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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."
Does it work via twitter? If it does I think IBM's lawyers want a word...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And what exactly is low priority traffic?
$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.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
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).
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.
Just upload that spam to missiles and deliver it physically. You surely will get highest priority that way.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
$42M? Does it include searching for the answer to life, the universe and everything?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
to move net neutrality to /dev/null
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This has a lot of complicated requirements. If you scan through the pdf "DARPA's Military Networking Protocol" link in the article I don't see how this doesn't extend well beyond 3 years and $42 million. E.G. "As deliverables, performers must provide protocol implementations that replace or modify both the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for the user level devices and the Network Controllers."
Throw in the pace of defense companies move and it would be a miracle.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
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.
US has begun research on Secret Project "Network Backbone". "Where do you want your Node today?"
The DoD is big into what they're calling "Network-Centric Warfare". US doctrine relies heavily on information dispersal and access.
This is (currently) an effort to make sure the right info gets into the right hands on the battlefield.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's my tax money anyway and I have no saying on it.
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.
$11 million to do what Comcast already does?
I hope the military enjoys it more than the average peer-to-peer user on cable.
and will include support for features like 32 levels of network traffic prioritization
...a fixed number of levels means a badly designed program. Or else it would not put any limitations on the number of levels.
Why not just make it go trough the rules recursively like all cascading rule parser? You could even put a configurable limit on it, so it does not crash when coming in contact with infinite levels of rules.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
> The advanced network technology ... being developed by ... DARPA .. 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
Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa .... "advanced technology" ?
We were doing this in 1980 with the ICL VME mainframe operating system using their proprietary comms protocol "ICLC03", which prioritised traffic according to which of 6 different categories the relevant device was defined to be in. That's how we could support a cluster of 16 dumb terminals and half a dozen printers down one 9.6Kbps line without all the terminals stopping dead every time somebody printed something.
I hardly think the technique can be described as "advanced" ... "common sense" maybe. I've always wondered why TCP-IP doesn't include such a feature.
(Sorry - ICL died such a horrible death that I can't find a link on this modern intarweb thingie to anything usefully describing VME operating system features such as its ICLC03 protocol - but I assure you it's well described in technical manuals in various ring binders in my spare room.)
If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.