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The Internet Security United States Science

NSF Ponders New And Improved Internet 153

Posted by Zonk from the can-this-one-deliver-soda-over-ip? dept.
diorcc wrote to mention a Wired article about a NSF Project that could completely rebuild the Internet as we know it. From the article: "The National Science Foundation is backing a major initiative that could lead to a completely new internet architecture, with built-in security measures and support for ubiquitous sensors and wireless communications devices, among other things. The Global Environment for Networking Investigations, or GENI, will include a research grant program to fund new architectures and an experimental facility, which has not yet been planned in detail."
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NSF Ponders New And Improved Internet More

NSF Ponders New And Improved Internet

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  • Idea! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) * on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:38PM (#13416361) Journal
    Let's name it "Internet 2!"

  • Misleading.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by PDXNerd ( 654900 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:38PM (#13416364)
    So in other words, this is just an experimental research facility with possible long-term finds that may impact the future direction of interneworking.

    To rebuild the internet is insane. To slowly change the direction we are building it is more likely.

    • Re:Misleading.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by mfh ( 56 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:45PM (#13416422) Homepage Journal
      To rebuild the internet is insane. To slowly change the direction we are building it is more likely.

      I agree. It's about standards that companies should follow. Those that fail to follow the standards will lose relevance and compatability.

      And yes, the article title was misleading. They won't be rebuilding the Internet any time soon.
      • It's about standards that companies should follow. Those that fail to follow the standards will lose relevance and compatability.

        For some reason all I could think of after that was the phrase 'Internet Explorer and CSS Support'... (That said, I still mainly agree with the idea).

    • To rebuild the internet is insane. To slowly change the direction we are building it is more likely.

      Agreed. This looks like a good idea in theory, but it's going to be quite difficult to implement. Kinda reminds me of IPv6. It has lots of advantages over the old IPv4 protocol, but hardly anybody uses it.
      • This looks like a good idea in theory

        Even the change of the protocol to improve security is in theory a means for job security. The current Internet protocol allows for a decentralized administration. Any protocol changes to centralize any administration would obviously be for job security. Anotherwords, a rebuild for security suggects a change to support a commercial model or a government model of the Internet instead of it's choatic "free as in free beer" model it has now. That is questionable as in wh

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:39PM (#13416374)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • NII2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:40PM (#13416385) Homepage Journal
    Didn't we already give them hundreds of millions of dollars, and trust that they'd deliver the "New and Improved Internet" to us with Internet2? I know I2 is doing a lot of good for a bunch of universities, medical centers and corporations, all of which therefore are getting their N&INet (NII) to contribute to their hugely profitable enterprises, subsidized at taxpayer expense. Where is the delivery of I2 to the rest of us, who pay for it, who need it, who represent most of the American economy (foreigners are welcome to ride for free, as usual ;)? Why should we give them even more money, when they just got paid to learn they can get paid not to share it with us?
    • I don't believed the NSF created the Internet2, from my knowledge it was a banding together of multiple different universities. Corporations have to pay to be on the Internet2 and they have to have a specific educational requirement, so they don't get a free ride.

      I suppose one could argue that the money given to the university often is tax payers public money... but saying that everybody should then have automatic access to it that is kind of stretching it.

      • Re:NII2 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:35PM (#13416690) Homepage Journal
        It's true that the government's NGI [ngi.gov] is actually independent from Internet2 [internet2.edu], though they work closely together [internet2.edu]. The NSF funds organizations [sewanee.edu] to connect to Internet2 with tax money. And the I2 is about 80% funded by universities, which are largely funded by public money, government and otherwise. Where's the return to the public?

        I don't know why expecting public money to return products of its investment is "stretching it". We're buying R&D, we should get the R&D. Except where secrecy is important to, say, national security (tiny percentage of research), or the results would be premature to release, of course we should get access to what we bought. Why not?

        If an org wants to keep its research products private, it should use only private money. Perhaps there's a case to be made for proportional return on proportional investment (eg. publishing 80% of I2), but that's surely balanced by 1> the critical enabling support of the public money; 2> the vast public research predecessors on which all this new research depends; and 3> the essential role of publishing research results anyway, to science, culture and business. Otherwise, siphoning off all the oxygen produced will leave the system stagnant, and the private systems will wilt and die also.

        • Re:NII2 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by guet ( 525509 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @04:11PM (#13417185)
          And the I2 is about 80% funded by universities, which are largely funded by public money, government and otherwise. Where's the return to the public?

          The return to the public is in research and education (which is what universities do). Where else would you expect it? Serving inane comments on Slashdot quicker? Supporting the latest dot.com fad? When the industry is ready to embrace new standards (hint, this is not a rational or controllable process) they will come to the mass-market. Not before.

          I'm afraid your free market ideology is blinding you to the benefits of public research and public funding. The 'all power to the poeple' line is very seductive, but research takes time, and the best research is not calibrated, and is not predictable. It does not obey the laws of the market and will never do so.

          (foreigners are welcome to ride for free, as usual ;)
          What a tired old canard. Where did the tags your writing is surrounded with come from? (hint, not the USA).

          • Re:NII2 (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @04:43PM (#13417343) Homepage Journal
            Universities don't teach the return on their R&D. They productize it. Before you talk about economics, and university research's role in it, learn something about it first. Especially if you call my demand for better managed public funding for public research a "free market". It's a demand for a "free market" only in ideas: government subsidies aren't free marketing. Therefore your complaints are irrelevant. When the results are ready, they're currently privatized into university patents and thinktanks. They should, on the same schedule, be published and indeed taught the way you wrongly believe they are currently.

            Then there's your ducktalk about HTML tags. I didn't say the US invented everything. But we did invent the Internet. And until an American invented the IMG tag, the Web wasn't useable by most people. So take a hint, and show some gratitude, instead of your jealous spite. We're not cranking out this tech for your thanks, but you could at least show some dignity when you accept our gifts.
            • Universities don't teach the return on their R&D. They productize it. Before you talk about economics, and university research's role in it, learn something about it first.

              The return on their R&D research money comes in research progress and teaching (not necessarily directly linked to that funding). I'm sure they do 'productize' it as well sometimes, however the tangible products and commercial spin offs are just part of the benefit of this research, not the whole thing as you imply. Not everythi

    • Re:NII2 (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know the research done in medical centers never benefits me. Tell us what you absolutley *NEED* it for.
    • Internet2 is a production testbed. They were the first to do multicasting, IPv6, speeds around 10GB, etc. Those things are tested, developed, and deployed on I2 and the people that make the equipment use that experience to build it to the rest of the internet. Very few providers do v6 and multicast yet, possibly just a few of the big boys. The big new routers from Cisco and Nortel are being used on Internet2 and the cycle begins again.

      That said there are some that wanted a more experimental network to do mo
      • Multicast, IPv6 and 10Gbps were around before, and independently of, Internet2. It's not supposed to be just a taxpayer-subsidized testbed for Cisco (or NorTel, which isn't even American). It's supposed to be developing realtime, full-bandwidth, collaborative and teleoperative distributed environments to demo a real "next Internet", the way the original Internet demonstrated a departure from mere LANs.

        NLR, and NGI, too, are also demonstrating more high-speed networks. But the next generation isn't just spee

        • Re:NII2 (Score:2, Informative)

          by BigPappa ( 32324 )
          For the applications we need on I2, we need low latency. Would you want to do a teleoperation with 100ms ping times? Imagine a surgeon doing a teleoperation and he started slicing and the machine had to wait for the packets to be resent to complete it on a congested network? Would it stop and then cut deeper causing a major blood loss or puncture? We needed big pipes with low latency and fewer hops to do anything of meaning or reliability.

          With regard to applications, when we were first hooked up to I2 we we
          • Yes, I agree that I2 has produced important returns. That's why I want them to be shared with the wider public, not just your university which participates directly in the research. And I am disappointed that the realtime interactive "immersion" apps haven't really delivered on their promise. They're pretty nifty, but hardly revolutionary. Revolutionary apps usually need a demanding audience outside the universities at which they're originally developed. Yet another reason for sharing I2 results more.
    • OK, I'll bite instead of modding you troll. What the hell are you thinking? Don't you realise the internet was developed in the public sector? Those universities and medical centers are the same early-adopting testbeds that created the infrastructure to allow you to bang out your jingoistic nonsense with your one free hand today. I presume, incidentally, that you are posting this using some kind of advanced gopher client, and not HTTP, since you don't appear to have heard of that particular European inventi
      • You're a retard. I never claimed the US invented everything on the Internet. The browser I use, though, like most people's browsers, is largely an American invention - mostly the work of NCSA (Mosaic) and Netscape (Silicon Valley). And so much of GNU, as you pointed out (MIT, Berkeley, etc) is American in origin. Though there's certainly lots of foreigners contributing excellent work: often better than their American counterparts.

        So what? I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about Internet2, the s
        • Your posts quite simply proves that there is some truth about the stereotype of Americans that watches too much Fox "News".
          • Which part? "Though there's certainly lots of foreigners contributing excellent work: often better than their American counterparts"?

            I defy you to find anything like the Fox News pap in my posts. Unless you're going by your own Pravda, which tells you that somehow America didn't invent the Internet. All you've got is the stereotypical jealous response to any leader, whether a European disease or otherwise, that denies our achievements by finding fault with our pride in them. I could go on about the cultural

        • I'm talking about Internet2, the subject of this discussion. Just like the Internet, I expect my taxes and government to support research to produce Internet2, and to share it with the world. But instead, my taxes and government are subsidizing corporate testbeds for Cisco and Nortel, as a weak protest in another response correctly identified.

          It's too bad your own posts don't contain facts to back up your random walks through rant-space. We see Internet 2 just fine here, in UC Berkeley. I do realise NY

          • Face it, you've got a chip on your shoulder just like most people I met when I was a student at UC Berkeley. You got it all wrong, now you're flailing around looking for some credibility. Trying to get in shots about the "backwards East Coast". We don't let creeps like you into facilities like MAE East for a reason: you're loose cannons. Windmilling like that can knock loose a fiber - you're not worth the liability. Now, if your Internet2 lab were run by New Yorkers, you might have actually produced somethi
            • Now get back to work and do something to justify your grant. That, by the way, is paying for you to spin your wheels in our country, a guest who hates his hosts. Ingrate motherfucker.

              Hey, you know, Doc, those grants are awarded by competition, fair and square. If you don't like the fact that I out-competed Americans for ca$h, then why don't you submit a proposal and show a sketpical world what New York can do? Just one achievment on the scale of BSD Unix or the Linux kernel would be nice... instead of,

              • Because all that bullshit is just what fills your closet of nightmares, not mine. You got your grant, now you spew your nuke.the.USA venom at people who don't want to hear it. I'll point out that on merit, you are attending at UC Berkeley in the USA, not at a European university.

                However your college prepared you to win CS grants at Berkeley, you did not invent either Unix or Linux. The people at Berkeley who did create BSD were funded in no small part by New York City, where our achievements in other fields
                • Actually, you're far further off in your assessment of me, in too many ways to enumerate. In fact, you've amply [slashdot.org] demonstrated [slashdot.org] all the above stereotypes [slashdot.org] already. I am still curious as to what NYC has done in the way of science, other than pay taxes and consume products. I mean, it's a great place for nightclubs and shopping. I've sort of given up on you ever answering that, though; plus, it's clear that if there are any great scientists there, you sure won't know'em.

                  BTW, you may not think you're a "Bushevi

  • From what I read of the article, it didn't seem that the NSF wanted to rebuild the internet, just experiment with a new way of making the internet. It's even being connected to two other pseudo-internets, Internet2 and LambdaRail.

  • Good News / Bad News (Score:3, Funny)

    by sdpuppy ( 898535 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:43PM (#13416412)
    Good News:

    They're rebuilding the internet to make it more secure, eliminate spam, virus, spoofing and so on.

    Bad News:

    Initiative will use Microsoft programming techniques as its foundation.

    :-) :-) {just joking}

  • .. and it will be the best funded network EVER, what with all those 36 dollar fees they've been taking from me nightly.

    oh.. gotta go deposit my check to get back out of the red.

  • Sensors? Intelligence? This could lead to... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonderkid ( 541329 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:49PM (#13416440) Homepage

    ...SkyNet. The living net.

    Human, may I surf your mind?

  • Needs a Killer App (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:49PM (#13416441)
    If it had a version of napster running on it that the RIAA couldn't disrupt or bust people for using it might even get some use.

    • If it had a version of napster running on it that the RIAA couldn't disrupt or bust people for using

      What problem do the major North American record labels have with the Napster Music Store [napster.com]?

  • GENI are Evil (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:49PM (#13416442) Homepage Journal
    Sure they helped give us some nukes to kill a wraith ship but I still think they're bad.

    Hell I didnt even know they had a internet.
  • Didn't GEnei [cmdrkey.com] die a few years ago?

  • Strategic Incrementalism (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ngr8 ( 504185 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @01:57PM (#13416485) Journal
    There was an old McKinsey article that talked about "Strategic Incrementalism" back in the 80s. Idea was that with a clear vision, one could tweak the way to "good enough".

    While there are intrinsically very ugly problems in client and server software right now, it seems that "Little Science" is displaced by "Big Science" (viz, NSF) in addressing incremental substantive improvements in security and availability for the Internet masses.

    So, for example, as valuable as a *waving hands* non IP infrastructure blah blah might well be... there could be greater good achieved with work on secure computing environments, strong authentication, one time pad encryption methods and etc.

    As a very dear friend of mine was fond of saying "if you want security, pull up your own shorts".

    So, while big honkin backbone and new architectures are and will be very important, some think time at the "big level" regarding applications architecture and services would, likely, produce faster returns and shorter implementation times.
  • The current Internet doesn't need replaced or fixed.

  • IPv6? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:03PM (#13416513) Homepage

    a completely new internet architecture, with built-in security measures and support for ubiquitous sensors and wireless communications devices

    In other words... IPv6?

    • Trusted Network Connect (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:14PM (#13416570) Homepage Journal

      It could use IPv6, but "built-in security measures" makes me think of Trusted Network Connect. Imagine if you needed a Trusted Platform Module plus an approved, unmodified operating system plus an approved, unmodified dialer program that verifies the "integrity" of your machine just to get an IP address. Some analysts claim that most major cable and DSL ISPs are likely to require TNC by 2015 [slashdot.org].

      • Re:Trusted Network Connect (Score:5, Insightful)

        by griffjon ( 14945 ) <.GriffJon. .at. .gmail.com.> on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:57PM (#13416788) Homepage Journal
        Especially given the paranoia/security/centralized control mode we're in with the current regi^H^H^H^Hadministration. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new attempt to enforce key escrow, and for all the "trusted" computer to have "secure" backdoors into their crypto systems that "only" the govt can access with "a warrant"

        (I also hear that there's a movement for a sarcasm tax per-double-quote in the house committee, so I'm tryin' to use 'em while they're free!)

        This all being said, the concept of a mesh network and the work of the guys at DefCon WiFi Shoot-out might be very, very valuable sooner rather than later. Man, wouldn't that be fantastic? A geek-run national wifi mesh... It's be just like 1990s Internet again, until the FCC started raids...
        • As soon as you have a mesh network that large, you have to look into rewriting the routing protocols. The current mix we have [i.e., mainly OSPF and BGP] just wouldn't possibly scale to that many nodes unless you start introducing supernodes. With supernodes comes centralisation, and with centralisation you have a target for the FCC or any similar organisation.

          That's not to say it isn't much easier to change supernodes when all the links are wireless. Also, the solution of more efficient routing protocols s

  • New and Improved (Score:4, Insightful)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:08PM (#13416536) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I'm drifting off topic here, but how can this internet thing simultaneously be new and improved? If it's improved, it existed before. If it's new, it didn't.
    • Here you make the assumption that "new" and "improved" describe the same aspects of the subject. It is improved compared to the Internet, but only new in the sense that it is different and younger.
  • Will it have hookers and blackjack?

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by bullitB ( 447519 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:10PM (#13416554)
    The current version has clearly been a complete failure. Maybe if they start over from scratch, this Internet thing will actually become popular.

  • this is easy to do... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:17PM (#13416589) Homepage Journal
    simply track every transaction on the internet and allow law enforcement to invade and abuse it whever they will it...

    Considering we can break anything we make, no matter what is done, it comes down to this.

    giving access to personal and private information to other humans...

    May as well just start installing gps tracking and personal data recording chips in all humans...
    Then it really won't matter what internet or other future tech we make use of.

    Of course included is a punishment system of shock therapy and AI second guessing what you do to stop you from doing anything on the list of things not to do..... A list created by a few faulty humans of course....

    The point is, there is nothing we can build that we cannot break.

    Making this whole "better internet" just a carrot to get the donkey to move...... in circles.

     
    • You're right. A GENI project goal, via the article:

      privacy and accountability and vary protections for individuals based on "difference and local values"

      "Difference and local values" is code for enabling the Saudi Government to block DanicaRacing.com.

      It's also code for enabling Bush to track and harass people who read Islamic web sites, and enabling Clinton (the current one) to make sure that "parents" have absolute power to mould their "children." Bush and Clinton (and Hatch and Kennedy and ...) will fir

  • In related news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KillerBob ( 217953 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @02:25PM (#13416623)
    In related news, industry analysts have examined the expected content of this "new & improved" web, and have decided to call it the "National Science Foundation Web", or "NSFW" for short. When asked for comment, an official replied "finally, the Internet will have a name that accurate reflects the majority of its content."

  • NSF? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NSF? NSF what? Not safe for what? Not safe for work? Not safe for eyes? Not safe for consumption?

    All I'm seeing here is NSF Ponders and I'm not even sure what a Ponder is and what wouldn't be safe for it.

    These safety bulletins are getting severely lacking here on Slashdot these days.
  • I personally am waiting for the internet like in the Megaman Battle Network games. I want a PET! =)
  • ...think terrorists when they saw NSF?

    Bastij terrorists [wikipedia.org]
    • Funny you should ask....Yes.

      I was half-expecting to see a blurb about the Denton boys, Ambrosia, and something about some project called Helios.

      Wait....

      Reinvent the internet.....Helios.....

      Oh shit!

  • GENI, reinventing, and incremental change (Score:3, Informative)

    by angio ( 33504 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @03:05PM (#13416840) Homepage
    To the posters to shouted "insane!" and "if it's not broken, don't fix it!", a couple of comments.

    First off, there are a number of major challenges facing the Internet. The ones that spring immediately to mind are security, management, and availability. To see some of these, compare the Internet to the (good parts of) the telephone network. 911 emergency phone service has roughly 99.99% availability; the Internet is an order of magnitude worse. You can't get a virus over the phone lines, and it's very difficult to create a botnet of 100,000 people to DDoS, say, a hospital's telephone system. Now, that ignores many of the good things about the Internet -- you can create and run fabulous applications that the network designers never envisioned, etc., at least, if you're not running behind a NAT. ;)

    But wouldn't it be nice to have a network that had the best of all worlds? A network that cost 1/10th as much to manage as it does today? A network where your parents didn't call you up frequently and ask, "It says it couldn't find my DHCP server - what's wrong??" A network where you didn't resort to weird (but clever) hacks like traceroute to try to diagnose problems? Where Scott Richter couldn't create a spam-blasting army of drones? I use Vonage, and I had to dial 911 a few weeks ago to report a fire at the apartment across the street. During part of the conversation, I couldn't hear the operator well enough to understand the questions she was asking. It was a frightening and educational experience.

    One of the most important parts of this program is that it's encouraging researchers to not feel constrained to fit into the current design, and is looking at ways to get that deployed in a way that it can gateway to or run on top of the current Internet. There's a big difference between this program and the Internet2, IPv6, etc. It's both higher risk and (hopefully!) higher reward. Internet2 was pretty much "Internet + faster links + some focused researchy bits"; it got co-oped early on because it provided lots of bandwidth to big science, and was too entrenched to try radical new things that (gasp!) might break. GENI is research + interfaces to allow early adopters -- like, say, slashdotters -- to make use of its services. The idea of creating an infrastructure that can safely be used simultaneously for testing out new research prototypes at all levels and running production versions of those services that succeed is a powerful notion that will give GENI a big edge over prior attempts.

    It's an exciting proposal, and a scary one. If it gets funded, it could be either the biggest success in networking since the Web, or the biggest flop.

    (Disclosure- I'm a networking professor at Carnegie Mellon. This is my field, I've been involved in some of the GENI discussions, and I intend to submit funding proposals to it. I think it'll be one of the best things in years to help academic networking research have a big impact on the real world.)

    • Hey, thanks for the informed reflections, and I sure do hope you guys come up with some radical cool innovations. I'm old enough to have used Telenet with a 300 baud modem, and the change wrought by ARPAnet was breathtaking. These youngsters don't appreciate the triumph any more than they appreciate not being afraid of polio, and for much the same reasons, I guess.

      If you know, I'd be interested in your comments on why the Internet is so much less reliable than the phone network. What's up with that? Is
      • I hope we do too - thanks. :)

        Why is the Internet less reliable? I think it's a combination of things. First, as you suggested, it's young, and is constantly undergoing massive change. The telephone network had years of relative stasis in which to stabalize. The Internet is still experiencing huge growth in capacity and capabilities, as the network and the connected devices grow by leaps and bounds (c.f., Moore's Law. :).

        The second thing is that the Internet is a general -purpose network. People do

  • First, the obsession with wireless everything is beyond moronic as we don't know what our present electromagnetic soup does to our cell structures and synaptic interaction as it is and we want to fill the spectrum even more at higher power levels per unit volume and area? Yeah, that's a great idea. (
    Second, what has made the present Internet great is not top down planning from standards committees and government agencies, but the interplay between them, users, content providers, carriers, corporations mak
  • Yet another way in which the govenrment can spend the money it steals from us in mass-quantities, or justify stealing more money from us. If the project is such a great idea, let it be funded by voluntary means (donations, contributions, etc), rather than by coercive involuntary means (taxes, government borrowing, inflation).

    Why is it that some people think that just because they feel they have a good idea, that justifies stealing money from others, e.g., violating the property-rights of others?

  • JXTA (Score:2)

    by pohl ( 872 ) *
    The goals of Project JXTA [jxta.org] are just as ambitious, except their approach could actually be implemented, since it is defined as a virtual network overlay that rides on top of what we currently have. The similarities between the JXTA project and the original IETF are a bit interesting too, since the JXTA protocols are being used for a fairly large defense system [yahoo.com] (15 billion dollars).

    Plus the set of ideas behind the JXTA protocols are beautiful. (Everyone that I know who has absorbed the protocol specificati

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