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UCLA, CIsco & More Launch Consortium To Replace TCP/IP

alphadogg writes Big name academic and vendor organizations have unveiled a consortium this week that's pushing Named Data Networking (NDN), an emerging Internet architecture designed to better accommodate data and application access in an increasingly mobile world. The Named Data Networking Consortium members, which include universities such as UCLA and China's Tsinghua University as well as vendors such as Cisco and VeriSign, are meeting this week at a two-day workshop at UCLA to discuss NDN's promise for scientific research. Big data, eHealth and climate research are among the application areas on the table. The NDN effort has been backed in large part by the National Science Foundation, which has put more than $13.5 million into it since 2010.

25 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Great idea at the concept stage. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just don't expect anyone to early adopt except the usual hypebots and yahoos. We can't even get rid of IPv4 and you want do replace TCP entirely.

    1. Re:Great idea at the concept stage. by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah. And replace UNIX, too. You know? Like Plan 9 and Windows NT.

      I ain't holdin' my breath.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    2. Re:Great idea at the concept stage. by Enry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. There's likely trillions of dollars invested in IPv4 that is going to be around for decades. Consider the Internet like highways and train track widths - we're stuck with it for a very long time.

    3. Re:Great idea at the concept stage. by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know some kind of ill conceived "content protection" is going be built into this protocol.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    4. Re:Great idea at the concept stage. by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      citation needed.

      I disagree strongly that 'ipv4 hardware' (huh? what IS that, btw? does this imply that ipv6 is not in 'hardware'? how strange to describe things) is not up to modern network speeds. if anything, they can outrun any intermediate link in the chain from you to some random website. wan is still the slow part and always will be; but unless you truly get 1gig speeds to your door, your hardware will be more than enough for anything wan-based.

      I truly have no idea where you got this info from, but you are as wrong as could be.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    5. Re:Great idea at the concept stage. by mark-t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can do that with ipv6 anyways.. and without even bothering with NAT. home devices can be assigned addresses in a local range, and will not be accessible from outside any more than if they were NATted, since IP's in such ranges are explicitly designed by the protocol spec to not be routable. As long as your cable modem adheres to the spec, there is no danger of accessing it from the outside any more than if it were behind a NAT.

      Of course, in practice, I expect some kind of NAT solution will be in fairly wide use even in IPv6 anyways, since there will be no lack of use cases where you do not want your device to generally have a globally visible IP and be visible to the outside, but you may still have occasion to want to make requests of services in the outside world, using a local proxy to route the responses to those requests directly to your local IP, even though you do not have a global IP, much like NAT currently operates. This can also be solved by utilizing a global IP and configuring a firewall to block inbound traffic to that IP unless it is in response to a specific request by that device, but this is generally less convenient to configure properly than using a NAT-like arrangement.

      Notwithstanding, at least with IPv6, the number of IP's is large enough that every device that anyone might ever want to have its own IP actually can... instead of only satisfying the about 70 or 80% of users, like ipv4 does.

  2. Mass media takeover and destruction of 'net by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is basically designed to bring the old big media, broadcast ways to the internet. Hence, to basically destroy the Internet, allowing for mass reproduction of centrally created Corporate content, where independant voices are locked out. The protocol is designed for that, mass distribution of corporate created, centrally distributed content to an ignorant, consumption only masses which are treated with disdain and objects of manipulation by the elite. This is to bring big media and the stranglehold they had for so many years on information the public has access to back.

    With the Ipv6 transition needed its time to focus on that rather than on this plan to destroy the internet and turn it into the digital equivalent of 100 channels of centrally produced, elite controlled, one way cable television programming designed to psychologically manipulate and control a feeble and dim witted public.

    No thanks and get your #%#% hands of my internet.

    1. Re:Mass media takeover and destruction of 'net by Melkman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Luckily I don't see this attempt to turn internet into TV taking off. They really seem to see it as an alternative to IP instead of a service running on top of it like the web. IP6 is a really small change compared to it and look at the snales pace with which that is being rolled out.

    2. Re:Mass media takeover and destruction of 'net by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I get what you're saying, but I don't get how NDN is supposed to replace TCP/IP. Sure, it replaces many things done with UDP, and it even can do some things better than TCP, but it's not going to be replacing IPvX any time soon, just as TCP and UDP and ICMP etc. can happily co-exist.

      What I find interesting is that there's been an implementation of NDN/IP for YEARS -- it's called Freenet. Something tells me that the sponsoring groups wouldn't like to see this particular implementation be the first thing to try out their new network layer however....

    3. Re:Mass media takeover and destruction of 'net by uCallHimDrJ0NES · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think we're going to stop the progression you are describing. The method by which it is achieved may not be the one being discussed by UCLA and Cisco, but it's clear now that what slashdotters call "the Internet" is doomed and has been since all of those rebellions in northern africa/mideast a couple years ago. What most end-users call "the Internet" is just getting started, but certainly the application of it is as a control and monitoring system against dissent rather than a catalyst promoting freedom of information. The point where we have some hope of rallying the population to activism is the point where content providers and governments try to do things like completely disallow offline storage media. But not before then, because the population just plain doesn't understand what they have or what is at stake.

      --
      Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
  3. Different layers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are also funding a study to replace roads with run-flat tires. Oh, right, different layers.

  4. Now I know why Tsinghua is involved by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was puzzled with the involvement of Tsinghua University of China with this thing

    After reading your comment it starts to make sense

    The China Communist Party needs to regain control of the Internet (at least inside China), that explains why they endorse this new scheme so much

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  5. Corporate Inertia by Penguinshit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunately, as we learned from the debacle of cellular communications, corporate inertia will either squash this or slow gestation until it's stillborn. There is a substantial investment in the current technology of TCP/IP and it still works "just good enough". This change in network would require installation of a twin network alongside the current, with slow adoption in the consumer side. That would be very expensive to build and maintain over numerous financial quarters and thus no MBA-centric company would ever do it in current corporate culture. This takes long-term thinking in a quarter-to-quarter environment. Thus it won't happen for a very long time.

  6. Re: Not a chance by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    TCP/IP has the singular advantage that it is deeply entrenched, runs on a vast number of devices from supercomputers right down to single-chip computers. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but it's a proven technology.

    I'm sure in the fullness of time it will be replaced, or at least subsumed into some better protocol, and maybe this initiative will be the one that produces its successor... or not. I think TCP/IP is going to be with us for a very long time.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  7. Re:Not a chance by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Despite decades of research the horse and cart are still the best thing we know for the task at hand. Yes, it's admittedly not really good, but all the known alternatives are worse. This is more likely some kind of publicity stunt or serves some entirely different purpose.

    Your statement as shown can be applied to the internal combustion engine, or any other technology. Rejecting any change out of hand without consideration is incredibly sad, if not dangerous to our species future prospects. Yes it's important to take everything with a grain of salt, but everything should be at least considered. It only takes one successful change to have a dramatic impact and improve the lives of many.

    This goes for all technology, not just this specific problem.

  8. Youtube video by Van Jacobson, from 2006 on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a talk on youtube from 2006 by Van Jacobson that describes this idea before it was called named data networking. It is really neat, and I am surprised that it has taken so long for somebody to actually try to implement it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM

  9. Just in time! by DarkDaimon · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm glad they are starting this now so hopefully by the time we run out of IPv6 addresses, we'll be ready!

  10. So, tell us what we really want to know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How is this going to harm the everyday Internet user? I imagine at the very least it will make it more difficult for two random internet users to connect to each other, because all connections will probably have to be approved by Verisign or some other shit like that.

    Remember folks, the age of innovation is over. We are now in the age of control and oppression. Everything "new" is invented for one purpose and only one purpose - to control you more effectively.

  11. I don't see this as so horrible by sirwired · · Score: 5, Informative

    I could totally see the two networks running simultaneously. It's completely accurate that TCP/IP sucks for mass content delivery; it's gigantic waste of bandwidth. And for point-to-point interaction this protocol would be massively inefficient.

    But why can the two protocols not run on top of the same Layer 2 infrastructure?

  12. This is BAD. Very very BAD. by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In a nutshell, this is applying DRM to all of your connection attempts. You will only be able to make connections that are "authorized" by TPTB.

    No more free and open networking.

  13. Magnet Links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since every single goddamned one of you has used magnet links, you should be comfortable with the idea of requesting objects rather than discussions with particular hosts. Taking this idea and running with it is NDN. It's an excellent network research subject.

    It facilitates caching, multipathing... with some more work perhaps network coding to get close to the min-cut bound. Bittorrent is super successful because it's all about the content. Let's give a similar protocol a chance at changing the net.

  14. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  15. The reason the government wants this... by sigmabody · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those who don't see why this is bad, consider this:

    In order to route/cache by data, the data must be visible to the routing nodes; in essence, you would no longer be able to use end-to-end encryption. You could still have point-to-point (eg: encryption for wireless connections), but everything would be visible to routing nodes, by necessity. This means no more hiding communications from the government (who taps all the backbone routers), no TOR routing, no protection from MTM attacks, by design. You get the promise of more efficiency, at the cost of your privacy/freedom... and guess what, you'll get neither in this case, too.

  16. This looks terrible. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It looks like they started out with Content Addressible Networking, which is a great idea. Massive bandwidth savings, improved resilience, faster performance, power savings, everything you could want. But then rather than try to impliment CAN properly alongside conventional networking they went for some ridiculous micro-caching thing, over-complicated intermediate nodes that enforce usage rules, some form of insane public-key versioning system validated by intermediate nodes and generally ended up with a monstrosity.

    CAN is a great idea. NDN is a terrible implimentation of CAN. The main selling points include having DRM capability built into the network itsself, so if you try to download something not authorised for your country the ISP router can detect and block it. A simple distributed cache would achieve the same benefits with a much simpler design.

    There's the core of a great idea in there, burried deep in the heap of over-engineered complexity that appears designed not to bring benefits to performance but rather to allow ISPs to readily decide exactly what content they wish to allow to be distributed and by whome. This thing is designed to allow the network devices to transcode video in real time to a lower bitrate - putting that kind of intelligence in the network is insane!

  17. Re: Not a chance by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NDN looks like a scheme to tag data and change networks from "addressing a particular node" to "addressing data". This is like changing the Post Office such that a person addresses a particular letter sent to them, rather than having a house number where letters get delivered.

    Computer addresses with DNS on top make sense: it's easy to subdivide and route, and name translation allows humans to interact with it. NDN looks like it's trying to make the names the addresses, and make the URIs the names, and make the routers act as caches, and hope it all works; but then how do I address a *computer*? How do I ask for anything other than HTTP?

    NDN looks like p2pwww stuff I designed back in 2004, except trying to implement as a network protocol on the routers, rather than an application protocol on the nodes. Even then, I specified digital signatures, encryption, and network namespace isolation: you could have an ICANNWeb which signed certificates for each name (i.e. Microsoft) and, on ICANNWeb, you would put out a message (P2P) for Microsoft://www/windowsxp/support.aspx and get back responses for (have|know|home)--node has a copy recent as per [date], node knows who has a copy recent as per [date], node knows the home is [address]--and select from there. Each resource would be digitally signed with generation date stamp and expiration date stamp, and a new generation date stamp overrides an earlier expiration date stamp.

    In short: you'd get on a Gnutella-like network, perform a search, and be told where the resource is. Data was such that you could identify newer, identical, and expired resources. Your node could say, "0-3 hops", then "4-6 hops", incrementally crawling the network; or "3 hops past first response, limit 10". Usually if a node knows another node has a copy, that other node also knows several (it got its copy somehow--by its own request). If a node locates nodes with multiple versions, it provides outdated nodes with provable evidence that they're outdated, so they can drop their caches and learn some other node has a more up-to-date copy. Likewise, when those nodes are queried, they will then re-query the nodes they know have copies, and update them: an update doesn't trigger this cycle--too much traffic.

    That's application-level. A locatable, self-caching network which encapsulates all resources in digital signatures and allows for namespaces. It sounds like that's what they're trying to accomplish, but in the transport layer.