Military To Spend $42M To Build Advanced Network Control

coondoggie writes "BBN, which was bought by defense giant Raytheon today, got almost $11 million to help build self-configuring network technology that would identify traffic, let the network infrastructure prioritize it down to the end user, reallocate bandwidth between users or classes of users, and automatically make quality-of-service decisions. The advanced network technology is being developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and will include support for features like 32 levels of network traffic prioritization that will let data with a higher priority will be handled more expeditiously than traffic with a lower priority."

Comments

Uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly is low priority traffic?

Re:Uhm

[Dan541]

The lowest bidder.

Wow

[digitalunity]

$11M to reimplement IPv6 QOS. I suppose it's a bit more advanced since it makes QOS determination based on users or groups, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

Consider me unimpressed.

Re:Wow

[elnyka]

$11M to reimplement IPv6 QOS. I suppose it's a bit more advanced since it makes QOS determination based on users or groups, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

Consider me unimpressed.

Dude, there might be strategic/tactical decisions for deciding explicitly not to use IPv6. Notice that I'm not saying that those strategic/tactical decisions are necessarily valid for long-term maintenance, extensibility or external compatibility (the later of which might even be undesirable from a strategic/tactical POV.)

The road of technical divergence can either take you to innovation or to a complete technical fiasco. That fork is many times not only dependent on technical merits alone. Besides, iirc, IPv6 QOS is still as of yet to be developed (not a criticism mind you). It supports only 7 priority levels whereas the proposed technology will support 32 levels. A typical military subnet, with stationary and mobile units, all of them plugged and receiving feeds from a bunch of disparate devices might never need more than 7 or 8, but as you start plugging those nets together, you can (and will) easily require a finer priority granularity than that.

Add to that the ability to determine priority by user or groups, and the problem cannot be dismissed as "meh, should not be that difficult." There might be other defense-specific requirements that we might not know (.ie. limiting jumbopackets by priority or origin.)

Besides, this is being researched by DARPA, the harbinger of ARPANET and MQ-Predator, not some 2009 rendition of kozmo.com.

I know that here on /. we like to fling turds at the government's white elephants, but c'mon. There must likely be be good technical/domain-specific reasons (or at least good enough) for an entity like DARPA to perform research on it, reasons beyond the ones that might impress you.

The Next Internet?

[MikePo]

Interesting, could be a precursor to the next evolution of the Internet.

I don't know how well people would like QOS determination on users though, but I see the appeal to the government(s).

Re:The Next Internet?

[geekoid]

Yes. For military use it make sense.
IF we could get enforced guidelines with court protection, it would be fine. Of course we won't get that until after years of abuse from verious corporate entities.

Opportunity!

[Cornwallis]

I'm counting the new Internet Control Czar in the White House to use this to shut down the Internet as-needed for "national security" or other "emergencies" so I'm going to dust off my old BBS software and install another landline.

is it ipv6?

[circletimessquare]

if it isn't, an awesome example of government stupidity, since just as this thing gets off the ground, ipv6 will probably finally take over

it it is ipv6, look for ipv6 to be mandated on the industry

And now..

[kronosopher]

we hear the death knell of net neutrality.

The corporate think-tanks that envisioned the internet have known for a long time they had unwittingly created a network without strong authentication. This means anyone can jack-in anonymously and spread whatever socially dissident or commie/terrorist agenda they want. So in the interest of controlling our minds and the accessibility of information they are now attempting to re-implement the internet and in doing so shape traffic along arbitrary guidelines which of course will be entirely influenced by corporate profiteering.

I know that this project is only for military use, but it is only a matter of time before corporations are lured in by the promise of an unprecedented amount of power/control/oversight on their networks.

Re:And now..

[kronosopher]

If we are to have telemedicine, displacement of copper telephone infrastructure, etc., then we do need guaranteed levels of service for some things.

Traffic shaping is not necessarily opposed to net neutrality. I see nothing wrong with prioritizing traffic based on how much a customer paid, or how much bandwidth they've used recently, for instance. An ISP account should come with X gigabytes/month of "first class" service, where you get to decide what to send/receive first class, and the rest is bulk. I have wasted too much time kluging with LARTC. Traffic prioritization needs to be end-to-end, not just at the network layer of one end.

You're right. This is just another example of how the technology itself is not malevolent but rather how its employed.

That being said, I can assure you that simply by reviewing the level of divisive manipulation of traditional corporate media, while technological advancement have historically entailed a net benefit for purveyors of truth(thinking here, printing press, telephones, etc), it also has enabled morally bereft institutions to expand and refine their influence on the hearts and minds of the masses. Now we're talking about a fundamental change in the infrastructure of the internet which could easily force social dissonance or protesting underground by simply making it inaccessible, thus negating all of the great advancements in information transparency we've achieved on an *almost* fully open internet. An open internet is exceedingly difficult to control, and malevolent corporations have made little headway here like that seen in print, television, radio, etc.

On another note, the suppression of thought and technology permeates every facet of our modern lives, and now with the explosion of the internet we not only have an abundance of air and water but also information, which quite certainly is the most important tool in mitigating and extinguishing the suppressive and unaccountable corporate influence over our lives. This to me is indicative of a greater economic and social transition resulting in the replacement of antiquated short-term socially detrimental corporate group-think with something so open and free that none of us can possibly fathom its colossal magnitude.

IMO, defeating net neutrality, or enabling corporations to do so(even with the best of intentions), will result in humanities failure once again to recognize and respond adequately to threats to the our overall social and economic cohesion. Quite simply, in order for humanity to succeed as Bill Hicks said "..as one race explor[ing] outer space together in peace, forever." we must educate and enlighten people in order to encourage reform and the discontinuation of the broken components of our establishment.

Sounds like a workaround

[FudRucker]

to move net neutrality to /dev/null

Re:Didn't they make a movie or two about this

[Pulse_Instance]

Sounds more like the way that the network in the Legacy Trilogy is set up in that the lower level soldiers can get there net access cut back or removed when needed to provide command guaranteed access to the network when they need it.

Who cares how much they spend

[AmigaMMC]

It's my tax money anyway and I have no saying on it.

Shiny tool

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem with this will be that any idiot general or SES exec (as in idiot in terms of comms/technical issues) will be able to order his "comm guys" to make "priority one" all traffic having anything to do with him and/or his cronies. the sycophantic bureaucrats hanging onto this general's/SES's coattails and their hours of grainy video-laden powerpoint slides about the battalion/unit/agency bake sale will crash base networks all over the world. packets carrying beat-the-dead-horse PowerPoint slides with 30mb pictures of smiling ethnically-diverse suit-drones waxing poetic about how neat the government budget system is will take priority over mission-related packets.

anyone who has spent any time in the military or working for the federal government will know exactly what i'm talking about. it will be, as always, some guy with a powerful, shiny tool to use for his own interests.