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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.'"
Let the porn industry fix the internet. They're responsible for most of the traffic.
...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.
We're running out of IPv4 addresses?
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.
IPv4 is an absolutely fundamental part of virtually every network in existence today, and given that networks are a fundamental prerequisite in the modern computing world and see very, very, very, very heavy usage every minue of the day no one is going to take any time out and start tinkering because people think networks and the internet are broken. There's no financial incentive for ISPs or any companies to invest in IPv6 yet and there won't be no matter who is 'in charge' of the internet to 'force' it to happen. You can't mandate anything in an open market, and I just find the possible motivation for that statement bizarre.
Basically, it'll start to happen when we really do run out of IP addresses and things get desperate and it will happen when someone comes up with a sane and straightforward guide for making IPv6 co-exist happily with existing IPv4 networks and making sure everyone knows about it. Until those things happen there is zero incentive to rip out and replace or tinker with something so fundamental. Band aids are the order of the day and have been in every piece of fundamental infrastructure since time imemorial. We must leave this 'rip out and replace' culture in computing far behind otherwise no one can ever take us seriously.
The article author thinks IPv6 is just a band-aid, though he admits it would fix the address shortage. He is talking, vaguely, about an architectural upgrade but doesn't really say *what*. He only says "more research is needed", which I translate to "give me more funding".
Do you have any insight as to what he's talking about, other than "get off your ass on IPv6"?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
There will be no proactive solution; this sort of thing will only be improved upon in increments as things break. John Doyle mentions "Band-Aids" but that's exactly how it needs to evolve....like any other living organism.
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Internet-Fixer Man!!! With his large hoard of anonymous, probably overweight, definitely awkward, mostly perverted, could be educated, willing to take risks, bunch of trolls from 4CHAN, he's going to fix the internet in no time flat!
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.
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The only conclusion that I can draw from the silence on the actual upgrade is that it's something we wouldn't like.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I fail to see how/why the TFA is lumping everything under one problem called the "Internet". Break it up into little bits, and you'll see that there *are* mostly effective working groups and vendor coalitions solving issues, up and down the stack, every day.
body massage!
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.
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I honestly don't even think IPv6 is needed. We just need recall some of those huge blocks of IP addresses that have been allocated for no good reason and implement NAT/proxies more widely.
Just about every single company uses firewalls nowadays anyway, there is absolutely no reason for them to have huge blocks of IP addresses like they currently do (they don't even use them!).
The Internet is improving everyday as better routers, faster servers, new better cables/antennas are deployed, the last mile connection options are also multiplying. IPv6 is put on hold as there is no real need for it at the moment.
IPv6 is NOT on hold. Most of Asia are already using IPv6. If you use Apple there's a good chance you're using IPv6 without even realising it. The EU is mandating moves to IPv6 in the coming years, and I imagine most countries are doing something similar.
The US may have its head in the sand, but that doesn't mean everyone else does.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes. It's a very respectable source indeed. Also, Christian Science (promoted by Christian Scientists) is entirely different from the science promoted by Christians (who are a different group).
If there was someone "in charge" of the internet, we wouldn't be worried about being unable to change technical standards by proclaimed fiat, but instead about why we were using both ancient and nearing unworkable technical standards, and why we were unable to even apply band-aids to the problem, lest the ship be rocked, incompatibilities result, special interests slighted, and the status quo in danger of coming out of stasis.
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Ignorance is bliss, and you, sir, seem to be positively rolling in it. CSM, strange as it may seem, is generally regarded as being of surpassing quality (vastly superior to your "mainline" news channels and rags).
The irony is that most religious people I know revile the CSM as being liberal, ungodly, and in all manner of secular.
Dear mr.Christian Science,
Your attempt to make us panic and throw a metric shitload of money into your inadequate research to end net-neutrality has failed. The average slashdot reader knows more about the intricacies of the Internet than you expect and can therefore tell you that doom's day is far off. We know that because the Terminators need IPv6 to keep track of their innumerable minions.
No IPv6 no doom's day.
Thank you for your time,
Average Slashdot Joe
It's called Christian Science Monitor basically because the founder was also the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist and she demanded that it be called that. Despite it's name, the paper is 95% secular and is actually known for its fair and balance reporting, especially for avoiding sensationalism (ironically in this case). Their staff has even won a handful of Pulitzer Prizes over the years.
The problem is that congestion control on the Internet is strictly based on the Van Jacobsen hacks to TCP/IP. These work pretty well, but they have problems. First, a lot of IP traffic is not TCP. Second, various IP protocols like Bittorrent actually game congestion control to get more than their fair share of the pipe, and there's really no way to prevent this (e.g., what Comcast tried isn't a good solution).
The belief that no-one is working on this is incorrect, however. There's some very good work being done in the IRTF (a research organization associated with the IETF). They did a really cool presentation on their work at the Stockholm IETF this month. There are really good people at various ISPs and running the backbones. It is not the case that it's all on autopilot and slowly decaying. E.g., check out Hurricane Electric. Comcast has a very good team.
The most hopeless thing I see on the Internet is the continued prevalence of operating systems that are highly vulnerable to attack due to poorly-thought-out security models. Apple is starting to do some interesting work on this - they recently hired the guy who did BitFrost for the OLPC project, for example. A big complaint about Bitfrost is that it's not necessarily all that useable, but if anyone can fix that, it's probably Apple. Would be nice if Microsoft weren't backsliding on this.
To quote an article I once read that addressed what you are saying:
The long and the short of it is that NAT is only a band-aid... it is not a scalable solution. NAT can only be "good enough" as long as the above issues remain unimportant to a majority of people.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Oh, and if you reassigned all of the large, assigend-but-unused, IPv4 blocks at the current allocation rate, they would all be gone within 18 months. Good long-term thinking there.
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Some of the "problems with the Internet" are not technical problems so much as social, legal, and financial ones.
SPAM would be an example - except that today's legal approach has failed catastrophically to address the issue. The US has a weak "you can spam" act, and the UK is worse (Spam can only be stopped, one spammer to spammee "information" flow at a time, starting from the second message any given spammer sends to any given recipient). But the problem is not IP. Nor is the problem, fundamentally, that anonymous virtually-free email is possible (it is a system that has many important benefits - from global accessibility, to anonymity). The problem is unscrupulous users who exploit the internet by sending spam.
The Network Neutrality debate is driven by under-investing ISPs who want to run an under-resourced cheap network, and split it into many segmented markets, where they can charge each separate segment as much as it will bear without going into bankruptcy. This will fossilise current usage models of the network, and be a huge barrier to innovation.
Many of today's security "problems of the Internet" are no more Internet problems than mugging or burglary are a problem with streets. The real problem is undetected criminals, and insecure computers and protocols.
Most of these issues either are being addressed - or can be addressed without "fixing" the Internet.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
To add to the other good replies to your message.
"Recalling" those "huge" blocks (and note that there is no legal justification for any entity to be able to do so) would also only be a band-aid. If you "recall" all of the /8 blocks that are globally assigned that are likely underutilized, you only extend the lifetime of IPv4 by a handful of years.
Many people point to NAT as a way to prevent the depletion of IPv4 address space, but what most of them don't realize is that NAT (despite the huge problems that hitch along for the ride) has *already* served that purpose. We're *still* running out of IPv4 address space, even with ubiquitous use of NAT (including being hobbled by the problems that it brings). If NAT hadn't seen widespread use already, we would have run out of IPv4 address space years ago.
NAT creates problems, and it doesn't even fix the problem that people are positioning it to fix (ie, the depletion of IPv4 address space). We're still going to run out, we still need to transition to IPv6, even if you "recall" those big blocks and make everyone use NAT. Taking the steps you suggest only extends the horizon of the problem, and only extends it by a relatively small amount.
Anyone cares to tell me what the words 'christian' and 'science' are doing together ? I mean, do they live in a universe with different rules with different science or what ? No, I'm not thinking about the evolution denier idiots, I assume this refers to run of the mill christians. So why the specification ?
Your average 'run of the mill' Christian believes that Science is a set of rules and theories about a universe created by God.
Science for it's part, hasn't found anything that flat-out irrefutably contradicts a universe that has been intelligently designed...and it has found no irrefutable evidence that it has. Personally I don't see a conflict between the words 'Christian' and scientist anymore than I would see one between 'gay' and 'scientist'.
What are they going to do? Cover up the 'gay' gene if it gets discovered?
There's no place like
The adoption of a new technology is generally not driven by those who dominate once it is widespread. It tends to be driven by early adopters, who are willing to spend the money to try out a new technology. They either prove it, or they have tons of problems. As soon as somebody proves a technology is viable, a business shmuck at some large company can make a successful pitch that "This is the future, etc, etc...and it's already proven technology so the company doesn't have to worry about hiccups, etc, etc".
That is why Porn killed Betamax. Not because Porn represents a large market share, but because Porn was willing to be an early adopter of VHS. They proved that video sales and rental via VHS was viable. Once that happened, the major video players we unwilling to take a bet on Betamax, no matter how superior it was, because they looked at the Porn industry and saw that VHS was already in use, and therefore, the business plan and technical hurdles were done for them, guaranteed.
"The GPL is viral by design, like any good religion."
Most of the proposed "upgrades" are worse. There was a "Clean Slate Program" at Stanford, but the general idea was to put the network firmly under the thumb of the carriers, turning the Internet into something like mobile telephony. That didn't fly.
IPv6 and IPSEC would fix most of the problems down at the IP level. It might be useful if the FCC mandated that US ISPs must support IPv6 to consumers by some date. More likely, China may mandate IPv6; they need the address space. The 2008 Olympics was mostly run on IPv6, so the technology is working there.
And, most importantly
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Working fine here. All this talk of "fixing" is just a way to control what should not be controlled. Let the demons roam free, and the angels mingle in the muck. The global connection project has succeeded. Now some would like to see it fail, or stop working so well. Beware...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
* NAT prevents direct attacks on Internet- connected machines
* NAT prevents snooping of internal network structures
You misspelled "firewall"
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
IPV4 addresses will be exhausted at a time according to the following formula:
Wiggabu + 18 months
where Wiggabu represents the time you are currently reading this equation.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I echo the sentiments of the majority of the posts that do not want any more central authority than already exists on the internet. But the problem of shrinking IPv4 address pool will be fixed as the IPv6 address pool starts getting utilized more. Dear Uncle Sam here in the U.S. already mandates that all network capable devices sold to the Federal Government be IPv6 capable. So when they are ready to take the plunge, they can do so fairly quickly. Many commercial entities are also doing the same. So with more IPv6 addresses being used, the take rate on IPv4 addresses will level off, then actually reverse and more addresses will be available. With IPv4 encapsulation, many of the IPv4 devices can be allowed to be purged on their natural cycles, eliminating the need for any mass purge of older devices. I think this is a tempest in a teacup and there is probably nothing to see here. Keep movingâ¦
There's no incentive for the ISPs to fix the problem?
I think if there's a way to increase profits by reducing equipment costs, then there is an incentive. One of the original authors of the TCP/IP protocol just designed a stream router (as opposed to a packet based one) that will route orders of magnitude more data for roughly the same cost as a conventional switch or hub. [citation needed] If ISPs adopt the thing, they spend less money on upgrading infrastructure to meet need and make more money. Money is a good incentive. You can make just about anyone do anything for the right amount of money.
Sure, supply and demand. Where the demand is great because of IPv4 address shortage -- Asia -- it hasn't stalled and has been rolled out robustly. Where it is NOT in demand, because there is no shortage of IPv4 addresses in the U.S., it has stalled. Aside from large address space, there really isn't a compelling benefit to switch to IPv6. As much as geeks like things like mandatory IPsec support, autoconfig, etc. they are geek appealing and not appealing to the masses.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Well there are 2 links to respond to them at the bottom of every page; labeled "Feedback" and "Contact Us." Certainly they're not like Slashdot where they're mostly commentary, but then not every site can be nor should be. You could, though, submit a Christian Science Monitor article to Slashdot and probably start a quite good discussion.
As for their articles often being rants, I'll sometimes think someone is ranting when I disagree with them. Often articles are written for people whom are informed, whom bring to the article a background of knowledge about the subject and the world and can thus absorb differing perspectives or interpretation of facts, or even rants. News articles are just that, new articles about familiar and occasionally unfamiliar events; they're not the be-all end-all last statement.