GENI To Replace Internet, Gets $12M Funding

Postglobalism writes "A massive project to redesign and rebuild the Internet from scratch is inching along with $12 million in government funding and donations of network capacity by two major research organizations. Many researchers want to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, saying a 'clean-slate' approach is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet's birth in 1969."

Comments

Won't ever happen

[dlgeek]

First off, once you read past the sensationalist headlines, the article just says that they are establishing a very high capacity research network to study new protocols, not trying to create a parallel infrastructure. However, that being said, trying to redesign the Internet's protocols from scratch isn't necessarily a bad idea, the current model is definitely showing its age. For example, TCP has a lot of issues on links with large bandwidth-delay products, resulting in lots of extensions and forks to support these links.

The real problem is getting a critical mass to switch. Just look at the state of IPv6 support in home networking gear and the lack of implementation all over the web. My guess is that this will lead to some new standards that will maybe be used by people doing experiments with tons of data and nobody else. Don't expect to see this work coming to a router near you.

Re:Won't ever happen

[dlgeek]

The grant is from the NSF, not the DoD which implies it is more scientific in nature.

However, even if it was from the DoD or NSA, the government has a strong interest in improving US users' security, so as to protect US companies from foreign espionage. Look at the NSA's contribution to various crypto algorithms (agreed upon by the security community as positive) or to SELinux.