigned so it was done only by a box that would keep vital program code in EPROM, for example, and have to be approached physically to be reprogrammed?
Given what they are describing in the article, I keep envisioning them trying a partially hardware based mode, but I can't for the life of me figure out a layer, or combination of parts of two adjacent layers, that couldn't be emulated on a virtual machine. For anyone who is really deeply familiar with the existing 7 layer model, what layers could this DARPA proposal be aimed at changing, _IF_ we assume new hardware is a part of the new design?
Who is John Cabal?
while your redoing the internet, do away with pppoope (pppoe) please :)
Will another layer in the OSI model help me get porn any faster?
What serious alternatives are there to the von Neumann architecture? Got any links?
Theres are only 10^22 adoms in the entier univers.
This is also caled Avacados number.
Lokk it up in any fizics bok.
Do'nt be so ingorent.
IMHO this is ludicrous, and here's why.
Mr. Jackson's letter is more than a little disturbing to me, and here's why.
"...the seven layer Open Systems Interconnection model--which defines how devices communicate..." I did not know that the OSI model defined how devices communicate. I thought the OSI model was a model laid on top of any given networking system (combination of hardware, software, protocols, and applications) to help people that are new to it better understand and implement it.
"..."You go to Wal-Mart and buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work," Gibson said. Yet people usually do not expect the same of their computers. "We don't expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem."..." This one should speak for it's self. But I guess it does not for everyone. Most computer savvy people that I know *DO* expect their computers to work, all of them. IMHO it is only the masses that have not been told other wise and see shoddy hardware and OSs that have become accustom to the day to day failures. I personally have many systems that have been up and running under load with less than the best hardware and less than the best OS with an uptime that is measured in three digits. I would consider that to be exceptionally reliable for the equipment.
"If a commander expects a system to have a problem, then how could they rely upon it?" Someone had better tell the rest of the military that they are relying upon unreliable systems. What about all the old VAX systems that are controlling ICBMs? When was the last time that one of those failed to do what it was suppose to, be it sit in the silo and wait to launch or launch and hit it's target?
"Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance." No IP was not meant to ensure reliability of end to end transmission of data, that is TCP's job. If you are trying to say that email does not make it from his out box to another's in box that is in the SMTP protocol on top of TCP which is on top of IP. Yes there is a LOT of room for improvement in SMTP as it stands today. In the mid to late '70s when the ARPANet was in it's infancy end to end node reliability was one of the highest priorities. The ARPANet was meant to be reliable even with as much as 2/3s of it's infrastructure missing or taken down. The internet, which has been derived from the ARPANet, is quite reliable save for congestion. But wait a minute, we have similar problems on the national power grid, are we going to replace it because of it's problems? Ok, so bandwidth is an issue? Well yes and no. If we are talking military then we can get the size pipes that we need and we will not be transferring mp3s and movies across it in a battle field. Even in a battle field we can use satellite for signal, or point to point wireless technologies that far surpass 802.11. But for the sake of argument let's say that we are stuck at a T-1 (1,572,864 bps raw through put / circa 1,376,256 bps through put via TCP/IP). If every system in the network that needed to communicate had a T-1 and restricted in and out bound traffic to a synchronous 688 kbps then any given system on the network would be able to talk to one other system on the network while still having bandwidth for one system to talk to it. 688 kbps is not bad if you are talking command and control types of interface. Things like terminals that are menu driven, even something along the lines of HTML based interfaces would be more than fast enough. Now say that we need to talk to more than 1 system and listen to 1 system at a time let's adjust the ratios a bit. Let's take it to the extreme and say that I'm going to talk to 1 system at a time with 56 kbps (Yes 56 k, v.90 modem speed.). 56 kbps is still quite sufficient to talk to a command and control system . The only problem with these speeds is that we need to make sure that they are
While the interview is light on details, there is more information available online.
Don't forget how the system works. Darpa basically hands out money for research into areas it finds interesting. Coincidently, I've been involved for a short time in a research project dealing with exchanging present day IP (mostly the heavyweight gorilla listening to the name TCP) with smaller, more adaptable alternatives.
Two projects in this field that I've heard of
are
the knowledge plane and
application private networks
The basic idea, AFAIK, is to do away with the one size fits all model of networking and replace it with a more adaptive lego-like stack. For this to work you need information on the state of the network in order to build your optimal dynamic stack. A possible source for this might be the discussed knowledge plane. Also, actual micro-protocols need to be created and some sort of decision making system must be in place (APnets). Shameless plug of my own work
here.
I don't know of other projects, but if Darpa has opened its wallet for this cause you can expect many other universities to have similar initiatives underway.