Re: NY Times: Time to build a new Internet?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jari Arkko <jari.arkko () piuha net>
Date: February 16, 2009 2:20:37 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: huitema () microsoft com, jdakin () gmail com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   NY Times: Time to build a new Internet?

Echoing what Christian said, I think we have some real problems and  
some of those are due to the architecture. Research on clean slate  
architecture is very important because it can help us find better ways  
to do things. My personal belief is that some of those new approaches  
might eventually end up being implemented in the current Internet as  
opposed to being a part of a complete overhaul.

That being said, I think we need to be careful about expectations. My  
mother knows the Internet has a number of problems, but she does not  
know how to fix it. Research on new Internet needs to go beyond this.  
Simply stating that we need a new Internet is not enough. We need  
designs that would actually work better. Many of the well known  
Internet problems are actually quite difficult, and its not clear that  
the current research efforts have yet solved them. For instance, can  
we fully eliminate the spam problem, if we still need to be able to  
receive e-mail from previously unknown people? Some of the problems  
are also not just technical. I suspect the routing scalability problem  
will never be solved without changing the economic models that have  
led to the peering contracts that we currently have; people will keep  
adding entries to the routing table if there is no pushback with  
economic impacts. And I agree with David Akin and others that its not  
clear that we want to jump to the other end of the openess vs.  
security scale. Clearly, there are people who want extreme openness  
and people who want extremely secure and closed networks. The crux is  
being able to balance accountability and privacy in the right way. And  
what authority decides what is a part of the "gated community", on a  
planet where even the different governments have very different ideas  
about what is acceptable? I can image issues that would make the  
network neutrality problems pale in comparison.

Jari Arkko





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