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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."
Do we have enough porn for an entirely new Internet?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Web 2.0 isn't good enough, let's have OSI 2.0! Love them X.400 email addresses, wot?
Other challenges, indeed. Such as surveillance, "trusted" computing, IP "protection", etc.
The new internet will be locked down much tighter, I am certain.
They need to ditch this open, uncontrollable Internet for something the governments have more control over.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For better or worse, I think that we're stuck with what we've got. We'd really be better off improving the Internet we have (DNSSEC, end-to-end encryption on all protocols by default, PKI for the masses) than redesigning it from the ground up.
Even if they had 12 billion dollars, it wouldn't scratch the surface of the cost of recreating the Internet.
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.
This new version of the wheel offers an anti-bubblegum coating, side curtain airbags to protect it from damage during a crash, and laser-etched tread for maximum efficiency. Seriously, why use tires when you can have a shiny new set Wheels 2.0?
Typical. I've only just finished printing out the current Internet.
And all were abysmal, expensive failures. The marketplace can be extremely conservative at times.
Since the Internet is really just a collection of smaller privately-owned networks connected on common backbones, is it even possible to 'replace' it? I'm not sure what the goal is here. Sounds like herding cats to me.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
... control, as in censorship, and target marketing. Where you can have a web site but nobody can see it .... now that's security....
So, a system where being on the internet is a right, but being seen on the internet is a privilege you have to pay for.
Invest in Tubes Industry.
They will need a lot of those.
Subject is from The Simpsons, in case you didn't know.
Interesting news. Big issues, though: compatibility with the old internet will have to be maintained during a change-over time period... compatibility with old infrastructure must be maintained (running old IP, IPv6, and whatever else they develop for the "New" Internet on the same lines will be a challenge)... and government regulation and intervention should be minimal, regardless how much $$$ they pump in.
If they pull this off, they'll have really accomplished something worthwhile. Otherwise, it's just vaporware and an interesting experiment in re-designing the wheel.
The internet we use today is totally different from 1969 (or 1981, or 1991). The internet evolves Darwin style already. Who uses DecNET or Banyan Vines? How about uunet, gated, gopher, or telnet?
It's gone, baby, gone.
Hell - we're having enough trouble replacing a simply-ass DNS server... who can imagine a peaceful replacement of entire the Internet (other than power-hungry numbnuts?)
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
How about cutting wellfare in half and have ten times the money. Exactly how many poor people do we really need anyway?
If it's a completely redesigned internet, will it have IPv6?
A new architecture means there are thousands of things to be worked out and fixed before it can get to the same level as the current implementation. Think a decade or two, with significant funding (think billions).
Systems that evolved are often not ideal or perfect, but they do work. Iterative evolution is important, because sometimes it's just not feasible to design something.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Alright, you guys make this whole "new internet" thing, and we're you're done we'll just all switch to it all at the same time OK? We just need to schedule a date for when to switch to that new Internet thing. We should do it during a quiet time of the year, the month of December sounds appropriate, and I reckon it should take you guys quite a few years..
How does December 21st, 2012 sound? I have nothing in my schedule for *that* day... Too apocalyptic maybe?
You just got troll'd!
I'm just surprised that apparently all it takes is $12 million to do it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Oscar Goldman:
The Internet, A network barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic internet. GENI will be that internet. Better than it was before. Better, stronger, harder, deeper, faster.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I'm not saying, by any means, that our present internet is perfect, it isn't, but I am inclined to view any attempt to rebuild it from scratch with grave suspicion. We got lucky the first time, since the academics managed to build something worthwile before the regulators, incumbents, and other vultures took notice. That will not be the case this time. All too often, when somebody says that the internet is broken, they are talking about minor little details like its peer-to-peer structure, relative openness, and concentration of intelligence at the edges of the network, not performance of TCP-IP over high-latency connections or similar.
2007 US Military spending: $549.2 Billion. Domestic spending: $457.9 Billion. Welfare is a small fraction of domestic spending, so it cannot be 10x defense spending.
That's what they will have to do if they want at least a chance at surviving - provide a public gateway.
And the libertarian geekdom is actually not interested in this project to survive, because if it does, the governments will eventually push us there, where they will have all those things like internet user IDs and other funny stuff that the only the privacy concerned have bad dreams about today...
when you begin to address privacy and security at the protocol and architecture level, you also begin to enable governmental control
one of the biggest philosophical issues that people don't seem to understand is that there is no such thing as centralized privacy, or government-enforced privacy. you constantly see stories on slashdot bemoaning government's inability to protect your privacy. its completely absurd. the only one who can protect your privacy is you
it is an utter oxymoronic, paradoxical way of thinking to believe government policies and privacy can coexist in the same thought process. people constantly inveigh the government to do more about privacy. no. you don't want to involve the government in privacy, in any way. if you want privacy and security, YOU need to take steps to make that work, on your own. to involve a large controlling entity to do that... what? can we say not getting the concept?
any system built to ensure "privacy" is essentially a command and control system... that can snoop on anything it wants
the same with security
it is GOOD the internet as it is has no internal safeguards for privacy and security. it means it is controlled by no one. get the point?
the riaa and beijing should fund this GENI project
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think their first priority should be rebuilding the email protocols. We are all wasting too much time, money and bandwidth dealing with spam.
TFA basically boils down to this single statement: "We've got money and some shiny toys to play with, wheee!!!!". It doesn't say anything about what their long-term intentions are specifically. I for one reserve judgement on the issue until I see something more concrete -- with the exception that I agree that nothing of any real substance will come of this for at least a decade.
And in this case, there are tons of temporary fixes all over the Internets.
There was an old joke in the Soviet Union that there were only four channels on television. The first three were all news and the forth was a KGB agent waving his finger and saying, "No, no, no! Change the channel back!"
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Eh? Spending on welfare (TANF) is a very small part of the budget, $16.5 billion. At a population of 301 million, that's $54.80/year/person, fifteen cents a day per person. The base defense budget - not including war funding - is more than $481 billion, $1598/person/year, $4.38 per day per person. U.S. military spending makes up the bulk of world military spending. We could cut ours in half and still enormously outspend all potential adversaries.
Conservative politicians like to conflate "entitlements" all together, which includes not just welfare but medical spending (prices for which are driven up by the for-profit model and by drug patents, both of which are made possible by government action), veterans affairs and military retirement payments (which should be properly counted under defense), and Social Security spending.
The NSF's budget is $6.065 billion, $20.15/year/person, about five and a half cents a day per person.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
True. The hard part is staying on that tiny horse.
...all those series of tubes? I wonder what they're gonna use instead?
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!
Your lack of paranoia disturbs me..
Government is all about power, and seeking more power. Power is zero sum, if you get more power I loose some. (hehe rhymes)
Business is all about money, which fortunately is not zero sum since the government can print more.
If there is a to be a new internet and Governemtn and Business are to design it, there will be a taking of power and profit for them.
No paranoia.. just proven agenda.
You need to check those numbers. I know the budget is not necessarily the exact same as what the president asked for, but for 2008 Bush requested $324 billion for welfare, plus $608 billion for social security, $386 billion for medicare, and $209 billion for medicaid. Domestic spending far outpaces the military, though it is clearly not 10x.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget%2C_2008
People will flock to it in droves, buy HD routers with HD cables and HD service plans.
If it only takes $12mil to build an entire new internet why the hell are the ISPs still bitching and moaning and not upgrading anything?
"I'd call Social Security and Medicaid welfare..."
And you would be mistaken in doing so. Call anything you like welfare, but that doesn't make it so.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
The headline this was posted with is weapons-grade stupid. Nowhere in the GENI plans (which have been being formulated by academics over the last several years) is there any indication that GENI should "replace" the current Internet. There are a few people involved in GENI who think that the Internet of the future might look a bit like GENI in some respects, but a much more likely outcome is that future Internet innovations will emerge from experiments carried out with GENI. GENI will be a very sophisticated research platform that allows researchers to carve up the research network into reasonably isolated slices via virtualization so that experiments into new protocols, switch architectures, etc. can be run on a full-speed network in parallel with one another without interfering. Access to GENI, much like Internet2, will essentially be restricted to researchers running experiments and essentially limited to interconnects between major research universities.
Nowhere is there any suggestion that GENI will or should:
* replace the existing internet
* develop protocols to remove anonymity from the internet
* give control of the internet to any particular government
It's a research platform for academics who think that the field of networking could benefit from large-scale research projects that are more ambitious and forward-looking than the sort of thing that can be reasonably carried out by the R&D departments of large tech corporations. Full stop. There is a ton of information available about the project from their websites, and in papers that have been published over the last several years.
And you would be mistaken in doing so. Call anything you like welfare, but that doesn't make it so. When I pay in alot in every month and can plan on getting very little out at the other end, because they are giving it all away to someone else, I'd call that welfare.