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

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?

[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.