Who Will Fix the Internet? No One, Apparently

blackbearnh writes "It seems like everyone focuses on the latest and greatest killer Internet applications, but the underlying infrastructure that all of them run on is showing its age. That's the claim made by a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor. IPv4 is relatively ancient, and even stalled improvements like IPv6 aren't significant enough to matter, according to some researchers. With no one 'in charge' of the Internet, it's almost impossible to get any sweeping technical improvements made, especially since there's no financial incentive on the part of the ISPs and telecoms to invest in basic infrastructure. CalTech Professor John Doyle puts it this way: 'To the extent I've been working in this field for the last 10 years, I've been mostly working on band-aids. I'm really trying to get out of that business and try to help the people, the few people, who are really trying to think more fundamentally about what needs to be done.'"

Comments

The Whole Point if the Internet...

[rshol]

...is it s diffuse and decentralized nature, a network of networks, not a single network. An organization or individual with the power to "fix" the internet would have the power to destroy it or lock it down.

Re:The Whole Point if the Internet...

[javilon]

Mod parent up. The only reason the Internet is not augmented TV by now is that nobody had the ability to "fix" it.

Ridiculous

[frankxcid]

Another ridiculous article. Supply will always follow demand. WHo will fix the internet? It doesn't matter, it will always be there as long as there is a demand.

Re:Ridiculous

[StreetStealth]

It is unfortunate, though, that even in business, the incentive of profit is outweighed by the incentive of short-term profit.

Upgrading infrastructure is a big investment over the long term, which makes sense to you and me, but to your average MBA, the question is "what's the ROI for the next two quarters?" and of course, the short-term ROI on a long-term investment is always poor.

So, the upgrades aren't made, and everyone goes on pretending nothing's going to go wrong (if it's not going to go wrong this quarter, there's no danger!) and nothing happens until the problem has been put off for so long that suddenly, it's right around the corner and it's obvious that catastrophe is the only possible result from continuing to ignore it. Then, even more money than would have gone into a phased upgrade goes into an emergency upgrade, patching things left and right, dealing with outages, and generally making a mess of things.

It's the way everything works, though, really -- matters of climate change, unsustainable financial practices -- so long as doomsday isn't tomorrow, no one cares.

Not Necessarily a bad thing...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The existing internet certainly has its rough edges, and they are not insignificant; but an alarming number of proposed "internet fixes" and "new improved internet" proposals seem to be more about serving the interests of incumbents(largely in the areas of surveillance and copyright enforcement) than about making the internet work better.

Many of the internet's virtues are a result of the fact that it grew up before anybody outside of a narrow circle knew that it was going to be significant, so its development was relatively uncrippled. We aren't going to have that opportunity again. Any "new internet" proposal is going to have the grubby claws of "stakeholders" all over it.

Re:Not Necessarily a bad thing...

[hey!]

That's a good point. If you want to see the kind of Internet the industry wants, look at the US mobile phone market.

We need more competition

[tmosley]

It seems to me that most of the country is still in a situation where there are one or two options for high speed internet in any given area (only one here). If we allowed more competition, we would probably see a rush to upgrade infrastructure, as most people are damn tired of this "large pipe, limited download" crap, and the first ISP to offer either no cap or really high cap and maintain fast speeds is going to take every last customer from crappy services like AT&T.

Having some centralized organization handle network upgrades will work out about as well as it did in the 90's, ie not at all. They'll just pocket the money and continue to clamp down on their customers. The only way to improve service is to increase competition.

Re:Hmm

[cayenne8]

It runs fine for me. Frankly, I'm afraid that if anyone gets 'in charge', and 'improves' the internet, it won't be anywhere near as free and useful for any Joe Public to get on, express views, be anonymous, etc.

I'm afraid the powers that be, will be the ones 'in charge' of the New and Improved internet, and can bet your sweet ass, they won't make the mistakes they did last time that leaves them without total control.

Their corporate masters, will force them to have severe control on what content can be pumped over it, pretty much necessitating control on what can connect to it (so much for having control of your computer), and the govt. and lawyers will certainly make it where you can't be anonymous, and you will likely need a special license to publish on it.

Personally? No thanks, with all its bugs and problems, and tons of cruft out there, I'll be happy to stick with the current internet system that is out there. I like the idea that I can hook a computer on it, and instantly become a peer with any other computer out there, no matter if it is a farm kid on dial up, or a massive corporation's data center. My box/server is equal, and I can do and publish damned near anything I want.

Hands off

[blueZ3]

The problem correlates to what makes the Internet so successful: it's a wide-open, essentially unregulated space.

With no centralized authority, you get benefits like anonymity (see how long that lasts once the bureaucrats get their hooks in it--oh noes! the terrorists! think of the children! we must track each user), innovation (in just a few years we've gone from hypertext to graphical MMORPGs--I can just see trying to get the paperwork through on that one) and freedom (I don't suppose the good people at 760 United Nations Plaza would be interested in protecting the freedom of expression of fascists, for instance).

Of course, with anonymity comes spam, with innovation you get new and better malware, and with freedom you get a lot of crazy talk. But unless you're ready to throw the baby out with the bath water, it's probably best to leave well enough alone. Since politicians of all stripes are essentially unable to understand opportunity costs or unintended consequences, I shudder each time I read one of these FUD-o-thons.