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DNS Inventor Predicts Future of the Internet
afra242 writes "BBC News has an interesting article which discusses what Dr Paul Mockapetris, the creator of DNS, thinks about what the Internet will be in the near future. He states that currently, we are in the Bronze Age of the Internet and phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses."
Now, as head scientist and chairman of Nominum, a DNS management company, he has been reflecting on how the net has grown up.
The father of DNS and a scientist working at a DNS management company believes that everything will be controlled by a DNS-like system, absolutely unbelievable!
We have these things called bookmarks... People rarely remember web-addresses as it is. I know that entirely too many people believe their entire "Internet" is their homepage (while working for ATTBI during the @Home changeover I *personally* received several calls from concerned people that their Internet was gone and replaced by this "ATT BY" thing as their homepage had changed from home.excite.com to www.attbi.com). I would venture to say that most people get their information from a handful of sites and don't bother to remember much other than google.com or yahoo.com. I know that I get most of my information from a handful of remembered sites and I consider myself a bit more Internet savvy than the average user.
"It is quite possible that phone numbers will have disappeared and people will just use menus off their phone. I don't think there is particular value in having them."
He theorizes something that already exists! So instead of bookmarks for phone numbers we have these things called address books. You look up someone's name in there and you click on it. It dials. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks for showing us the way!
He's no longer a visionary. He's just pretending to be one. What he did for us changed the Internet from the start. This article on the other hand means nothing as it already exists in popular form.
currently, we are in the Bronze Age of the Internet and phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses
And web addresses will be replaced by? What after IPv6?
Prediction 1: He wants web addresses to replace phone numbers.
Isn't this pretty much already happening now? With the advent of cell phones and even home phones that allow phone book storage, this already happens. There are people that don't even remember their HOME phone number because they always pull it from the menu on their cell phone, or use voice-activated dialing.
I'm not so sure I follow. Google has become so successful because of their search technology. With billions of webpages and websites, and probably even more billions of phone numbers, how is that going to help? It's still tough to find web addresses with easy to remember names these days. Atleast with Google it makes it much easier.
Prediction 2: Access for all, Security
Wasn't this already introduced a couple years ago? Since the advent of broadband, it has been the goal of changinging everything over to that and giving access to all. However, I think it's something that is going to happen a lot sooner than we think, thanks in part to wi-fi. Wi-fi is becoming increasingly popular with everyone these days from hotels, cafes, even in parks. Thankfully, he did point out that security needs to be tightened up before a lot of this goes mainstream.
Correct... This is more than likely going to be the next big explosion on the net (behind searching of course). But I just wish it would actually happen in the right order. Get the security practices down, then introduce access for all, but make sure they can understand it first.
Hmmm.
But seriously, isn't it already that way? I only know two phone numbers: my cellphone and my normal phone. If I want to call someone I just look up their name in my "phonebook" on my cell or phone and I click "call". So in some way we already have the thing he talks about. You could consider the phonebook function in modern phones as an equivalent to a local "hosts" file.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Then when the pipe breaks, and everything crashes, what do you do? At least with everything split up into different services, you can cope if one or two go t**s up. If everything is provided through the same method, and something happens to it, you're kinda screwed. At least you would only have to complain to one company though...
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Lets think about this. This is the guy that saw the Internet (or what became the Internet) and decided that the one thing this wonderful new decentralized network needed was a highly centralized system for mapping host names to IP addresses - thus eventually creating all the problems we are now experiencing with ICANN?
And we should respect his opinion why?
Some cultures in the world are still in the Bronze Age -- period. What good is ubiquitous Internet connectivity to a people that are comparatively primitive?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Paper, snail mail, hiking boots and such will always exist as needed elements of human life. Thesse predictions are not only short sighted of how it deepens the gap between the have and have nots, but the driving forces in evolution of computer technology are Military and Gaming IMHO. The driving force in real world implementation is probably the online porn industry. And as always the prime force against most of what Dr. Mockapetris states is privacy concerns. Otherwise projects like this April Fools note would already be underway. Note that my information is just as scientific as his predictions :)
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein
This is a step in the direction that I have been asserting (much to the chagrin of those who have to listen to my nerd-like ramblings) to all my friends and co-workers: "Soon, we will all be assigned IP addresses at birth". Now that, my friends, IS the future!
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
The problem is the form factor of the cell phone. Cell phones typically have a numeric keypad to keep the size reasonable. The easiest way to input a phone number is to enter numbers.
The biggest current trend is that everyone is switching to wireless phones. Most people don't want to carry around a phone large enough to contain a keyboard. Voice recognition works well only for words that are commonly used. For weird IP addresses, you would have to say each letter one at a time.
Imagine you meet somebody. You want to store his/her phone number your phone book on your cell phone. Which is easier? Typing 820-833-5214 or typing a 16 letter word into your 10 button keypad?
I only R part of TFA, but I noticed this quote immediately. This doesn't seem like much of an insight to me. Of course we'll look back on it and laugh, isn't that how it always goes? We used to drive covered wagons pulled by horses on dirt roads. It's quaint now, but back then they were at the edge of technology. All (er... most) of us here know that the network infrastructure is weak and likely won't carry us much further in its existing state, but rest assured, we'll get there. One step at a time, that's the way it's always been.
You're right. But so what? Just because a large group of people in the world live at a standard of living well below our own does not mean we should stop envisioning, anticipating, and planning for the next advances in our standard of living.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Then we - the representation of the Beaker People (Slashdot) have to know that history will repeat and the Battle-Axe People (MPAA+RIAA) will overtake.
While Dr. Mockapetris believes that de-numberizing the way we remember/contact people is the way of the future, I believe this does nothing to further help the much needed cause of finding people, places, things. THAT, I believe, is the way of the future, and "doing away with phone numbers" simply does not help that.
"It is quite possible that phone numbers will have disappeared and people will just use menus off their phone. I don't think there is particular value in having them."
Did he forget what his DNS is even based on? no matter how many layers of indirection he places on top of the current system, you can't replace the fact that people need to be identified uniquely in one way or another. If he believes a person can be remembered more easily by myphone@whatever.com (or whatever other convention he uses other than phone numbers) he still misses the point on how we obtain these names/numbers in the first place.
When reading this article, i've tried to forget the fact that he has his own DNS management company now, yet his inisistence on building an "alternative" phone-numbering infrastructure and using his clout of being "the father of DNS" only hints that he really has no new "vision" of the future and is trying to profit on whatever soon-to-be-outdated technology he happened to invent.
DNS certainly helped the internet grow enourmously.. but if you think about it now, its really not needed as much any more other than advertising.
Alternative forms of gathering your bookmarks/phone contacts/unknowns is the future.
It's because you are a student.
When I was a student, I don't think I picked up a phone more than a handful of times.
But consider the environment... Most of my friends lived in the same dorm floor. If not, I'd see them in class or at whatever extracurricular activity we had in common. My girlfriend lived less than five minutes away, in another dorm. All of our classes and activities were five minutes away, at most. Thee was at least a small computer lab in almost every building. I had an ethernet connection to a great backbone pipe in my room. A two-minute walk in any direction would take you past two dining halls, a sandwich truck, a few fast food stops, a convienence store, two liquor shops, and four bars.
Hell, the only reason to use a phone was to call home for money, or to order a pizza (and a couple of the local places since started offering order-by-web and order-by-email).
Fast-forward five years, to a more 'real-life' setting. I spend a lot of time on the road, travelling to clients homes... the majority of them don't have good internet or any connection at all, and usually when I'm there I'm too busy to use it. Without a cell phone, noone would ever be able to find me when I'm in the field.
Half the time, though, I work at home, and that gives me access to high speed internet, instant messaging, and all the other trappings of a geek's house. Nifty. But it doesn't really matter...
My wife and several of my friends have email at work, but are generally too busy to send more than a short message, once every few hours. They'd never be able to get away with instant messaging.
A few more of my friends either don't have internet access (even at home) or check their email only once a week. If you are trying to hear from them, you HAVE to call them, or you never will.
In 'real life', most folks have started to rely on the cell phone in their pocket, or at least religiously check their voice mail / the answering machine when they come home.
I'll bet the first users of telephones said something like that, the first time the switchboard stopped working.
As greater dependance on the system arises, the incentives to strengthen the system grow as well.
Just don't (power grid) pay attention (phone system) to our track record.
When I read the title of the submission, I thought that there might be some unique incite into the future of the internet, but this article was exremely lacking. The only real prediction that he makes is that all voice calls will be routed over the internet. I guess that is an easy prediction with all of the working in VOIP. However, I was hoping he would have something more interesting to say, not simply just saying that there is a lot more room for innovation.
SIGFAULT
I don't think DNS is the answer.
The problem with DNS is this: No "fuzzy" matching. DNS does not have Google's ability to spell-check names. SO, yes, DNS is good for making things a little easier to remember, but other technology should be used for things like voice matching, etc.