Japanese Researchers Aim to Replace the Internet

Gary writes "Japanese communications minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday that Japan will start research and development on technology for a new generation of network that would replace the Internet, eyeing bringing the technology into commercial use in 2020. The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns."

Comments

Doesn't this already exist?

[morgan_greywolf]

Doesn't this already exist? I mean, seriously, how many parallel projects do we need to do the same thing?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. This is totally redundant, and there's no reason to do it - just like other companies writing operating systems when Windows Vista was being developed.

Wait, bad example...

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[MightyYar]

I don't see anything wrong with trying different approaches to the same end. Perhaps they disagree with compromises or design decisions that were made with Internet 2.0?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[machine of god]

As many as it takes to get one that's free of private interests.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet 2.0 and Web 2.0 are different things.

Internet 2.0 - New infrastructure for the net.
Web 2.0 - My web site is shit, filled with AJAX and contains no content.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[lheal]

Unless they figure out how to ensure redundancy, they will have reinvented the wheel. The reason the Internet is unreliable is that the last two nodes on the graph have only one connection. Why do we have only one ISP, and why do ISPs only have one upstream provider? Economics. Let's see them solve that one.

Furthermore, we've been about to implement IPv6 for years now.

Even furthermore, their ultra-secure shiny modern internetwork will still have to connect to the kludgy 1980's rustbucket the rest of us use on our Windows-based computers, which means it will be pwned in a few minutes just like the original.

It's the Silver Bullet Syndrome. They think they'll invent a secure network, when all they'll be doing is achieving a bit of obsecurity.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[cp.tar]

From what I'd understood, Internet2 is a fundamentally different network - first of all, it is not de-centralized like the Internet; add the fact that AFAICT it is not (yet) open to general public, and despite the name, it doesn't seem to be a replacement.

Granted, I may be missing some important points, as Internet2 doesn't exist in Croatia, but whatever... I don't mind the development of different networks; may the best and fastest one (both in transmission and wide deployment) win.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Colin Smith]

I mean, seriously, how many parallel projects do we need to do the same thing? Well. One is American, one is Japanese...

It's called competition. At some point someone makes a bundle of money that the others don't make.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Oswald]

My fear is that it's a perfect example. By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable. "Faster" and "safer" will have a tough time overcoming "empty".

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[mikael]

The internet is built over a series of seven layers - the .

The idea of splitting everything into layers is so that any one system could be changed without having to totally rewrite everything else - if you want to replace your dial-up modem with a wi-fi card, all you have to do is replace the drivers. If your ISP wants to replace their router network with an ATM network that's easily done without affecting you. If someone came along with a better router management protocol, that's easily done.

The original Internet did have redundancy and resistance against breakdown built in. Unfortunately, many network companies found it cheaper simply to route separate logical networks along one connection, rather than have multiple and completely separate connections. Thus, we end up with a hard-wired minimum spanning tree network, that fails as soon as one link goes down.

Let them go ahead with this idea, but by the time they complete their literature survey, they will probably find out there is very little that they need to change.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Late-Eight]

It's probably a good thing to have multiple projects working on this, as it will help generate a bit of competition between them all. Hopefully creating a better end result.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

As many as we need until we get it right! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed /LinuxDistroTimeline.png

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[bockelboy]

The Internet 2 is a consortium maintains a high-speed backbone across the US; the costs are subsidized by the government so universities can communicate each other at 10Gbps rates without having to go out to the commercial Internet. A small portion of the funding goes to some middleware projects.

However, most NSF-funded networking projects use the I2 as their testbed, but they're not necessarily a part of the I2. For example, GENI - the US effort to redesign internet protocols from the ground up - will run in parallel with I2. GENI is the US counterpart to this Japanese effort (although it's hard to tell from the light-on-details article).

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the next wave of domain grabbing so I can be the first to register $ex.com and reap the windfall of money selling it.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[marcello_dl]

This is totally redundant, and there's no reason to do it - just like other companies writing operating systems when Windows Vista was being developed...

Wait, bad example...

Of course it is. You called Vista an operating system.

Operating systems make computers work, vista makes Gates rich.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[MrNaz]

Actually, Japanese and indeed many other eastern civilizations had many of the economics problems of today solved. Some of these problems are so pervasive that people in the west just take for granted that they are fundamental limitations of humankind. Thanks to the west and its fundamentally broken social model upon which its economic and financial systems are based, ancient, long ago solved problems are rearing their ugly heads again.

Perhaps Japan has realized the folly in copying the West and its dizzyingly high but historically fleeting civilizational success and are attempting to reverse the cultural damage done to their society over the last half century or so. Oh wait, we're talking about internet stuff... right, right. Sorry I got a bit carried away there.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Retric]

I know this is /. but did you read the article you linked?

Noting actually uses the OSI model it's just an abstraction to help people understand how networking works. The Internet uses the TCP/IP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model model of Application, Transport, Network, and Data link layers.

PS: The internet has redundancy as a mesh of networks even if many of those networks have single point's of failure. On second as you speak with such conviction on subjects you know little about you might belong on /. Welcome to the party.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[somersault]

Yep. The only question is - do you want the network to function like The Matrix, or be more along the lines of Ghost in the Shell?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable.

You're going to have to explain that one a little, I'm afraid. "Lock in" doesn't just mean "used by a lot of people". The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.

But I don't think TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) is owned by anyone as such, so it's not like we're going to get forced to pay more for a protocol "upgrade". Nor could some hypothetical owner force us all to use any such upgrade - so there's no fear there.

As for arbitrary restrictions, the Internet already lets you run any protocol you can devise over TCP/IP without the need for permission or approval. That may change if the anti-net-neutrality crowd start a program of aggressive traffic shaping, but that's hardly likely to be improved by a new proprietary Internet; more likely we'll see DRM on every hop, and no new usages permitted without a five year committee process.

So, to summarise: please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[uncl_bob]

Interesting stuff. Where can I find more information about the things you mention? There are defintely lots of broken things in the western society, no doubt.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Provocateur]

Let them go ahead with this idea, but by the time they complete their literature survey, they will probably find out there is very little that they need to change.

Shouldn't you have included
a) Insert Mwahahahaha!
b) Insert 'I pity the fool...'

Personally, I'm all for fat pipes to view all that anime goodness. Happy Sunshine Love City for Maximum Joy for everyone!

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[teh_chrizzle]

please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.

i think the parent post is referring vendor lock-in, specifically provider lock in.

if you have no real choice in who provides your internet access you have take what they give you or choose to live without internet access. with all of the shenanigans (filtering, capping, throttling, etc.) that american telcos and cablecos have threatened to pull (or are actively pulling) thanks to the lack of competition in the residential broadband market, perhaps a non-american competitor to the internet as most americans know it is just what the doctor ordered.

with that said, if they really wanted to impress me they would make such a network accessible from the US.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Japanese. It will be smaller and more fuel efficient.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

if you have no real choice in who provides your internet access you have take what they give you or choose to live without internet access.

Point taken. However, that's not a shortcoming of the way the internet is currently designed. If I wanted to get a second phone line, I could open an account with a second ISP and have two gateways into my home LAN. That would take a little more vendor support for the average user, but there's nothing in the current implementation preventing such a usage.

I do appreciate that most areas in the US don't have much in the way of competition between providers (I'm in the UK) and I understand the concern that an ISP monopoly or duopoly may prove just every bit as abusive as a vendor with a widely used proprietary format. But in the ISP case, the flaw is not in the design of the internet itself. Reinventing the infrastructure is not going to solve the anti competitive nature plans of some large carriers, and at best it will only provide a feature that we already have.

perhaps a non-american competitor to the internet as most americans know it is just what the doctor ordered.

mmmm... but how are you going to access it? Unless someone feels like laying dedicated fiber across the Pacific, surely you'd end up accessing it via the Internet anyway? In which case, look for your local ISPs to traffic-shape and/or surcharge it to death before they let it become a viable competitor.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

The term, "vendor lock in" to use the full term, is where a single company controls a protocol and abuses that control to force price hikes, unnecessary upgrades and arbitrary restrictions upon its customers.

I think you've gone a bit too far with that definition. Vendor lock-in is just where a single company controls a protocol and no third parties can use it in an unrestricted way.

The company doesn't have to abuse this position - the mere fact that you _have_ to use that company's services constitutes vendor lockin, even if they are the best services in the world.

An example might be something like MSN - even though the protocol is fairly well known (through reverse engineering), and you can pick and choose your client software, the design of the MSN network *requires* you to use the central MSN servers if you want to participate in the MSN network (i.e. there is vendor lockin since you are required to use a specific vendor's services). Compare to XMPP, which is decentralised by design - you can pick and choose what server you use (and even run your own server) and still talk with people elsewhere on the XMPP network who are using different servers and clients.

But I don't think TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) is owned by anyone as such, so it's not like we're going to get forced to pay more for a protocol "upgrade".

Well, you might be inherently forced to upgrade. When content moves to IPv6, you will need to upgrade to IPv6. The real difference here is that it isn't a single vendor forcing you to upgrade to make more money - when you need to upgrade you can pick and choose which vendor to upgrade to.

So, to summarise: please explain how can we have any meaningful lock in on the internet, and (assuming this to be possible), please also explain how this would be bad.

I think the original poster should've said "lock in" rather than "vendor lock in". There _is_ lock-in associated with the internet since that's where a lot of content is. If you want to visit Wikipedia, for example, you have to do that using HTTP over TCP over IPv4 - you can't do it using IPv6, or over Internet2 or any other network technology without some kind of gatewaying between them (probably at the application layer). Thus, you are locked in to IPv4.

This is one of the reasons why IPv6 isn't gaining ground very quickly - the server owners don't see the point in supporting IPv6 since none of the end users support it. The ISPs and end users don't see the point in supporting it since none of the server owners support it. It's a chicken-and-egg situation - why switch to IPv6 when all the content is available on IPv4 anyway?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

I think you've gone a bit too far with that definition. Vendor lock-in is just where a single company controls a protocol and no third parties can use it in an unrestricted way.

I think I should have had a "for example" between "and" and "abuses". No argument from me :)

Well, you might be inherently forced to upgrade. When content moves to IPv6, you will need to upgrade to IPv6.

Well, you will if you want to access that content. But IPv4 addresses are a subset of IPv6, and it's likely that you'll be able to access most if not all of the current web for a long time to come. You'll probably have problems accessing the webservers built into your next-gen fridge and washing machine, but a lot of people are going to be OK with that.

I think the original poster should've said "lock in" rather than "vendor lock in".

Actually, he did. I put the word "vendor" back in there because I wanted to make the point that when people say "lock in is a bad thing" they're generally talking about vendor lock in. being locked into TCP/IP is not, in itself, a bad thing.

There _is_ lock-in associated with the internet since that's where a lot of content is. If you want to visit Wikipedia, for example, you have to do that using HTTP over TCP

I think it's more accurate to say that TCP/IP defines the Internet, rather than that it locks you in. Otherwise, might as well say that humans are locked into DNA and that this is bad because it will make it hard to interbreed with aliens. I mean, yes, technically you have a point. It's just that DNA is (if you like) the technology upon which human beings are founded. Change that mechanism and, biologically at least, we become something other.

There has to be, at some level, a single underlying protocol. TCP/IP is it for the internet. I don't think "lock in" really applies, and even if I were to concede that it might, it's hard to see how TCP/IP lock-in could be a bad thing.

why switch to IPv6 when all the content is available on IPv4 anyway?

It's still not lock-in though. No one is stopping any from switching to IPv6. It's just that the problem IPv6 was designed to solve never really happened, mainly because NAT gateways became so prevalent.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[larkost]

It may seem like a minor difference, but the Internet at large is not "TCP/IP" only but rather IP only. You can layer TCP on top of it quite easily, and most of the routers out there have special optimization for TCP, but it is not required by any stretch of the imagination. TCP is a very common layer, but many connections are UDP, and you can technically have any other packet type you want, as long as it fits on top of IP.

Now it may be that firewalls will not let packets other than TCP or UDP in, but that is not an Internet limitation.

There are a couple of protocols out there that beat TCP for almost every use-case, and in 10 years they might be more popularly used. The internet at large does not have to change a bit to handle these protocols.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

But IPv4 addresses are a subset of IPv6, and it's likely that you'll be able to access most if not all of the current web for a long time to come.

Not entirely accurate - IPv4 addresses can be represented as IPv6 addresses, but the actual protocols are still different (even if that's hidden from the application).

it's likely that you'll be able to access most if not all of the current web for a long time to come.

When we run out of IPv4 addresses you're going to struggle to make services available through IPv4. Sure, it won't be for a few years, but it will happen. But my point is that even though no single vendor is going to force you to upgrade, you are still forced to upgrade due to the pace of progress.

Why don't you use an old 486 to browse the web? I mean, it used to render web pages just fine - noone has forced you to upgrade. However, if you want to look at the shiny new web sites your 486 probably isn't going to handle it - same thing here.

I think it's more accurate to say that TCP/IP defines the Internet, rather than that it locks you in.

I would disagree. Services on the internet use IPv4, true. However, those services can run just as well over IPv6 (for example) and the user wouldn't know that it was any different.

IPv4 has lots of problems, not least the lack of IP addresses, which forces you to use nasty hacks like NAT. However, you can't ditch IPv4 in favor of a protocol that solves these problems because you are locked into using services which are only provided over IPv4. This is why lock-in is bad - it prevents you from switching to a better technology (or at least - a technology that's better for _you_).

I'm not saying there is a solution - there probably isn't. But I'm not under any illusion - the internet locks us into using specific protocols, even if they are non-propriatory, and this has major down sides.

No one is stopping any from switching to IPv6.

That's untrue. If you run a server, you have to pick your connectivity provider very carefully if you want an IPv6 connection. Same with home users - you have to pick your ISP carefully (ignoring the fact that there are no consumer grade routers that do IPv6). Sure, there are work arounds such as tunnelling your IPv6 traffic over the IPv4 infrastructure, but this presents other problems such as increased latency, decreased bandwidth, etc.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[MrNaz]

Umm... I'm not really referring to anything specific, but I guess when I think of the western system being broken three things stick out:

1. The total absence of any form of ethics in society, and the failure of schools to actually instill ethical values in students, opting rather to overwhelm them with sterilized information and a highly politicized but totally depraved morality.
2. The atrocious state of exploitative finance whereby money always flows uphill into the hands of the rich via the new system of slavery that we call "the banking system". Look into non-western forms of finance (such as Islamic finance) and you'll see that it's far more broken then you could possibly imagine.
3. The destruction of the family cell as the fundamental unit making up the societal structure. Look at Indian culture, watch a few of those family Bollywood movies, and you'll see how valued family is to that culture. If you know any traditional Indian families, see if you can spend some time with them and you'll see how enriching family can be. Indian culture isn't the only one that values family these days, it just sticks out to me as I am of Indian descent (although I now live in the west) and whenever I go back for a visit I am blown away by how close their lives are and how much more fulfilling it is to always have people around you that you can trust and rely on implicitly.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[colonslashslash]

There are a couple of protocols out there that beat TCP for almost every use-case, and in 10 years they might be more popularly used. The internet at large does not have to change a bit to handle these protocols.

A sincere question for you larkhost (how many of those have you seen on /. this year? :) - could you expand on this a little please, which protocols and why? My knowledge of underlying network protocols is not as good as it should be.

Thanks.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FlatLine84]

Crap, I thought the interweb was IPX/SPX.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Retric]

I was talking about the TCP/IP model which oddly enough works just as well with IRC/UDP/IP/Ethernet/Ethernet physical layer as HTTP/TCP/IP/Frame Relay/Optical Fiber.

"The TCP/IP model or Internet reference model, sometimes called the DoD model (DoD, Department of Defense), ARPANET reference model, is a layered abstract description for communications and computer network protocol design."(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model)

Anyway, I was trying to walk the fine line between roasting someone with a really low UID (484) (you might belong on /. Welcome to the party) and correcting someone who was almost correct but just wrong enough to bother me. The "OSI model" and the "TCP/IP model" share the bottom 4 layers (Physical layer / Data link layer / Network Layer / Transport Layer), but OSI has 3 layers where TCP Model uses one. AKA HTTPS covers the top 3 OSI layers Session, Presentation, and Application but it's not broken up into separate parts.

PS: I think inserting the Link into the middle of TCP/IP and Model obscured what I was saying.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Andrzej Sawicki]

If I wanted to get a second phone line, I could open an account with a second ISP and have two gateways into my home LAN. That would take a little more vendor support for the average user, but there's nothing in the current implementation preventing such a usage.

That's assuming there is more than 1 ISP around where you live. Which is not always true. Especially if you need more than basic service (i.e. higher bandwidth). Besides, spying on you can be mandated for all ISPs (it already is in some countries, no?), so having a "choice" won't change much anyway. Next up is mandated filtering, also for all ISPs. Where's your choice then?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[umeboshi]

udp beats the hell out of tcp for tunnelling tcp.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[texwtf]

Noting actually uses the OSI model it's just an abstraction to help people understand how networking works. The Internet uses the TCP/IP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model model of Application, Transport, Network, and Data link layers.

Actually that's not entirely true: IS-IS is an OSI based protocol in active use.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Mister Whirly]

1. The total absence of any form of ethics in society, and the failure of schools to actually instill ethical values in students, opting rather to overwhelm them with sterilized information and a highly politicized but totally depraved morality.
Ethics are not absolute and vary from person to person. It is the job of the parents to teach and instill their idea of ethics into their own children. It is the responsibility of the school to educate, not to teach ethics or morality.

3. The destruction of the family cell as the fundamental unit making up the societal structure. Look at Indian culture, watch a few of those family Bollywood movies, and you'll see how valued family is to that culture. If you know any traditional Indian families, see if you can spend some time with them and you'll see how enriching family can be. Indian culture isn't the only one that values family these days, it just sticks out to me as I am of Indian descent (although I now live in the west) and whenever I go back for a visit I am blown away by how close their lives are and how much more fulfilling it is to always have people around you that you can trust and rely on implicitly.
Not sure you should speak for an entire country - I am American and the way you describe your family situation is exactly how I would describe mine.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Kadin2048]

Not to put words in the GP's mouth, but there are a few transport-layer protocols that I've come across which go in different directions from TCP and UDP.

There is a list over at Wikipedia, although I don't know if it's really close to exhaustive.

A lot of them are aiming for some sort of middle ground between TCP and UDP. They want the statelessness of UDP but some of the congestion-control and error correction of TCP, but without having to reinvent the wheel by building their own error-correction on top of UDP on a per-application basis. Others are just low-overhead versions of TCP, which were probably a lot more appealing when network and computing resources were less abundant.

Some other protocols seem like pretty straightforward attempts to patent, proprietize, and replace TCP: e.g. Venturi Transport Protocol. Others seem more well-intentioned, but look like solutions seeking problems, or buzzword-compliant* attempts to please everyone with one product.

The only one that seems particularly interesting is SCTP, which is an IETF proposed standard for a protocol that's similar to TCP but allows the transmission of multiple simultaneous streams of data, within one connection. That seems like it might be useful.

* I couldn't resist quoting this description of XTP, which sounds like it was copied and pasted from a Dilbert strip:

XTP was designed to provide a wide range of communication services built on the concept that orthogonal protocol mechanisms can be combined to produce appropriate paradigms within the same basic framework. Rather than using a separate protocol for each type of communication, XTP's protocol options and control of the packet exchange patterns allow the application to create appropriate paradigms.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[treeves]

Don't be a sour plum! Oh, sorry.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

There's a lot of points I could take issue with there, but I'm going to stick to the main one:

IPv4 has lots of problems, not least the lack of IP addresses, which forces you to use nasty hacks like NAT. However, you can't ditch IPv4 in favor of a protocol that solves these problems because you are locked into using services which are only provided over IPv4. This is why lock-in is bad - it prevents you from switching to a better technology (or at least - a technology that's better for _you_).

The problem I have here is that you are conflating on the one hand the problems of migrating a vary large user base with, on the other, the monopolistic abuses of power popular with a certain Seattle based software house.

Persuading everyone to migrate to migrate to IPv6 is a major undertaking, but it isn't being done to benefit a single controlling entity to the detriment of the user base as a whole. You can't really say that about some of Microsoft's manipluations of it's office formats.

Similarly, while the IPv6 upgrade is desirable for a some commercial interests, for most Internet users, (and it would seem many ISPs and providers) the issue doesn't seem to be sufficiently compelling for them to take action. The fact that these stakeholder have the option not to upgrade is also atypical of the vendor lock-in scenario.

So, in summary, I think the negative effects of he supposed TCP/IP lock-in are so minor (from a user perspective) as to be trivial, while lock-in to proprietary protocols or formats can be not only expensive but also an avenue to all manner of unwelcome exploitation.

So my question is: are you deliberately trying to conflate the two issues? I don't think you can support the notion that they are in any way comparable.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

That's assuming there is more than 1 ISP around where you live. Which is not always true. Especially if you need more than basic service (i.e. higher bandwidth). Besides, spying on you can be mandated for all ISPs (it already is in some countries, no?), so having a "choice" won't change much anyway. Next up is mandated filtering, also for all ISPs.

Yes. However, these are mainly political issues not technical ones. If your ISPs have been allowed to form a cartel, if the government mandates ISP level surveillance - both political.

A redesigned from scratch Internet won't help with these issues at all, because the problems are not technical ones and any new protocol will be subject to the same issues.

On the other hand, a redesigned Internet could make matters a lot worse in this regard, since it provides an opportunity for things like patent encumbered protocols and on-by-default filtering of unregistered or encrypted protocols.

That's not to say that the problems you mention are not serious: just that you seem to be looking in the wrong place for a solution.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Elektroschock]

What you need to understand is the Japanese culture. They always start kind of "world domination" plans. Where is the 5gen computer? Forget it. Japanese are good in making plans, plans that are absolutely tough and a bit over the top. But they lack the right "hacking" attitude and reality checks. It is just that the radicalism helped in the past. The next internet is not "planned". It will just evolve.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

But in Japan they plan to call it the "Inter-Ni".

/pause for laughter...

ni = two.

/awaits mod-down...

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your both wrong. It's a series of tubes. Does either of your jobs involve regulating the internet. I didn't think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to choose between seamless VR and round windows, I'd choose seamless VR. Just imagine how irritating those things would get. It would be like using Enlightenment, but a thousand times worse.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Gospodin]

Including yours?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[teh_chrizzle]

Reinventing the infrastructure is not going to solve the anti competitive nature plans of some large carriers, and at best it will only provide a feature that we already have.

i'm certainly quite skeptical of any research project with such a lofty goal, and the point of my post was to clarify what i took to be the parent post's idea of vendor lock in, which you identified (correctly so, in my opinion) as a business/implementation problem rather than a technical one. i am certainly not a nascent-japanese-rival-to-the-internet fanboy.

i know absolutely nothing about the japanese project that the article is about, but the idea of another, different global inter-network is not immediately invalid. this specific project may very well prove to be invalid, but in the abstract, the idea of such a research project is (at least in my opinion) interesting.

research into another global inter-network, using the lessons learned from previous implementations and focusing on current and emerging technologies that may not have been available when the internet itself was initially designed (or re-designed) might deliver a faster, more efficient, and/or more reliable inter-network. it might. it might also prove that the design of the internet today is the best that is technologically possible. that's the beauty of research projects.

from my very limited understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the internet itself, i have gathered that the internet was designed from a sort of "worst case scenario" point of view. it is meant to tolerate and work around slow, unreliable, and possibly hostile links first, and to deliver bits quickly second. what would it be like if we designed the internet today, but with a more "optimistic" approach? i don't know if it would change anything, or if it's even possible, but it would cool to find out.

we have established that the commercial implementation of the internet is not always true to the technological "intent" of it's creators. what would the net be like if the technology behind it "understood" the tendency (maybe even the inevitability) of businesses to put profits ahead of service? i don't know if it would change anything, or if it's even possible, but it would be cool to find out.

but how are you going to access it? Unless someone feels like laying dedicated fiber across the Pacific, surely you'd end up accessing it via the Internet anyway? In which case, look for your local ISPs to traffic-shape and/or surcharge it to death before they let it become a viable competitor.

i have no idea how one would access it, which is why i, being the myopically self centered creature that i am, would not be impressed with the idea of an internet competitor unless it was accessible to me in the US.

perhaps what is needed (if indeed anything is needed at all) is not a new and separate internet, but a kind of ad-hoc inter-network of peers that is isolated and possibly insulated from the internet, like some sort of giant darknet. as for how one makes those networks accessible on a global scale, i don't know how that would work, but i think it would be freakin' awesome.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You are correct about the Internet being based on the TCP/IP model. This makes sense due to that fact that the OSI model was not created until 1977.

The OSI Model added the presentation and session layers, and renamed the "Internet Layer" to the "Network" to make the model more generic.

The TCP/IP Model can be mapped to the OSI Model, since TCP/IP Model defines all the layers except for the presentation and session layers.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The wikipedia article that you linked for the TCP/IP model appears to be biased in favor of DARPA, who probably took exception to an outside organization making a more generic model. The TCP/IP Model reflected the goal of DARPANET which was to provide a network connection between many geographically diverse hosts. Applications was outside the scope of the project, so it was probably more convenient for them to lump any layers outside their network into a single "Application Layer".

Anyway, the OSI Model is more appropriate today. For example a VPN can be inserted between an application and the a network, without requiring modifications to either, thus warranting another layer which the TCP/IP Model does not have. This is why the OSI Model is taught in school rather than the TCP/IP Model (referring to another politically motivated comment made within the wikipedia article that you referenced).

The point the Grandparent Post was making is that the Internet follows this layered approach and any layer can be updated without seriously affecting any layer above or below it. Therefore calling the need for a Japanese Internet project into question. However, the motives are clear when you look at the political side of the Internet.

Anyway, I was trying to walk the fine line between roasting someone with a really low UID (484) (you might belong on /. Welcome to the party) and correcting someone who was almost correct but just wrong enough to bother me.

What does a low UID signify besides being able to remember a username and password longer than most? I used to have a low UID, but needed to make a new UID since I lost my password and my original email account has long disappeared and been forgotten too. Sometimes a UID is just a UID. Don't let a low UID intimidate you. Statistically speaking if 75% (made up number) of slashdot were experts and above-average individuals, that would leave 250 3-digit UIDs for the not so bright but strongly opinionated.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[curunir]

The more apropos example would have been eBay, MySpace or YouTube. In all those cases, people use it because other people use it. It's incredibly difficult for competitors to emerge because the appeal of such sites is specifically tied to the rest of the people using it. With the possible exception of eBay, it's not hard to build a better version of any of those services...many have. But pretty much all competitors to those products have had to target specific niche demographics because the general community has already chosen the product they want to use.

I think you're looking at the vendor lock-in term a bit myopically...the GP was pretty clearly using it as a synonym for critical mass. And, in a way, the Windows OS dominance is the same thing. People use Windows because everyone else uses Windows. This makes websites and software companies only support Windows. Similarly, any internet, however improved, will be next to useless without the hoards of users and websites that the current internet connects.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Warbothong]

There is a difference between "lock-in" and "standard". Windows is a case of lock-in, whilst the Internet is based on standards. When I read about these "new Internet" ideas I take it as given that connecting it to the current Internet is part of the plan, since that's completely feasable, and therefore it's not really a "new" Internet so much as an upgraded Internet, where the question of the data available becomes irrelevant.

I think a better example than Windows would be something like Debian. Let's say Debian was the vastly dominant OS, and some random developers decide to replace the Linux kernel as default with the FreeBSD kernel (as an example), since there have been experiments in this area. Some people would be saying "Developers are working on a new Linux", whereas the actual case would be "Developers are upgrading Debian" (don't take that literally, the two kernels mentioned are just analogies), since the implementation isn't the point, the key things are the stuff it enables us to do. Since Linux is known and documented and can be tinkered with by anyone, those random developers could (given enough resources) make the FreeBSD Linux emulationy thing almost 100% accurate. Then the question of "What programs will be available on it?" doesn't make sense, since it is exactly like the other Debian, and compatible (and presumably if the FreeBSD version was successful then there would be some pretty accurate FreeBSD emulation for the Linux version). The whole thing just ends up as alternative implementations of the same system. The most important thing to ensure in any of these developments is that the "new Internet" proposed will be as documented, open and standardised as the current system, and if not it should be avoided like the plague.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

i am certainly not a nascent-japanese-rival-to-the-internet fanboy.

And it certainly wasn't my intention to suggest otherwise - apologies if it came across that way.

what would it be like if we designed the internet today, but with a more "optimistic" approach? i don't know if it would change anything, or if it's even possible, but it would cool to find out.

Well, I think it would be a lot easier to censor, a lot more vulnerable to pharming attacks, less resistant to inter-ISP squabbles where one decides to drop the other's packets, and you'd still have the problem that the "last mile" would be in the hands of either your local phone company or cable TV co, with all the problems that implies.

Which isn't to say they shouldn't do the research; research is always good. But I think it's important to understand the distinction between the protocols the internet runs on, the servers and routers, and the wire used to carry the signal. The "Internet" is protocols and servers and routers. But the problems you've describes are about the wire - and you'll have to use that same wire to connect to any other network, unless you want to spend a lot of money, anyway.

perhaps what is needed (if indeed anything is needed at all) is not a new and separate internet, but a kind of ad-hoc inter-network of peers that is isolated and possibly insulated from the internet, like some sort of giant darknet.

Sounds like you'd like freenet and GNUnet.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[kaizokuace]

They took a note from the FOSS community and decided that needless forking was the answer.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[ultranova]

from my very limited understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the internet itself, i have gathered that the internet was designed from a sort of "worst case scenario" point of view. it is meant to tolerate and work around slow, unreliable, and possibly hostile links first, and to deliver bits quickly second. what would it be like if we designed the internet today, but with a more "optimistic" approach?

Why, it would be easily censorable.

Internet succeeded precisely because it was never intended for ordinary people but for the army and officials. By the time the various powers-that-be realized that their worst nightmare - a means for people to communicate and share ideas and news effectively without any simple way to enforce censorship - had become reality, it was too late to start installing locks; the protocol was already set in stone.

If Internet were to be redesigned today, it would include an ability to censorship anything in a central fashion. All for the sake of children and national security, of course. China is actually refreshingly honest in admitting that their "Great Firewall" is meant to block political content, as opposed to countries like Finland where the police maintain lists of "child porn sites" the ISPs then block access to.

Internet succeeded because it managed to take the world by surprise. There will never be another one, and once effective means to control the spread of information through this one - AKA censorship - are discovered, this one will be gone too. Enjoy it while you can, for it won't last.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you'd like freenet and GNUnet.

While those are a good first step, they still are dependent on the Internet. I think the GP meant something completely separate, like a citizen-run WLAN (or something more efficient) which would wrap the world in a global mesh network.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

The more apropos example would have been eBay, MySpace or YouTube.

I think that's "market saturation". Different concept. I'll grant that the thing that makes eBay useful is that a lot of people use eBay. And certainly that much is true for TCP/IP. But, if you're arguing that eBay is bad because it stops others from making money... in which that case the analogy breaks down.

Unless, of course, your intention is to take TCP/IP (which doesn't cost its users a penny), and replace it with something that upon which you can levy charges. And if that's the primary motivation for re-inventing the Internet, I can't say I'm particularly sympathetic.

I think you're looking at the vendor lock-in term a bit myopically

I'm not interested in conflating a monopolistic abuse of proprietary protocols and formats with the prevalence of a enabling technology that isn't controlled by any single vendor, if that's what you mean.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[WalkingBear]

It's not about the number of parallel projects. Look at how many types of peripheral interface busses there were in the early to mid 80s? The more different minds and wallets work on a project, with their own ideas, abilities and directions, the higher the chances something really awesome will come out of it. If you have 100 projects trying to solve the same problem, one or two of those projects will become the default solution for most people and the other 98 will fall by the wayside. However, the knowlege and technology developed in those 98 will still be there and will be used, somewhere, where the "accepted" solution doesn't work.

Firewire and USB are prefect examples of this.

So to answer your question more succinctly? "How many projects do we need?" All of them.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

While those are a good first step, they still are dependent on the Internet.

Well, he did say "darknet" and "insulated from the internet" rather than separate from. But it's a fair point.

I think the GP meant something completely separate, like a citizen-run WLAN

Which is a fabulous idea, and I think something like a widespread community mesh is an inevitability. The only thing about that, I think, is that it's still conflating the transport medium with protocols and infrastructure - OSI layer one with layers three and four.

It's not that it's a bad idea - I just think it's orthogonal to the matter at hand.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[ClosedSource]

If I recall corectly the Internet Protocols don't divide the layers all that neatly. Isn't there some dicking around with data on adjacent layers? Is that your understanding? Does the OSI Model allow that?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, the Internet aims to replace Japanese researchers. The Internet claims that everything that has ever needed to be invented, already has been invented. All it needs is search to find the right answers to questions, and Google has provided that missing link.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

The problem I have here is that you are conflating on the one hand the problems of migrating a vary large user base with, on the other, the monopolistic abuses of power popular with a certain Seattle based software house.

Lock-in is lock-in - You don't have to be abused in order to be locked into something. Lets look at an example:

MSN - if you want to talk to all your mates who use MSN then you're going to have to use MSN too.
XMPP - if you want to talk to all your mates who use XMPP then you're going to have to use XMPP too.
IPv4 - If you want to access all the services on the IPv4 network then you're going to have to use IPv4 too.
IPv6 - If you want to access all the services on the IPv6 network then you're going to have to use IPv6 too.

All looks pretty similar doesn't it? In each case you are locked into using a specific protocol for a specific job. The only difference in the MSN case is that, because of the protocol's design, you are also locked into using a single vendor's servers and no gatewaying between protocols can be achieved without that vendor's cooperation (yes, I'm aware of the XMPP MSN transport - it doesn't really provide real gatewaying though, you still need an MSN account).

In all these cases, various factors are locking you into using a specific protocol - this is a Bad Thing since it prevents you from picking a protocol that suits you best. However, there isn't much you can do about it. If the service you're after moves to a different protocol then you are forced to follow suit. Your friend moves from MSN to XMPP and you have to do the same if you want to continue talking to her.

Locking you into a specific _vendor_ on the other hand is something you _can_ avoid.

The fact that these stakeholder have the option not to upgrade is also atypical of the vendor lock-in scenario.

But in the long run they don't have the option not to upgrade - if major services are made available only on IPv6 then the ISPs and end users will have to upgrade or you lose access to those services.

It's not really any different from Microsoft "forcing" you to upgrade to the new version of Office. It's not as if the old version is just going to stop working - it just means you won't be able to access new content.

So my question is: are you deliberately trying to conflate the two issues? I don't think you can support the notion that they are in any way comparable.

I do see them as comparable - the requirement to upgrade to support a new protocol in order to access new content seems no different to me to the requirement to upgrade your office suite in order to access new content, or upgrade your operating system to access new content. In the latter two cases at least, the existing content won't magically stop working (in the first case that is probably not true - whilest the old protocols may be around for a long time it would seem likely that over time the services available over the old protocols would be eroded).

I think lock-in can be split into 3 separate categories in order of badness:
1. Lock in to a specific piece of software. For example, Office - if you want to exchange Office documents with people you need Office
2. Lock in to a specific service. For example, MSN, Skype, etc. - if you want to talk to your friends you are _required_ to use a single vendor's services (possibly with the option of using some 3rd party software to access the services). If they provide sucky services then that's just too bad coz you can't change vendor.
3. Lock in to a specific protocol. For example, IPv4, XMPP, SIP - if you want to talk to your friends who use XMPP then you also need to use XMPP. But it's an open protocol so you can use any vendor who provides an XMPP server (you can even run your own). If the vendor runs a crap service, you can change vendor, but you're still stuck with the same protocol - you can't choose to use SIP to talk to the XMPP network.

The first two categories are fixable by choosing to use open file formats, open protocols and decentralised protocols. The third category is probably unfixable, but I would suggest that it isn't a trivial problem.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

Lock-in is lock-in - You don't have to be abused in order to be locked into something.

I'm sorry, but that's completely missing the point. You might as well say "being shot is being shot" and then deliver a tirade about the evils of pea-shooters. Not only is the problem not inconveniencing anyone sane, but you are also trivialising the original problem by declaring it to be equivalent to something so minor.

I mean, yes, if I want to look at something, if I want to use my eyes, then I'm locked into using the electromagnet spectrum. By your argument a lock-in is a lock-in, and therefore that's a Bad Thing, or at least as bad as any other lock in. However, no one is abusing the singular nature of the visible spectrum, and the fact that there are no practical alternatives for vision doesn't expose me to any avenues of exploitation. More to the point, no one is in a position to potentially abuse the medium. In consequence, I don't particularly care if vision has an EMF lock in or not.

And the fact that a lot of people use a protocol (or a file format) isn't a problem - it's what makes the protocol valuable. That's why Microsoft are creating such a stink about OOXML - because they fear the erosion of the value of their formats. And that's also why it's so important to have these formats and protocols open and unencumbered by IPR issues, in all their various forms - because such common formats are too valuable to be entrusted to any single entity.

I fully expect you to disagree with me, but as long as you insist that the ills of lock-in stem from the lock-in itself rather than any potential for abuse, then it's hard to see how we're going to progress this.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[curunir]

I think that's "market saturation". Different concept.

No, it's critical mass. I stated that quite clearly. See here for what that means.

I'm not arguing that anything is bad. What I'm saying is that it's hard to compete with eBay because sellers want to sell on the network with the most buyers and buyers want to browse where there is the largest selection from sellers. eBay's momentum is entirely self-sustaining now. All they have to do is not allow their system to degrade or provide their users with a reason to leave and it will be almost impossible for anyone to compete with them directly without serving a niche market.

It's the same with MySpace and YouTube. People don't use them because they're the best, they use them because everyone they know uses them.

And I never said that the GP used the term vendor lock-in correctly, I simply said that you were looking at his/her exact words instead of the meaning behind those words. And that meaning was that, like Microsoft's OS dominance, switching from TCP/IP and the current internet will be next to impossible since the replacement wouldn't be able to access the mass amounts of stuff and the mass number of people that are currently connected to the original internet.

However, taking Microsoft as an example only muddies the waters. Their monopoly is in part due to critical mass, but also due, in-part, to anti-competitive practices (vendor lock-in). This is why I listed other examples that were more clearly examples of critical mass rather than vendor lock-in.

And incidentally, TCP/IP may not cost money, but it is an integral part of things that do cost money. Broadband internet access and internet hosting are both services that you pay money for. It's these services that are hard to switch away from. They are the interfaces between the customer and the product. If TCP/IP can be swapped out without changing those interface, the transition away from it could be seamless. But a switch to an internet host or ISP that doesn't access the current internet will be a very hard sell.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[mikael]

Yes, I did - I've also worked on networking products (network probes and LAN analyzers). Even had one of those protocol charts above my desk, so I've got a good idea of how "the tubes work".

The Japanese have always had these grand computer initiatives (the last couple were "The TRON project", and Fifth Generation computing (AI, Expert Systems, Automated Learning).

The TRON project was an attempt to have computers be able to have a standard communication protocol:


First, there is the problem of reliability. Has your Internet service provider's server every gone down unexpectedly? Is it shut down regularly for maintenance causing you to lose access to the Internet? Have you ever sent an e-mail message that was never received by the person to whom you sent it? Has a person to whom you sent an e-mail message ever written back saying the header was received but there was no message attached to it? In the case of most people, the answer to these questions is "yes." But in comparison, loss of telephone service is now an extremely rare occurrence that happens mainly due to natural disasters. When it's a result of an error by the telephone company, all hell breaks loose and large-scale rebates have to be paid out to placate angry customers. ...
Of course, there are very understandable reasons why the Internet has its loyal supporters. Most importantly, the fact that governments don't control the Internet means it can give a voice to people or groups of people certain governments would like to suppress. So in that sense, it is of immense cultural importance. Another important feature of the Internet is that it is still "open technologically," so anyone can become a player without paying royalties or worrying about a lawyer from a large software company walking through the door with a ultimatum to either sign a highly unfavorable contract or have access to the Internet denied. However, in the final analysis, even the hard core fans of the Internet have to admit that when it comes to underlying technologies, the Internet is lacking in many areas.

Fortunately, there are other global network development efforts under way in addition to the Internet. One of these is the TRON Hypernetwork (in technical parlance, the highly functional distributed system [HFDS]), a vast, high-performance, real-time hypernetwork of innumerable open and closed subordinate networks based on the TRON total architecture that is being planned for computerizing human living spaces and human work environments in the 21st century. This hypernetwork is in the process of being built around a central framework of real-time servers and digital exchanges based on the Central and Communication TRON (CTRON) architecture, one of the first tasks of which is to support today's Internet protocols.


Looks like this is another attempt to revamp the TRON project (which also had its own networked CPU).

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[StikyPad]

...and Baby Jesus cry.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps more like the Wired?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[The One and Only]

What you need to understand is the Japanese culture. They always start kind of "world domination" plans. Where is the 5gen computer? Forget it. Japanese are good in making plans, plans that are absolutely tough and a bit over the top.

Like what, starting a naval war with the United States?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[G3ORG3]

I baptize you the "JAPANET"

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Pearson]

as you speak with such conviction on subjects you know little about you might belong on /. Welcome to the party.

Looking at his member number, it's apparent that he got to this party a bit before you. :P

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[teh_chrizzle]

The "Internet" is protocols and servers and routers. But the problems you've describes are about the wire - and you'll have to use that same wire to connect to any other network, unless you want to spend a lot of money, anyway.

excellent point. very well said. whatever rivals the internet may have to transcend wires.

Well, I think it would be a lot easier to censor, a lot more vulnerable to pharming attacks, less resistant to inter-ISP squabbles where one decides to drop the other's packets, and you'd still have the problem that the "last mile" would be in the hands of either your local phone company or cable TV co, with all the problems that implies.

it's sad, but probably true. the two possible research projects i mentioned (the optimistic internet and the pessimistic internet) are responses to the two basic dooms-day scenarios for the internet. the "descent into gridlock and chaos" scenario is the preferred scare tactic of the filtering/capping/throttling crowd. the "TV with a buy button" scenario is the preferred propaganda tool of the innovation/free speech/privacy crowd. if there were sufficient competition in the market, both scenarios would be laughable. unfortunately there is no such competition, and neither side will be happy until they get what they want.

that means that either the control crowd (AT&T) wins, the internet becomes just like TV or radio (owned and controlled by corps and the govt.) and one or more darknets appear in protest, OR the freedom crowd (google) wins, the net returns to the good old days of 2001, and one or more parallel networks appear to deliver sanctioned content at speeds the internet only dreams of (like cable telephone service today). either way, new parallel nets have to be built to appease both camps.

the only real questions then become which camp will keep the name "internet", who will build "zie darknets", and what will the control camp call its darknets if it loses control of the legacy internet?

the third scenario, the "imaginary third pipe" dream (powerlines, muni-fiber, muni-wifi, high-speed mobile data) is another possibility, but i am not confident that a third entrant will appear any time soon. building a competitor to the internet takes the kind of motivation that only the need for vengeance can provide.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

I think that's "market saturation". Different concept.

No, it's critical mass. I stated that quite clearly. See here for what that means.

Critical mass is what makes eBay popular. I don't think it's what makes it hard to compete with them, at least not directly. I also think it's a lot harder to make that argment for youTube (there are a lot of video upload sites) and harder still for myspace (there are loads and loads of social networking sites).

Which is all somewhat beside the point.

I'm not arguing that anything is bad.

No, you're not, and that's the problem. I'm arguing that vendor lock in, often referred to simply as "lock in" is bad. It describes a specific and well understood problem where a single supplier controls the protocols and formats used by a great many people, thereby opening them to unwelcome manipulation from that supplier. This is widely understood and acknowledged to be a bad thing, and I rather object to attempts to dilute the term by using it as if it meant the same thing as "widely used".

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[teh_chrizzle]

I think the GP meant something completely separate, like a citizen-run WLAN (or something more efficient) which would wrap the world in a global mesh network.

i own the copyright on the term "pirate internet" :-)

if you have a development deal, send me an internet! do it now, i probably won't get it until friday.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[MrNaz]

Ethics are not absolute and vary from person to person. It is the job of the parents to teach and instill their idea of ethics into their own children. It is the responsibility of the school to educate, not to teach ethics or morality.

You're right, I shouldn't lay the blame on schools. However, in the western countries that I've had the chance to observe, parents have precious little time with their kids, say, weekends and school holidays, and the bulk of their education is done by schools. Education, at least to my understanding, *includes* ethics and morality, and I don't believe in this post modern rubbish about ethics, morality and everything else being relative. Everyone agrees stealing is wrong. Everyone agrees honesty is good. Everyone agrees in honor and justice and patience. While the specific manifestations of these ideas may vary, the underlying concepts themselves are static and uniform. Regardless, modern western society seems to actively discourage people from getting involved in the socio-political arena by ignoring these things and leaving kids to find their way in a world flooded with reality television, sport, MTV and other forms of mental novocaine.

Not sure you should speak for an entire country - I am American and the way you describe your family situation is exactly how I would describe mine.

Well I've never been to America, I'm talking about "western" culture. I know that in Australia and the UK (I live in Aus and have many family members living in the UK), a family like mine (and yours I guess) would be the minority, not the majority. I think (but as I said I've never been so I can't be sure) that in the US, the social situation would be similar to Aus and the UK. Family is not revered as the paramount and most basic social bond in the way it is in eastern cultures. The things I've seen people do to family and call it "just business" in the west make my blood run cold. Here they say "you shouldn't mix business with family". Why? Because you can't trust family? In India, the opposite is true, there the most successful businesses are those run by families, because family members there trust each other implicitly.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

Not only is the problem not inconveniencing anyone sane

Completely untrue.

If you're using SIP as your instant messaging protocol and I'm using XMPP, one of us has to change protocol (or use both) - that is inconvenient.

Similarly, I have some servers that are only accessible over IPv6 (because I don't have enough public IPv4 addresses to go around). These are specifically servers that I only need to access from locations that I know have IPv6 connectivity so it isn't a problem, but it does mean that if I needed someone with only IPv4 access to connect to them I'd have to jump through some hoops - that is inconvenient.

By your argument a lock-in is a lock-in, and therefore that's a Bad Thing, or at least as bad as any other lock in.

That is explicitly _not_ what I said. If you had read my post you would've seen the bit which said "lock-in can be split into 3 separate categories in order of badness" - I think it's pretty clear that I consider *vendor* lock-in to be much worse than *protocol* lock-in. But to deny the existance of protocol lock-in just because it isn't as bad and probably can't be fixed is extremely naive.

the fact that there are no practical alternatives for vision doesn't expose me to any avenues of exploitation.

That's a pretty good indication of why you have picked a bad analogy. In the case of network protocols, document formats and software there usually are perfectly good (often better) alternatives.

no one is in a position to potentially abuse the medium.

Again, I have to reiterate - lock-in really isn't about whether something is being abused. Just because noone is in a position to subvert something for their own ends doesn't mean that you aren't locked into it and it doesn't mean there aren't problems with being locked in.

And the fact that a lot of people use a protocol (or a file format) isn't a problem - it's what makes the protocol valuable.

In some respects it isn't a problem (makes things easier for people to exchange files, etc.). But what if that format/protocol isn't capable of doing what you need? Going back to my IPv4 vs. IPv6 example - I might choose to provide a service using IPv6 because the enhanced multicast abilities would be benficial, but I can't because all the potential users of a service are still stuck on plain old IPv4 - i.e. I'm locked in to using IPv4.

And that's also why it's so important to have these formats and protocols open and unencumbered by IPR issues, in all their various forms - because such common formats are too valuable to be entrusted to any single entity.

I'm not disagreeing with that - opening up file formats and protocols is a Good Thing and solves a lot of problems. But it doesn't solve *all* lock-in problems.

as long as you insist that the ills of lock-in stem from the lock-in itself rather than any potential for abuse, then it's hard to see how we're going to progress this

There are a lot of problems related to the abuse of lock-in, but claiming that there are no problems at all caused by unabused lock-in is just plain wrong.

Also, how do you define "abuse" - taking the Skype example, the protocol is designed to use Skype's servers and has no scope for allowing third parties to run servers. Should this be considered an abuse or just a shortsighted protocol design?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

If you're using SIP as your instant messaging protocol and I'm using XMPP, one of us has to change protocol (or use both) - that is inconvenient.

Oh, please! How is that to be considered a lock in? Does my use of SIP prevent me from using XMPP? No it does not. I just have to install more software. Will the XMPP corporation change the protocol so that I'm required to buy their software all over again? No, that will not happen. Inconvenient, yes. Lock-in, no.

Again, I have to reiterate - lock-in really isn't about whether something is being abused. Just because noone is in a position to subvert something for their own ends doesn't mean that you aren't locked into it and it doesn't mean there aren't problems with being locked in.

And here we disagree. I'm locked into my own house right now. That is, I'm inside and the door is locked. However I have a key and I can get out. The lock in is only a problem if someone else controls the key.

In the case of IPv4 and IPv6, that doesn't apply. I can migrate any time I want to. The fact that there's not much point until most of the rest of the world does likewise doesn't mean I'm locked in, although it does mean there are serious migration issues to be solved if we're ever going to make the transition.

Also, how do you define "abuse" - taking the Skype example, the protocol is designed to use Skype's servers and has no scope for allowing third parties to run servers. Should this be considered an abuse or just a shortsighted protocol design?

A better phrase is "potential for abuse", and that's been there from the start. Which is one reason why I don't use Skype. How much of that potential is down to poor design and how much was because they wanted a level of vendor lock in on the emerging VOIP sector is something we'll probably never know for sure. But given that there were plenty of unencumbered protocols they could have used, I rather tend toward the latter.

If you had read my post you would've seen the bit which said "lock-in can be split into 3 separate categories in order of badness"

I did, and I chose not to address your point because I felt (and still feel) that you were proceeding from a false premise. However:

Case One: Yes, MS Office is a lock-in case, although the scope of the problem goes far beyond the use of .dox{x} files as a communication medium. In particular, there are also issues of deliberate breaking of backwards compatibility to force othewise undeeded upgrades, and issues about the long term availability of documents after the software that can read them is discontinued.

Case Two: This is really case one in disguise: MSN and Skype are vendor lock in cases, not protocol lock in. The problems here come not from the fact that the services have a defining protocol, but from the fact that a single vendor controls that protocol and is in a position to abuse that control.

Case Three: This I do not accept as lock in. There is no key holder here and no potential for abuse.

So I still think you're attempting to trivialise a serious industry problem by conflating it with a completely unrelated problem on the one hand and with a handful of self evident non-issues on the other. Sorry, but no sale.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

Oh, please! How is that to be considered a lock in? Does my use of SIP prevent me from using XMPP? No it does not.

How does your use of Office prevent you from using Open Office? It doesn't.

How does your use of MSN prevent you from using XMPP? It doesn't.

Yet, both MS Office and MSN are considered cases of vendor lock-in _because_ you are tied to using a specific program/service/protocol in order to access specific content.

Will the XMPP corporation change the protocol so that I'm required to buy their software all over again? No, that will not happen.

XMPP corporation? XMPP is the IETF standard instant messaging protocol - there is no XMPP corporation.

And yes, the XMPP protocol does change and you are required to upgrade your XMPP client if you want to use the new functionality. Just as Office documents change to incorporate new functionality and you are required to upgrade your copy of Office in order to use it.

In the case of IPv4 and IPv6, that doesn't apply. I can migrate any time I want to. The fact that there's not much point until most of the rest of the world does likewise doesn't mean I'm locked in

You can migrate from MS Office at any time you want. The alternatives won't be much use (assuming they can't use Office documents) if you want to exchange documents with the rest of the world, but there's nothing stopping you switching. I really don't see a difference:

* You can change from IPv4 to IPv6 but there's no point since the content is only available over IPv4.
* You can change from Office to $other_office_suite but there's no point since the content is only available in Office format.
* You can change from MSN to XMPP but there's no point since the people you want to talk to are only on MSN.

All looks pretty similar to me.

I did, and I chose not to address your point because I felt (and still feel) that you were proceeding from a false premise.

Not addressing my point is one thing. However, what you did was ignore my point and willfully assume I believed the exact opposite of what I stated I believed.

[Office] In particular, there are also issues of deliberate breaking of backwards compatibility to force othewise undeeded upgrades

IPv6 breaks backwards compatibility with IPv4 in the same way. Compare:
* You want to open an Office document that was saved from a newer version of Office, thus you have to upgrade your version of Office too. But all your old documents still work just fine with your existing Office.
* You want to use a service that is only available over IPv6, thus you have to upgrade your IP stack. But all the old services still work fine over IPv4*

In both cases, you are not _required_ to upgrade, however you do need to upgrade *IFF* you want to access new stuff.

(* as mentioned, this isn't necessarilly the case - if IPv6 takes off then IPv4 services will be erroded and replaced with IPv6-only services. In a way, it makes it _worse_ than Office since you can nolonger guarantee your existing stuff will continue working without an upgrade).

This I do not accept as lock in. There is no key holder here and no potential for abuse

As I have stated before, I do not believe the potential for abuse is a defining feature of lock-in. Sure, if you are locked in then there may be an increased potential for abuse, but that doesn't mean that all lock-in scenarios can be abused.

So I still think you're attempting to trivialise a serious industry problem by conflating it with a completely unrelated problem on the one hand

I'm not intending to trivialise it at all. There _is_ a serious industry problem with lock-in, and that is a big problem. But to believe that there is no such thing as lock-in (and no disadvantages) in situations where a single organisation isn't in a position to abuse people seems extremely naive.

Rather than trying to trivialise the "vendor lock-in" problem, I am trying t

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

How does your use of Office prevent you from using Open Office? It doesn't.
How does your use of MSN prevent you from using XMPP? It doesn't.

OK, maybe you've got a point. Let's look at this another way:

I've been giving this a bit of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that the notion of "protocol lock-in" is basically absurd.; I;m not saying that to be rude - I mean that the notion is fundamentally flawed. Let me try and explain why:

The trouble is, for each and every protocol that exists, in order to use the protocol, you have to use the protocol. It's no use me sitting inside waiting for the phone to ring if you're determined to communicate using smoke signals. We have to use the same protocol or there is no communication. The protocol defines the channel.

This means that every protocol going has 100% protocol lock-in among its users. "Protocol lock-in" is a tautology. It's a universal constant and there is nothing we can do to change that. And so, because it's true in each and every case we might consider, we can factor it out of our discussions entirely. Good, bad, indifferent, it's always on and therefore irrelevant.

Now, if you disagree, please explain why. If not, say so and we can move on to the next bit; I suspect that if we're still going to discuss lock-in, then the word "vendor" is going to feature strongly.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[FireFury03]

Now, if you disagree, please explain why.

I don't really disagree - as I said, the fact that you are locked in to a specific protocol in order to access a service (which you now seem to consider is true) is probably unfixable, but that doesn't mean it doesn't cause problems.

The original poster said: By 2020, the current internet will have a level of lock-in that makes Windows look disposable. "Faster" and "safer" will have a tough time overcoming "empty".

And I firmly believe he's right (infact, I think that this level of lock-in happened long ago). So much content and services are available over the internet (or more specifically: IPv4) that you are pretty much locked in to using IPv4.

If someone comes out with a new protocol (which has already happened with IPv6) or even a whole new infrastructure, that new technology is going to have real trouble gaining ground for the simple reason that it has no content/services on it - the content/services are still all on IPv4 (or available through both). The mere fact that IPv4 is "good enough" for most uses means that there is little incentive for everyone to upgrade.

Remember that to roll out an "internet replacement" you're going to need to get the server owners, the connectivity providers and the end users to all upgrade. If one of them doesn't feel it's worth their while then noone gets to play with the "internet replacement" even if they want to.

Sure, you can roll out IPv6 on your own network (I did years ago) and run IPv6 and IPv4 in parallel, but the vast majority of your traffic is going to be IPv4 for years to come unless a major reason comes up for the server owners and ISPs to expend the money needed to upgrade.

With IPv6, there are major reasons for upgrading:
- Do away with NAT. This is mostly going to affect the end users and server owners since P2P protocols such as VoIP are becoming more popular. Unfortunately, P2P does work through NAT (but is less reliable) so much of the push to upgrade is gone there and then.
- IP address shortage. This is possibly the bigger reason. Even with NAT we _are_ going to run out of IPv4 addresses at some point in the future. However, I feel this is going to be very much like the Y2K problem - everyone can see it coming but noone is willing to spend the money to plan for the future. Eventually this problem is going to hit us hard and there will be an "oh shit the sky is falling" moment where everyone will end up spending way more money upgrading than they would've done if they had upgraded earlier.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[NickFortune]

I don't really disagree - as I said, the fact that you are locked in to a specific protocol in order to access a service (which you now seem to consider is true) is probably unfixable, but that doesn't mean it doesn't cause problems.

Well, I do reserve the right to change my mind if I decide that I've been talking rubbish, and I try not to get so caught up in a debate that I can't consider that possibility that the other guy might be right. To which end, let's address a few other points here.

• IPv6 Is Good Yes, I think you're probably right. We're going to need it sooner or later. And when we do we're going to need it a lot. But I don't think the need is as pressing as was anticipated and it might be quite a while yet before enough people are motivated that we see a change.
• Migration from IPv4 poses problems. Yes it does. I'm a little hazy on how the situation will be noticeably worse in 2020, but in essence I agree with you.

So yes, these are serious problems. I'm not trying to trivialise the magnitude of an IPv6 migration.

However, I still don't think that the term "lock-in" is particularly apt. The situation lacks the elements of unwelcome external manipulation that I've come to associate with such usage. And I still think "protocol lock-in" is at best meaningless, and at worst misleading.

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone agrees stealing is wrong.

Is it wrong for a starving man to steal a loaf of bread?

It's also possible to argue that taxation is a form of theft. I might even agree that it is, for the same of argument. That wouldn't neccessailly imply that it's wrong though.

Then again, maybe a starving man stealing a loaf of bread is wrong, but less wrong than him letting himself die of starvation. Maybe levying taxes is wrong, but less wrong than letting the country descend into anarchy. But I guess that would be some kind of moral relativism, and I guess we couldn't have that. Could we?

Re:Doesn't this already exist?

[rufty_tufty]

"From my very limited understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the internet itself, i have gathered that the internet was designed from a sort of "worst case scenario" point of view. it is meant to tolerate and work around slow, unreliable, and possibly hostile links first, and to deliver bits quickly second. what would it be like if we designed the internet today, but with a more "optimistic" approach? i don't know if it would change anything, or if it's even possible, but it would cool to find out."

An easy example of how the current internet is none optimal (as was explained to my by an ex-workmate) is found when you look into windowing used to control bandwidth used. From how he explained to me the current algorithm was designed in the early days of asics and goes:
1) Send first Packet
2) wait for Ack packet
3) make an estimate of available bandwidth
4) send next packet
5) based upon estimate wait appropriate time to send next packet
6) constantly adjust bandwidth usage up/down until the congestion flags found in the ack packets, or file transfer complete.

While this worked great in the days of 3K6 modems, ftp/kermit and a few dozen open connections once for the modern webserver serving goodness knows how many files per second most of the being tiny it is a silly algorithm. A superior one might be:
1) From past experience have a rough idea how fast you can send outgoing files/how much buffering the switch you are connected to has.
2) send file as fast as you possibly can until said buffer is expected to be full/you start getting ACKs back with the congestion bit set. This information could even be shared over multiple connections
3) Profit (as there is less state to maintain and because files immediately start transferring at the fastest possible rate)

Now I know they were doing research into is this would be a good idea, certainly modern routers have much more memory than was assumed in the early days of TCP/IP so seemed to benefit from this algorithm; I assume the japanese one will look at similar things/alternate algorithms.
Another easy example is some/many routing algorithms assume low ping time = fast link = high bandwidth link - which is just total rubbish! There seem to be many ways the international Network could be improved (see IPV6 for another obvious example) if the replacement could gain any headway is another question...

Also we all need to be careful about talking about "replacing the internet" since the internet is built of:
* Physical links
* routers
* data link protocols
* Session level protocols
* Applications
* Content
* user expectations

while some of these are independent of TCP/IP, many aren't and tunnelling over IP as some have suggested would not help address some of the issues that might be available for improvement (e.g. QOS issues)

Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad they are going to replace the Internet, but I wish there was some sort of forum, some sort of blog, where we could discuss how much it would cost to replace the Internet.
Maybe I should submit an Ask Slashdot question. I also have a time machine. 2+2=?

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[morgan_greywolf]

The original cost of building the Internet was doubtlessly in the billions, maybe in the trillions of dollars. But such cost wasn't spent by one entity. The Internet was built with private/public partnerships and building it was a boon to the early computing industry. Entire empires were built with Internet dollars -- think UUNet, BBN, AT&T, Al Gore (kidding!) and others who created the Internet.

My point is that the cost is shared throughout the economy and actually builds wealth instead of destroying it.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

how do I type a Japanese URL when the internet protocols only see ASCII Characters ?
Ever see a URL that didn't use ASCII charachters ?

Japan will need to convert their Japanese specific URLs to some type of Gateway that communicates with the required internet protocols to be able to communicate with the rest of the world ?
That is a monumental if not impossible task

Do they realize that the rest of the world internet isn't going to change for Japan ?

He will get an Intra net or Jap net at best Not an Internet

The internet and its protocols are based on ASCII
  A second internet that can accept Japanese URL's ?
Such can only work in Japan no?. In that case the whole thing already exists in every county, it's called an intranet , now with that, they are free to use whatever languages , protocols and fix ups they wish, but they cannot communicate with the internet protocols without ASCII? How can they call it an Internet ? the Internet is based on English characters called ASCII, Without worldwide acceptance of Japans methods, How can hey possibly get an internet?

Unless I'm wrong, Examine any valid URL, ever see Characters other than ASCII English that was a valid internet URL?
A Japaneses Internet that requires ASCII to intercommunicate with the rest of the world?
How?

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[marcello_dl]

Replacing the internet is not possible. Either everybody switches overnight, or there is a period where these new networking tech/protocols must communicate with the old ones. So they essentially become part of the internet, nevermind it won't share the TCP/IP stack. Besides, a compatibility layer is needed for existing internet apps.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

So, you think that the fact that the internet today cannot cope with anything other than the ASCII character set is a good thing? How about if someone tries to solve the problems that obviously don't affect you, but do affect many other nations on this planet. You know, like having things in a language that they can understand, using characters that appear on their keyboards. True, you might not want to access those sites, but many people who live in those countries probably will.

Why will they need a gateway? Perhaps they will be quite content with, say, the whole of Japan being able to access Japanese sites in their native language. They might not care whether you can access them. Indeed, if you insist on sticking to the ASCII character set you will be limited to lots of content that you simply cannot understand because you believe that everyone should speak the same language as yourself. The Japanese might be very pleased to capture their own market yet still be able to access your internet when it suits them. Sure, if they want site to be available internationally they will have to keep a URL based on the ASCII character set because, Internet 2, which is being developed in the US, is not addressing the problem of other alphabets. It seems in the west to be a case of sod them, they don't matter. And when someone else tries to address the problem the attempt is mocked as being a duplication of effort. It isn't. Nobody in the west is looking at the problem AFAICT.

And what is to say that their research will not identify a better way of building some part of the internet as we know it? Not all the best ideas originate in one country. Perhaps they will solve a particular problem that will benefit everyone, using whatever internet they care to use, in whatever language they choose. It might not, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. After all, going to the moon achieved nothing in and of itself, but there have been numerous spin-off benefits and inventions that resulted from going down that path.

Many countries have internet access that is far advanced from that found in many parts of the USA. Perhaps they would like to keep it that way.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Mathonwy]

erm?

Ok, I admit that networking isn't my strongest suit. But... am I missing something? What do you mean "the fact that the internet cannot cope with anything other than ascii"? The internet is just a protocol for routing information from point A to point B. That information is stored in bytes. By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is anything language-specific about those bytes.

Are you confusing "the internet" with "the web"? Web pages do assume (by default at least) an ascii encoding, I believe. But that's not something that needs to be solved by changing the internet, that's something you could fix just by modifying browsers. Which, surprise surprise, is something people have already done. Heck, for that matter, what's up with your original premise, that they want to "have things in a language that they can understand, using characters that appear on their keyboards"? Most Japanese web sites ARE in japanese... Most web browsers DO support unicode encoding...

Are you possibly just talking about the URLs themselves? They don't have unicode support I guess, although that's something that could [I think?] be handled just by supplying a unicode-enabled custom DNS?

Don't get me wrong, research is generally a good thing overall, and as you point out, who knows what useful things they'll come up with along the way. But most of your reasons for why reinventing the internet might be a good idea, ring hollow to me. That, and the tone of your post feels like you have a specific bone to pick with either one of the previous posters, or possibly just with america in general?

Personally, my main concern with a "new" internet is the climate in which it would be born. The current internet had the benefit of being created for non-comercial use in mind, and was deliberately designed with open access in mind. It's structure is deliberately set up in a fairly idealistic way. It has a crazy-low barrier for entry if you want to put something on it. I find it fairly unlikely that a "new" internet would be as open. Corporations in Japan (or America, for that matter) are unlikely to make that mistake again, and given the current environment (again, in both japan AND america) I find it exceedingly unlikely that any new creation on that scale wouldn't be at least partially beholden to corporate interests.

(And yes, I know, our current internet's high-ideal design is steadily eroding before the face of a never-ending series of attempted power grabs by various groups. But at least it's.... taking them longer? At least such attempts are bandaids on an unfriendly design, as opposed to having the whole thing designed to be friendly to corporate control from the get-go?)

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

URLs do not need to be pretty. If they were going to write an URL in japanese, they would be doing so using our characters, before the computer puts its magic in. Everything a jap' is writing on his computer is written using rômaji, the computer automatically converts the syllables to Hiragana, and the writer can choose whether he converts it to a Kanji or not.

When they are writing "", in fact, they typed "konnichiwa" on their keyboards. And then, after that, they can decide to convert it to the Kanji "". So, why should we support japanese characters on the URLs anyway ? they are writing "konnichiwa" before it gets translated to their stupid characters. It's just adding layers of uselessness.

The japanese language is retarded in more than one way and they should scrap this shit for something more modern.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

before it gets translated to their stupid characters

And that is what is wrong at the moment - people like you don't accept that there are other nations, with other languages and alphabets, and with other desires for how the internet develops. For example, changing DNS so that it can cope with other languages would enable other countries to have meaningful names in their URLs. Many of these people cannot read English - nor should they have to. So being able to use their own words, in their own language, using a native keyboard would be a great step forward for them.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

I think that you answered your own comment in at least 2 places.

They don't have unicode support I guess, although that's something that could [I think?] be handled just by supplying a unicode-enabled custom DNS?

And who will develop the code that does this? Who will ensure that it can interface with the rest of the internet? Japan will, for one, because nobody looking at Internet2 appears to be looking at this problem.

Personally, my main concern with a "new" internet is the climate in which it would be born

As you and other posters have pointed out, it is quite possible that Internet2 as it is currently being developed might well include DRM requirements that are wanted by US legislation, or to make wire-tapping or surveillance easier. But the rest of the world might not want that. Japan is looking at the problem from its own viewpoint, not to meet your requirements or mine, but theirs. And if they do build their own internal network it will probably interface with the rest of the internet. That might be an ideal place to stop many viruses from entering the system. Of course, we can say that it would be impossible, so much data to check etc. Which might be why they are looking at new technology to solve that specific problem.

Redesigning the internet is not the same as doing everything again. Perhaps some parts of it are good just as they are. TCP/IP is working and doesn't need changing. But, there again, perhaps there are improvements that can be made. Maybe the Japanese can implement an improved email system that is spam resistant. Oh yes, lots of people talk about how it could be done, but who is actually doing anything about it? Again, Japan has the opportunity to look at the problem and find solutions. If the US, or Europe, or anywhere else for that matter doesn't want to use their solution that's OK. Internally, they can still use it providing that can manage the interface to the rest of the internet. That might be one of the outcomes of the research. How about looking at the technology to maximize the use of the existing bandwidth so that we can have internet TV without the internet grinding to a halt? Or finding new ways of caching data in numerous locations so that each web page does not require so much data to come from a single source to update itself? Perhaps a P2P system so that the load is shared. All these problems could be solved without having to change the underlying structure but it still requires research to find the answers.

My previous post was not intended as being anti-US, but the first series of comments did nothing but criticise Japans efforts. "A duplication of effort", "Unneeded", "Its not broken". But from another country's viewpoint it might well be possible to improve it, and current studies in the US do not seem to be looking at the problem from a foreign viewpoint. And if its going to change and require, eventually, new technology and hardware, then Japan would like to be in at the ground floor rather than having to play catch-up with US companies.

The article does not suggest that everything has to change, but changes are necessary if the internet is to be as useful in 50 years hence as it is today. That is what I understand the Japanese initiative to be about.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Echnin]

Isn't this what IDN is, though? I'd link to Yahoo China (Yahu Zhongguo), but Slashdot won't accept the URL... If I type it into the address bar, though, it works. See this screenshot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chinese-domain- name.png

What's the problem?

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

The 'http://' and '.cn' are not Chinese characters - they are ASCII. I'm not sure how a DNS server in, say, Iceland would cope with receiving URLs written purely in Chinese, Russian, Korean and Arabic. The easy answer is that the current specification requires 'http://' and '.cn' to be written in ASCII. But to many around the world, those characters are as meaningless to them as the Chinese characters are to me. That is why there is still room for the system to be improved so that any language can be used without recourse to ASCII. Doesn't the fact that Slashdot won't even accept the URL underline this point?

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

>But... am I missing something?"

yes

>What do you mean "the fact that the internet cannot cope with anything other than ascii"?

The fact that you can't see it explains why you are unlikely to solve it. I can see the issues because I'm a french network engineer, and believe me, we french have it incredibly easy compared to the japanese (or anyone whose alphabet is not ridiculously close to ascii).

>The internet is just a protocol for routing information from point A to point B.

A very good summary.

>That information is stored in bytes. By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is anything language-specific about those bytes.

Also correct. Congratulations for a clear and concise exposition.

He IS talking about the internet. The protocols which are all ascii. The protocols which do not allow people with accents or quotes in their names to use their correct name as a part of their email. The protocols which make companies with accent in their names to use a distorted version of their name in their url. I could provide plenty of examples.

BTW, you mention unicode DNS as if it's a solution around the corner. The W3C has been thinking about it since before 2000, but by that time software patents were legal in the US and it boggued the RFC down. Short version: it's not gonna happen.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[HaMMeReD3]

your first line shows pure ignorance. If the internet can only deal with the "ascii" character set, I guess you've never heard of any of the other character sets out there, some of the more common ones are ISO-8859-1 and utf-8 and utf-16 (which is multibyte and can support pretty much all characters in all known languages). The internet doesn't transfer ascii, ascii is a encoding method, the internet transfers packets of digital information, with thousands of 1's and 0's. in each. There is no possible limitation to ascii only, except via dns. The reason unicode hasn't been adopted for dns is that it could be a security risk, there can potentially be several characters in the unicode character set that look very similar, it would make it very easy for spoofers to create extremely accurate looking urls in unicode. Until we have responsible people managing the DNS system, something like this will only lead to trouble.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

No, I think that you have missed my point. It can be redesigned to take into account all of the other encoding systems, safely and with no additional security risks. The risks are inherent with the existing system. There is no logical reason why a combination of Cyrillic characters or Chinese characters could not be interpreted as 'http' in addition to the western characters that are in use today. The characters 'http' mean nothing in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic or a host of other languages. Similarly, the limitation in DNS can also be overcome by redesign. That is exactly what the Japanese can 'redesign' when they look at the next internet. If you look at the example that was quoted as showing that Chinese characters can already be used you will note that the URL begins with http and ends with cn. It needn't, its just that currently that is how it works. The next internet need not have such a limitation. Why should any nation have to use characters that do not exist in its own alphabet? Would we in the West be pleased if we had to type some combination of Arabic at the start of each URL? Spoofing is a problem - why can't some effort be spent trying to find an effective and lasting solution as part of a redesign? And the language issues is only one problem that could be addressed. What about load sharing, security, SPAM elimination, etc, etc?

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

No!!

Wrong
Ever see a URL constructed of anything but US ASCII characters ?
Don't you think Foreign countries would create URL's in their own languages if they could ?
Ever see any ?
why not?
ASCII ONLY!

Your contused about where encoding and decoding takes place,
Try the RFC's that document the internet
before you engage keyboard put brains in gear first!!

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS SMTP SNMP FTP TFTP HTTP (not html) IRC etc....

  you're right, there's no need for anything but ascii.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[HaMMeReD3]

I think you missed my point.

As an example in english, there is an i character, then in cyrillic there is also an i, one might be character 105, the other might be character 2012. (those #'s are pulled out of my ass, but it is a fact there are duplicate characters in unicode)

This means there could be two www.microsoft.com's that have unique strings and identifiers, but look 100% the same. That would make it exceptionally hard to find spoofed websites, since you would need to inspect the unicode of the domain to insure that the site is truly the site you think it is. The problem with spoofing dns is irresponsible people controlling the tld's. If there were a stricter set of laws and regulations on the internet and a way to actually disable spoofed dns's globally then yeah, maybe we could have full unicode support.

There have also been tests done on multilingual domains, and some dns's support limited non-english extended character sets in their domain systems. But yes, the tld is always in english right now, and it will likely remain that way for some time.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "http://" is not part of the domain name. There is no reason a Chinese web browser can't use Chinese characters to represent the protocol.
Anyways, to most people, even in the US, those characters still don't mean anything.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

Yes, but how would an American or European browser cope with the same characters? Why not spend some time developing a system that would cope? Just because you or I cannot understand a particular character why shouldn't our software cope with it? Now extend the problem to DNS servers or email addresses and I think that there is still a lot of improvement that can be made over the current system.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[janrinok]

But that is why the Japanese and others should begin now to look at ways of solving such problems as part of their study into Internet 2. The fact that neither you nor I have an immediate answer to it does not mean that the problem cannot be solved with some research and a new specification.

Re:Yes, but Ask Slashdot: how much will it cost?

[HaMMeReD3]

The problem can be solved easily, just do not allow duplicate characters and have duplicate characters default back to the lowest one, that way the different strings after filtering would come out identical, and that domain is not allowed to be sold. Also, limiting each domain to a subset of utf-16 limited to the language it's meant to be in. If no multi-language domains less chance for the abuses. I'm not saying that it's an unsolvable problem, or even a difficult problem to solve, both solutions could be done O(N), so it's not like some huge computing problem. Maybe it's the fact that it took 20 years for the internet to get the way it is today, and it'll take another 20 years to upgrade it. Maybe wait for ipv6 and see what that brings, but nobody is going to add muti-language domains on the current DNS system. If it works, don't fix it. It's a global network, and new standards need to be implemented top to bottom to really improve the internet significantly.

hmm

[BuR4N]

In normal cases when you see news like this I would be tempted to say that this is something that will never materalize, but Japan have a trackrecord of going their own way with for example mobilephone networks. WIll be interesting to watch if they getting anywhere with this.

Re:hmm

[dsginter]

Did anyone else picture an ethernet cable jammed into a can of Folgers when they read th title?

We've secretly replaced Yoshi's 100Mbit internet connection with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if he notices!

Re:hmm

[CastrTroy]

However, with cellphone networks, it's easy to have your own little internal network for your country, and then switch to something else to communicate with the rest of the world. However, the Internet is more global, and if everybody isn't using the same technologies (http, tcp/ip, smtp, etc) to communicate, then things get hard to manage. You could have some sort of translation utility to communicate between Japan and the outside world, but I don't think it could work very well for things that require end-to-end encryption like ssl and https.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, at last an answer that really understands what the Japanese want to do :) I though exactly the same. They don't want to wait for the rest of the world to make a better Internet, as they didn't wait for the mobile networks to evolve.

For the rest of you, there is a japanese proverb that says: "Don't say it's imposible, say it has never been done before".

That's good and all, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

can we get our p0rn any faster/easier?

Re:That's good and all, but...

[iamdrscience]

Yes, but unfortunately, because it's Japanese, all genitalia will be censored with mosaic pixelations. :(

Re:That's good and all, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not the genitalia, just the pubic hair (and that can be shaved).

Re:That's good and all, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no, it is legal to show pubic hair in Japanese porn as well. It was once illegal to show uncensored genitalia with or without hair, but no longer, the only reason it is still often censored in Japanese porn is out of custom. Similarly, the reason some people believe that pubic hair is still required to be censored is that for some reason it is seen to be more acceptable by custom to show uncensored genitals when they are hairless.

Re:That's good and all, but...

[amoeba47]

Actually, it was the USA after WWII that forced Japan to implement censorship in their pornography.
Good old Christian values and all that.
And now, some time on, America has given up on that while Japan has stuck with the old laws from the 1940's.
As far as I'm aware, actual genitals must still be censored in the media in Japan.

Japanese porn!

[WPIDalamar]

I guess the next wave of the internet will be based around much freakier porn than today's internet.

Re:Japanese porn!

[pakar]

RJ45 plugs forcing their way into a USB port? :)

Re:Japanese porn!

[elrous0]

With fully automated pixelation of pubic hair!

Cluster?

[thatskinnyguy]

Wasn't there already a story on the next generation "series of tubes" a few weeks ago? It's supposedly supposed to be run on thousands of distributed networks and run on fiber and weld and create life and bring world peace.

Who's gonna pay for that?

[BibelBiber]

The thing i snobody wants to pay for it. Compare this to the AOL and CompuServe networks that were available for a long time. Competing with the free internet. They don't exist anymore. Just because anybody who owns it can put restrictions on you. It's not gonna work.

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[Lumpy]

You are completely ignoring what everyone is thinking.

how much DRM are they gonna shovel onto this thing? The current Internet setup is near perfect because of it's flaws. It is why it took off like a bat out of hell. "fix it" like these researchers and corperations want it and it will be Cable TV. Bland and icky.

They want to shove so much DRM into the internet as well as have all your packets signed by your information, etc...

I have a suggestion for the researchers, give up now, it will be a failure. good god look at how long ipV6 has been around and it is still being ignored. I think I read my 100th article about how we are running out of IP addresses that was worded identically to the one I read in 1999.

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[saintm]

Well, if Ian Snobody wants to pay for it, let him.

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[BibelBiber]

ignoring? This is what I was saying by writing "restrictions" (the "R" in DRM).

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[WGFELyL5]

The current Internet setup is near perfect because of it's flaws. *cough*
There may be some who would disagree.

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[Lumpy]

you are right, all of those people and organizations what to inhibit and restrict free flow of information.

There are LOTS of people and companies that disagree with me. but for a medium of sending information freely it is 100% perfect BECAUSE OF IT"S FLAWS.

If you want restrictions and control, then it is not and that is where you are 100% correct.

Re:Who's gonna pay for that?

[WGFELyL5]

for a medium of sending information freely it is 100% perfect BECAUSE OF IT"S FLAWS. Agreed.
How about as a medium for receiving information?

In any case, we disagree over the value one should ascribe to free flow of information.

The "free flow of information" as an abstract virtue ceases to be useful when spammers freely bombard inboxes, causing people to hide their email addresses, and otherwise inhibiting free communication of ideas.

New Japanese internet

[iwankalot]

I bet this is going to be the same as the old one, except that all the addresses will comply to the following syntax: pika.youraddresshere.chu

Re:New Japanese internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll do what the Yanks did and make their own domains the default. TLDs like .gov and .mil and .edu will point to the Japanese parliament and Mecha Central Command and School Girl Uniform University, while everyone else will have to tape together their own knock-offs for the same results.

At least it will stop the morons who argue the US can and should do whatever it wants with the Internet, regardless of the global implications, because they paid for something that bore a slight resemblance to it 40 years ago.

All That Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns. Oh, come on! Let's just cut to the chase and talk about the only statistic that matters--how many metric petatons of porn does it have?

I remember the last time

[badfish99]

I remember the last time the Japanese announced that they were going to change the whole face of computing, with this project. After a few years, it was going to be the only hardware/operating system/networking combination that anyone would ever use. I wonder how they're getting on?

Re:I remember the last time

[Goaway]

As of 2003, the TRON system (or more specifically the ITRON derivative) is one of the world's most used operating systems, being present in millions of electronic devices.

Re:I remember the last time

[dctoastman]

[citation needed]

Re:I remember the last time

[iamdrscience]

TRON has been a ridiculous success being one of, if not the most popular embedded operating systems in the world, meaning that it probably has more devices running it than the number of PCs running Windows/MacOS/Linux/etc. combined. Sure, I think it would be difficult to argue that it has changed "the whole face of computing", but really, is that anything to scoff at? I mean, how many technologies are there that have?

Re:I remember the last time

[TheRaven64]

Wow. I assumed you were going to link to this. TRON is spectacularly bad as an example of something that failed.

Re:I remember the last time

[iamdrscience]

[citation needed]

Sure thing: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/31855.html

"The ITRON specification is a standard real-time OS kernel that can be tailored to any embedded system. ITRON already has been ported to a wide range of microprocessor architectures and has quickly become Japan's de facto standard for embedded systems. Today, the specification is used in an estimated 3 billion microprocessors."

So the Wikipedia article is wrong, as of 2003 TRON was used in billions of devices, not millions.

Re:I remember the last time

[dctoastman]

Ah, so it is only ubiquitous in Japan. And that is hardly impressive considering that those little handheld poker and blackjack games are considered embedded devices.

Re:I remember the last time

[Goaway]

Being used in three billion devices in a single country is less impressive to you than being used in three billion devices world-wide?

PS: How many of your electronic devices are made in Japan, again?

Re:I remember the last time

[dctoastman]

Technically, close to none. ;)

But, when we consider all of the embedded electronics that get tossed around today (look in a Toys R Us for example), this number quickly becomes irrelevant.

Now, what percentage of embedded devices use this system.

Re:I remember the last time

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh TRON? It was the American Government which killed it. They claimed that the Japanese government was being "uncompetitive" by backing TRON, and threatened to slap huge tariffs on Japanese imports. That's what happened to it.

Meanwhile back in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cared enough to do anything about net neutrality and congress didn't do anything to upset their cable overloards. Which left americans paying USD $100 for a 1 mb connection (the cable networks were overloaded by oversubscription) and was censored when a video played criticism about a politician.

Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[circletimessquare]

Once upon a time, France had complete domination of network information communication thingies.

France probably laughed too, a big gutteral Gaulic laugh: "Silly Americains, think you can replace the Minitel? I fart in your general direction!"

Re:Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[igb]

You're taking the wrong lesson from Minitel. The real lesson is that pan-national will always triumph over local. See how far OSI got, even in the countries that mandated it (such as, of course, Japan).

ian

Re:Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[Guerilla* Napalm]

They couldn't help it - they just had to surrender.

Re:Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with that theory is that the internet predates minitel, so it is impossible for minitel to have had a "complete monopoly".
There were also commercial services such as Compuserve that date to the 60s, and had a huge market presence by the 80's. In the 80's, Compuserve was one of the largest information services in the world, so in no way can minitel be claimed to have had a "complete monopoly".

Re:Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[nsebban]

You have to know that more than 25 years later, the Minitel is still alive, and still generating some very nice cash to the (formerly public) French ISP who launched it back then. And guess what : most of the cash comes from porn.

Get lost, you Japanese people ! Surrender to the French Communications Technology !

Re:Sure, you all laugh at the Japanese

[oliderid]

Minitel was a marvel at that time. Its biggest flauw : a monopoly.

France Telecom was in charge of it. They kept as much as 70% (or more) of any revenue you could possibly make out of it.

Replace it with what?

[jollyreaper]

Whatever they replace it with has got to be a) self-aware b) housed in a really cool-looking robotic body c) flail phallic, cybernetic tentacles on command and d) be preoccupied with conquering neighboring nations and cowering schoolgirls. I predict it will be called EcchiNet. Nuclear war and terminator endoskeletons to come later.

Re:Replace it with what?

[cabalismo]

Nah, it will be called the wired and schoolgirls will disappear into it as the lines between reality and cyberspace are blurred....

Re:Replace it with what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or self-aware and young and female ... lonely and melancholy. For periods of time it just goes quiet and then erratic. Everyone wonders when it will shut itself off.

And it will wear a short school uniform.

Re:Replace it with what?

[LS]

I'm a foreigner in Asia, living amongst several Japanese, and your comment is simply embarrassing. If an American research project was discussed, my Japanese friends wouldn't immediately say that it had to be a) completely unaware b) house in a body of fat rolls c) spank its phallus on command and d) be pre-occupied with spying on neighbors and cowering schoolgirls, predicting it would be called ParentsBasementNet. War in the middle east and automated flying drones to come later.

LS

Re:Replace it with what?

[jollyreaper]

I'm a foreigner in Asia, living amongst several Japanese, and your comment is simply embarrassing. If an American research project was discussed, my Japanese friends wouldn't immediately say that it had to be a) completely unaware b) house in a body of fat rolls c) spank its phallus on command and d) be pre-occupied with spying on neighbors and cowering schoolgirls, predicting it would be called ParentsBasementNet. War in the middle east and automated flying drones to come later. That's because you and your friends are suffering from a lack of imagination. Allow me to show you how that insult should be done: if America were to develop EcchiNet, it would a) Be called JesusFreedomNet, b) the development contract would be given to Haliburton, c) development would be outsourced to India, d) a system ostensibly about stopping terrorists would be actually be used against Democrats and domestic dissidents, e) and the masses wouldn't give a shit so long as they're kept in football and beer.

There you go.

It would be very easy for them to do.

[khasim]

First - wire their own country for it.

Second - provide gateways and translations from the old Internet to their new version.

Third - provide the specs in an Open standard so anyone else can also implement it.

Fourth - provide the specs for tunneling their new Internet through the old one until the new Internets are connected to each other.

At the very worst they end up with their improved version for their own people. (If it really is improved.)

Re:It would be very easy for them to do.

[MBGMorden]

Fifth - Profit!

Re:It would be very easy for them to do.

[janrinok]

First - wire their own country for it.

Not if they stick with the Internet Protocol (IP). The data will move through the existing network. But it might still not be compatible with any external network. How about if they implement the 'Son of SMTP' to make it automatically secure and SPAM resistant? That would be a worthwhile improvement but it would need some form of gateway/interface to transfer email between Japan and a network that didn't implement it.

Japanese version?

[Yvan256]

The american internet is made of a series of tubes, right? Well, then we can guess that the Japanese version will be a series of tentacles.

Re:Japanese version?

[AccUser]

we can guess that the Japanese version will be a series of tentacles

Don't you mean noodles?

Re:Japanese version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't watch nearly enough hentai, my friend.

Misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at most of the really great technologies on which infrastructure is built -- they were dreamed up to solve problem not to build out as a commercial enterprise. Grandious plans to change the world with an estimated delivery date smack of marketing.

silly

[rgaginol]

Seriously... it's like Beta coming to the party with VHS, only a few decades too late instead of a few years.

Also, what's wrong with gradual improvement? For the most part, the Internet works doesn't it? Why not just fix the loose nuts. I'll agree though that some kind of pay-per-email system would be better then the 100% free system we've got now... though black listing bad ISP's and webmail accounts is getting better, but it is still not perfect.

Re:silly

[MLease]

Seriously... it's like Beta coming to the party with VHS, only a few decades too late instead of a few years.

Actually Beta came first. The short story is, VHS won because of better marketing and pricing. The longer story is here.

-Mike

Re:silly

[SeePage87]

The problem with gradual improvement is that there is frequently an upper bound on functionality. Think typewriters: There was gradual improvement for decades, and although we succeeded in producing very good typewriters, a new groundwork was needed before we had the word processing power we do today. Oh the days when "cut-and-paste" meant cut and paste.

Costs

[peterpi]

Great. We can ask them how much it's going to cost

2020? So...

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll be seeing it the same year the US is finally out of Iraq...

Lain

[dwater]

Anyone seen serial experiments lain? I think the Japanese are the last people we want inventing any internet....bazaar, to say the least, but strangely gripping, in a cultish kind of way.

Good music though.

Re:Lain

[FiloEleven]

But, surely it's better than the cathedral!

Nice response time!

[Jugalator]

Damn, that response time was faster than a freaked out web browser company resolving a security hole!

Just days after we heard Internet TV would crash it they're working on a fix. And they're working on an Internet, not just a security hole. :-o

A new internet with DRM and government spying.....

[ip_freely_2000]

I don't even trust this old and busted internet. The new internet would be nothing but pandering to government 'security' concerns and big business DRM demands.

Count me out.

This article says nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, nothing in the article indicates that they have anything concrete. They're only ENVISIONING some obscure technology to 'replace' the 'Net. C'mon, now - 'begin research and development'? That sounds like a student beginning to think about doing their homework.

Secondly, with all due respect, the Japanese don't really invent jack shit. They enhance existing technology to a certain extent, and sometimes admirably so, but the world has yet to really see something solid that comes straight out of Japan that hasn't been invented elsewhere.

This includes so-called 'anime'. That big-eyed shit came from Disney.

Simple question(s)

[Conspire]

1. Will it be backwards compatible with the existing internet?
------------- (If "no" for #1 above, it must be a Microsoft product!)

2. This kind of claim sounds like a marketing campaign, is this a marketing effort?
------------- (If "yes" for #2 above, it must be a Microsoft product!)

NSF is already doing this

[Danathar]

http://www.nsf.gov/cise/cns/geni/

"With support from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), researchers are working together to design a bold new research platform called GENI, the Global Environment for Network Innovations. As envisioned, GENI will allow researchers throughout the country to build and experiment with completely new and different designs and capabilities that will inform the creation of a 21st Century Internet."

Re:NSF is already doing this

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the way, the current prequel to GENI (PlanetLab) is already innovating on the current structure of the Internet with projects like Coral, CoDeeN, etc.

Internets Protocol 256 bit!

[Anonymous Coward]

IP256 is an absolute anonymizer protocol! ;)

How many internets now?

Not likely to work

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem that all these people who want to replace things like e-mail or the Internet run in to is the whole thing that makes these technologies great is interoperability. The great thing about the Internet is that you hook in to it anywhere and barring your ISP or government having blocks up, you can talk to everything. You can switch ISPs, areas of the world, devices, etc it all doesn't matter. It's not like we didn't have networks before the Internet, what we didn't have was a network that everyone and everything could work on.

So if you are going to replace it, you have to do it with something that works with the Internet. I am not going to sign on to a new network, no matter how good you say your technology is, if I can't access what's already out there. Of course a big part of what people want to do when creating a new standard is to cut off the problems that the old standard had, and thus it becomes incompatible and thus isn't workable.

I mean the problem with a new e-mail system isn't designing one that's resistant to spam. That's easy. The problem is designing one that is resistant to spam but not incompatible with existing, unsecure, e-mail. You aren't going to get people to switch otherwise. It doesn't do me any good to have a spam proof technology if all the people who need to contact me don't also use that.

Same deal with the Internet at large. I don't care how cool your new network is, if it doesn't provide me with access to everything on the Internet, and give everyone on the Internet access to servers I run, then it really isn't very useful to me.

Really, the Internet, for all its flaws, is here to stay for a long time I think. It's not that we couldn't do better, it's that we aren't willing to redo everything from the ground up and switch over. Same shit with plenty of other things. With modern technology, a HVDC power grid might be a better system than what we have. However that's not what we have, and we aren't going to replace what we do have entirely, so we keep adding to the existing system. The Internet is much harder given that you are talking about a network that spans the whole world (and that you actually can convert AC to DC and back).

It's a nice thought that "Hey, let's just tear down all this crap and rebuild it right, based on the better knowledge we have now," but it usually isn't at all practical in reality.

Re:Not likely to work

[DigitalSorceress]

"... a HVDC power grid might be a better system than what we have."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the reason Tesla (AC) beat out Edison (DC) was that AC travels long distances much better and with a lot less loss than DC. I mean, if you're talking superconductors or something super cool like that (pun intended), then maybe, but is that actually practical?

Re:Not likely to work

[vidarh]

I agree with what you say, but for 99% of applications out there, being "compatible with the internet" means being able to address nodes in [insert new system here] that needs to be publicly accessible with ipv4 addresses and talk to them via tcp and udp. Now, the applications running on that new system does not need to know tcp or udp - they just need to know a stream oriented and packet oriented protocol that can be reasonably easily proxied to look like tcp or udp to the world at large. Same goes for a lot of application level protocols. SMTP gateways to/from proprietary mail systems used to be commonplace, and HTTP proxies are easy to write.

You can replace a huge part of what we consider "the internet" with new technology and still interoperate reasonably easy as long as you plan for it.

Assuming that any new network would have more advanced capabilities than the current one, presumably tunneling tcp/ip or running would not be a problem either if people need/want to run older network services.

This is largely true for IP v6 too. The main reason we're not seeing for example ISP's deploy IPv6 in their core infrastructure and hand out IPv6 routers NAT'ing IPv4 clients is that they don't really have a compelling reason to - they still get enough IPv4 addresses and IPv6 doesn't give enough new capabilities to be worth it.

I think making it compelling enough to get people to want to switch really is a far greater challenge.

Re:Not likely to work

[Sycraft-fu]

Well the reason that's the case is voltage. Back in the day, there just wasn't any technology to step DC up to really high voltages. However with AC there's a very simple, efficient technology, the transformer, that can change AC voltage almost as much as you like. These days, we have plenty of devices that can do the same with DC and thus it could be done. There's some big advantages too. For example on really long distance lines, capacitance becomes a problem for AC voltage. DC, it doesn't really matter. Also if you want to share power on an AC system you not only have to run at the same frequency, but the timing of your systems have to be in sync. So even in places like North America, where it's all 60Hz, there are separate systems because they aren't sync'd. DC, no problem, just hook them together, no sync is necessary. Also a reasonable source of wasted energy these days is transformers in the home. Big transformers are pretty efficient but little ones can be 80% or less. Also, the wall wart types are always drawing some power, even if the device they are hooked to is off. Well, if the grid was DC, no problem, you wouldn't need those.

However we aren't going to change over because of the cost. Regardless of the savings, it isn't worth replacing the entire grid, so it just isn't going to happen. HVDC may be used in limited places, but we aren't going to an all HVDC grid, even though it is a better idea given the available technology today.

Re:Not likely to work

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem is that you eliminate any of your nice security bonuses by doing that. You can design a nice, secure network that requires all sorts of authentication and is setup so nodes are uniquely identified and verified and so on. However that isn't going to accomplish anything if you still want to communicate with the Internet since it DOESN'T play by those rules.

As I said, it is similar to e-mail verification deals. Sure, I can design a system that verifies senders and thus keeps spammers out, however nobody will use it because it would require everyone to use it to be effective. Same deal with a new Internet. You either make it not play ball, and be secure so nobody will use it since it isn't compatible, or you make it play ball, in which case it isn't any more secure, and nobody will use it because there's no reason.

Re:Not likely to work

[DigitalSorceress]

Wow, I really appreciate the explanation. I never thought of it in those terms. I guess I learned something today. :)

IP6 implemented by then?

[That_Dan_Guy]

Do you think IP6 will be implemented by then?

And in the case of IPv6

[Sycraft-fu]

That at least is compatible with existing stuff. That is to say you can implement IPv6 on parts of the Internet (like your own internal network) and still talk ot parts that don't use it. I can't conceive a new network that is secure against hacks, viruses, and so on but is still compatible with the old Internet, which has lots of those sorts of things. I mean sure, you can design a network where there's all sorts of controls on it and nodes have to authenticate themselves and so on. You can set it up such that if something misbehaves, it is shut off instantly and globally. Maybe all hosts have identification keys issued by a central authority and they do a key exchange for communication. As such you are guaranteed to know where traffic is coming from, and misbehavers can be shut down and they can't spoof their way through other systems.

Great, but then you can't connect to the normal Internet or that all goes out the window since it doesn't support that. I mean you could try and make something so that it is only required for talking to other hosts on your special net, but then what good does that do? Your net is just as full of problems as the normal Internet, so there's no reason to switch, so nobody does, and so on.

Parent Post should have been the original

[John Jamieson]

I remember all the hype and money to be spent on this "fifth generation computer project" (for that era). With this project, Japan was going to take over the entire computer universe, and the USA was to be left out in the cold.

Problem

[Billosaur]

Can they make it Godzilla-proof?

Re:Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No Godzilla speaks only Japanese
    the Internet only accepts US ASCII so they cant call Godzilla over the internet
  until Both Godzilla and the Internet protocols have something like a Unicode implant it is impossible
to type in his Japanese URI or URL

No fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan has fallen flat on its space in such grandiose undertakings: Witness the infamous 5th generation AI revolution from the 80s, which resulted in little more than dumb industrial robots - well short of their avowed, science-fiction goals.

Sure, 7 layer burrito

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen it. Read it. Still posting AC about it.

On a similar note...

[mazanoid]

Oh great. As if I am that happy with sony's overly complexified television sets which are difficult to service, their over priced ps3 with no neat games, and their vaio line of laptops with non-existant support and proprietary hardware that linux won't work on.

Imagine a next generation internet designed by ....sony.

Why can't japan just go send out a team to air condition hell instead and leave the internet alone?

Yada, yada, yada

[RealProgrammer]

Have you ever lived in East Asia? They had the same problems there as here.

Re:Yada, yada, yada

[MrNaz]

I've lived in numerous places, I've made it my life mission to get to know as much of the full gamut of human existence as possible.

East Asia only has the same problems that we have, because we export our problems, all wrapped up in a nice neat little package called "globalization".

Gore approval?

[negated]

Has anyone checked with Al Gore about replacing the internet he benevolently invented for us?
-S

Replace the Internet

[hackus]

Good Luck with that.

-Hackus

What's in and out?

[ceeam]

I hope they would think about the children and peer connections will be not possible. All we need is a solid corporate content provider to user lines.

Seriously though :( ... why not just switch to IPv6 finally?

Japanese Researchers Aim to Replace the Internet..

[Anonymous Coward]

...with a giant Sushi bar, where conveyer belts carry not only your food, but media. Mostly DVD's of tentacle porn. And Manga. You pay by the hour.

I remember when MicroSoft was going to do this

[peter303]

Originally MicroSoft was going to grow MSN as its "private internet" and conquer the Net with proprietary protocols, much like it did in operating systems, office software, and browsers(afterwards). MicroSoft proposed "extensions" to TC/IP or replacing it altogther and losts of people were upset. The Bill had his famous "Damascus" episode where he turned MicroSoft 180-degrees into embracing the then InterNet.

Better network speed aaaand,

[unity100]

better control of what people sees of course !

theres always this main motive behind 'new internet' crap.

Content-Free Hype from a Bureaucrat? Been done!

[billstewart]

Look, the article's content-free hype from a high-level bureaucrat reported by a non-technical newspaper writer, saying that he's obtaining funding for committees to develop future projects that'll be Really Cool. Nothing to see here, move along....

...

Oh, still here? Presumably the research he's talking about isn't just IPv6, because that's starting way too late, and lots of good work was actually done in Japan. Maybe it's something transport-related or router-related or content-related, which could mean user interfaces or could mean HDTV-ng over IPv6 or better-rendered interactive tentacle animations or whatever. Saying that it'll improve transmission rates while preventing viruses says there isn't really much coherence.

Certainly the Internet itself will have changed a bit by 2020....

new dialogue:

[circletimessquare]

FRENCH GUARD:
You don't frighten us, Japanese Akitas! Go and soak in your sake, sons of a baka otaku. I stick my chop sticks straight up in my rice, so-called Tokugawa, you and all your silly Japanese s-aaaamuraiis. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!
HIMURA KENSHIN:
What a strange person.
TOKUGAWA IEYASU:
Now look here, my good man--
FRENCH GUARD:
I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed after bukkake party floor wiper! I fart in your sapporo! Your mother was a kappa and your father smelt of kimuchi!
HIMURA KENSHIN:
Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
FRENCH GUARD:
No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

Japan already has a much newer internet

[altek]

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/earthquake_se ts_japan_back_to_2147

It's just that an earthquake set them back over a few hundred years.

At least partially politically-inspired

[zullnero]

I'd have to say that at least partially, this might be politically inspired. With the trends towards anti-piracy in the US, I really doubt that people outside the US are thrilled with the notion that the US government can effectively snoop on anything that passes through our networks. By the time Japan can build their own network, the majority of people are probably going to be using data lines for their voice, too...and replacing all of that with one that they can defend from outside spying is probably going to become very enticing to many countries. Unless, of course, the US government wakes the hell up and cuts this fascist crap out. Nationalization of the internet is going to really hurt international free trade.

Re:At least partially politically-inspired

[zullnero]

Or should I add, anti-terrorism paranoia as well.

Don't overlook the word "commercial"

[ucla74]

Something I thought would have received more attention here is the following: "...bringing the technology into commercial use in 2020." (Emphasis added.) To me, this is the cautionary part of the story. And over the past 60 years, the Japanese have proved themselves as adept as Americans or Europeans at earning a buck (or Euro, or 1M Yen).

Why people use the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason the internet is so popular is that people can browse all the PRON for free

my favorite food

[umeboshi]

And a user name that usually isn't taken by others. Interesting that I am umeboshi3 at gmail and was umeboshi2 at yahoo.
You happen to be one of the only people I have come across who actually took the time to learn its meaning (or you are already fluent in Japanese). You brought a smile to my face today! That's a good gift to give somebody on a Monday.
For some odd reason, I used to get a whole lot of Japanese spam in my mailbox. ;)

Re:my favorite food

[treeves]

Not fluent in Japanese, but I know some, and your username happened to be one of the words that a colleague taught me while out to dinner in Japan. I don't remember why - maybe there was something on the menu?
She showed me the kanji for it by writing it on the paper wrapper that the chopsticks come in, something that happens a lot when I dine with Japanese and Chinese people, for whatever reason.
Ki o tsukete!

Re:Fuck Ubuntu. I give up.

[morgan_greywolf]

Sheesh. If you want help, e-mail me. I've had no problem getting any Linksys wifi cards working on Ubuntu 7.04, although I haven't tried the 'N' cards yet.

You should be able to figure out how to send me mail.

Really...something new?

[Anonymous Coward]

The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns.

As we like to call it, Linux (w/ an internet connection)...

The basic error is...

[joh]

...that quite a few people don't get the fact that the very same things that make the Internet a pest are the things that make it what it is. The Internet is a relict, based on very simple, public protocols that allow almost everything, good and bad. The good old Internet assumes almost nothing and allows nearly everything. Replace it with something that assumes a lot and allows only very limited things and you get TV with DRM. What is exactly what some people want it to be, but *we* don't want that, do we?

There's nothing wrong with the Internet. There's something wrong with some governments, corporations and, generally, systems, but changing the Internet won't change a bit of *that*.

When someone has new protocols, business models or whatever, fine. Show them, use them, and when they're good, they'll thrive. If not, not.

JISX

[Lord of the Fries]

I'm having a hard time getting excited about a new internet designed by the same people that brought us the JISX encoding nightmare.

but...

[RockoTDF]

...is it compatible with web 1.0?

A Note to Our Nihon Buddies: [was] "blather ..."

[Anonymous Coward]

... Dosen't matter!

The 5th Gen Computer Project was a bust!

The Earth Similator, itn't!

Nihonjin on the street reaction.

Nihonjin, "Ah! ... Are! ... NANDA!" I.e. the goberment (intentionally misspelled) royally screwed up the pinsions plans, and now Abe and fellow like-minded (i.e. born) goons are tring their hands at ... poker?

Toodles! :) )

Regrow the Monopoly

[gevantry]

The Japanese telecommunications industry has been unhappy with the internet since it had to open it to general public access in 1995 or face serious economic reprisals from its trading partners. Prior to 1995, NTT was busy trying to construct a monopoly that would lock international ISPs out of Japan and allow the Japanese Telcom giant (still a de facto monopoly) to charge enormous user fees. Creating an alternative that they completely own would allow the government and NTT to once again assert control over the system and claim the monetary riches they feel they lost when they had to throw open the internet to genuine domestic competition from local and international providers.

But how long until we can say

[rolando2424]

MEGAMAN! JACK IN!

2chan 2

[^_^x]

Does this mean there will be an uber version of 2chan? (Pretty much synonymous with Internet in Japan...)

I predict it'll be like DoCoMo - ridiculously high speed and advanced, and pretty much only supported in Japan until eons later when it trickles out to the rest of us. Oh well, no RIAA, just lax Japanese censorship guidelines!

"I for one welcome our futuristic overlords."

The medium is NOT the message!

[bandmassa]

It doesn't matter if its carried on wet string, copper pair cable or wireless broadband. It doesn't matter if it uses Morse Code, ASCII Code, TCP/IP or IP2. What makes the Internet is that it is an INTERnational NETwork, not the medium or protocol that carries it. Sheesh, would somebody please show Mr Mcluan the bloody door? Replace the internet, PHOOEY!