Rethinking the Internet
If you stop to think about it, the pioneering scientists and engineers who contributed to the design of the Internet did a magnificent job. Pause for a minute and consider the technological wonder that allows you to access information in many formats from anywhere and everywhere. The success in handling today’s flood of traffic is even more stunning when you consider the age of many of the concepts. The Internet goes back to the old ARPA Net of the late 1960’s so it isn’t surprising that the system has begun to creak a little. Various new approaches are being considered and PC World has an article that talks about some of the ideas:
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article late last month titled “The clean slate way to redo the Internet.” It quoted Rutgers University professor Dipankar Raychaudhuri as saying that the Internet “was designed for completely different assumptions” and that “it’s sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today.”
The Inquirer article raises broader concerns, all rooted in the fact that the Internet’s design reflects the constraints of the early 1970s. Computing in that period was based on monolithic mainframes and dumb terminals. Technology and application requirements have moved beyond that simple beginning. Has time stood still in the network world? If it hasn’t, the Internet’s mission also must have changed, along with the technology on which it is based.
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