Subject: fyi: Internet re-engineering projects & notions [WSJ, 100x100; Frankston]

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:39:37 -0800

alternative (non-spam) topic(s)...

First, WSJ article overview of 100x100 project (goal: 100M homes in US 
w/100mbps Net bandwidth).

Second, Frankston musing about abstract, un-mapped (my guess at terminology) 
endpoint naming.

JeffH

------- Forwarded Messages

Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 19:07:22 -0500
To: [email-masked]
From: Dave Farber <[email-masked]>
Subject: [IP] Growth of the Internet May Take Nothing
  Short of a Revolution

Delivered-To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 07:26:19 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <[email-masked]>

Portals
 From the Wall Street Journal --

Growth of the Internet May Take Nothing Short of a Revolution
by Lee Gomes

A new and crucial chapter in the history of the Internet began last week.
Expect all sorts of evolution vs. revolution battles before the chapter is
finally written.

Starting Tuesday, researchers from four big universities and other
research outfits gathered on the Carnegie-Mellon campus in Pittsburgh for
the initial planning session of the "100 by 100" consortium. With a $7.5
million grant from the National Science Foundation, the group is spending
the coming few years thinking about how to improve the Internet so that
100 million U.S. homes can have everyday speeds of 100 megabytes a second.

That's more than 100 times as fast as most high-speed home connections
today. Files would fly across the Web almost as quickly as if they were
taken off your PC's disk drive. Imagine real-time, HDTV video links
between grandparents and grandkids.

This being the Internet, in all of its free-wheeling, global splendor, the
100 by 100 consortium isn't the only group thinking about the Net's
future. Darpa, the Pentagon agency that created the Internet in the 1970s,
is also sponsoring next-generation research under a group headed by MIT's
David Clark. The two groups' work -- there are others -- is seen as
complementary.

Most people think that improving network speeds is a simple matter of
installing faster pipes. But Prof. Hui Zhang, the Carnegie Mellon
computer-science professor who heads the consortium, says even with
so-called fat pipes everywhere, today's Internet might not "scale up."

The Internet, he explains, can't continue to evolve with the same basic
design set down a generation ago. "The Internet has been a huge success,"
he says. "But the chances are that we are setting ourselves up for a great
failure."

Some of the reasons for this concern are obvious to even the most casual
Web user, such as today's chronic problems with spam, hackers and the
rest.

But Prof. Zhang thinks the vastly bigger obstacle to the Brave New Web
involves something more subtle: the growing complexity of the network.
Much of this is unseen to average users; it's deep in the software
standard used to transmit messages -- known as IP, or Internet protocol.

The professor explains the problem: The routers that serve as the Web's
traffic-control devices are so complex that only a few companies can build
them. What's more, keeping a big network running is getting harder and
more expensive -- "a black art," he calls it.

Dealing with these issues means putting a number of once-solved technical
issues back on the table. That's where the evolution vs. revolution
debates come in. For example, should the Internet be "connectioned" or
"connectionless?" Right now, it's the latter. All communications are
tossed into the same big pipe, with routers making sure things get where
they ought to.

But one school of thought says the future Internet needs to have something
of the "connected" flavor of the old-fashioned telephone network, in which
a direct link is established between you and the person you're talking to.

In the world of data-communications types, things don't get any more
contentious than this.

As far as pipes, Prof. Zhang thinks that because of the 1998-2000 telecom
bubble, there are enough fiber-optic lines buried in the U.S. to handle
all of the backbone, "long haul" traffic of even the fastest Internet.

However, connecting up homes -- the "final mile" problem -- remains tricky
and expensive, though new ways of using wireless communications, including
reallocating some or all of the radio spectrum, could help.

Prof. Zhang acknowledges he stands on contested terrain when he says the
Internet can't continue to simply make incremental progress and expect to
reach the goals of the 100 by 100 program. The computer industry is full
of technologies, such as Intel's microprocessors, that were once written
off as dead ends, but which proved resilient under relentless commercial
pressure.

What's more, in this evolution vs. revolution debate, the revolutionists
have another challenge. Networking companies, which weren't around when
the initial decisions about the Net were made, might oppose any technical
changes, no matter how well-deserved, that threaten their market
positions.

Prof. Zhang said that as revolutions go, his would be fairly staid. Most
of the changes he'd want to make to the Net would be built on much of
today's system. The biggest change would involve new equipment, like
switches and routers -- though Prof. Zhang notes they would probably be
changing under any circumstances.

Prof. Zhang is keenly aware of the PR tricks involved in getting people to
move to a new technology. The current high-speed Ethernet system used by
office-computer networks has little in common with the much slower
Ethernet designed decades ago. It keeps the same name largely for
marketing reasons, to give people a sense of continuity and easy
migration.

Similarly, "whatever kind of gadgets we are going to be making in 10
years," he says, "we will still call them 'routers.' "

Send your comments to [email-masked]

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

- -------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

------- Message 2

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 09:11:47 -0500
To: [email-masked]
From: Dave Farber <[email-masked]>
Subject: [IP] more on Growth of the Internet May Take
  Nothing Short of a Revolution

Delivered-To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 22:35:50 -0500
From: Bob Frankston <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [IP] Growth of the Internet May Take Nothing Short of a 
Revolution
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Cc: "David P. Reed Ph. D." <[email-masked]>,
  'Dewayne Hendricks' <[email-masked]>

[Dave -- I'm sending this note with some hesitancy because I feel I should
provide more detail and have a specific proposal but given the WSJ story it
seems appropriate to respond with an overview of what it really means to
rethink the Internet -- it's far more about being dynamic than speed or
other technical demos.]

Revolt? More like just create the kind of Internet we need out of the pieces
lying around. After all, it is just a prototype.

I've been thinking a lot about these issues and have decided that my
"dotDNS" (removing the semantics from the DNS) and IPV6 are not enough. A
few years ago David Reed and I talked about rethinking the Internet now that
we know how well it works. I put it to the side because I thought it would
better to take incremental approaches first.

But the incremental approaches failed to address the fundamental issues. In
speaking to Paul Vixie and others it became apparent that even if I got what
I wanted the routing problem was going to be a limiting factor. In speaking
to Dewayne, it also became apparent that radios are a forcing issue for the
not-very-dynamic Internet - once we aren't dealing with spectrum management
then radios can simply come into existence and disappear in less time that
it takes to petition for an IP address.

I'm working on a detailed proposal but the basic idea is very simple --
going back to basic end-to-end model. Start by having the concept of end
point but now that the idea has proven itself we don't need to associate it
with a physical computer. We can keep the concept abstract. We can also get
past tying the end points to any particular model of routing. In fact we can
have abstract relationships that don't require routing. This concept is
already evident in the use of URNs for their uniqueness without associating
them with an actual device.

The End Point Identifier (EPI) can be a very long random number that is
self-chosen, un-guessable and usable as crypto key.

Routing is just another service and not a layer. Unlike the classic IP
address the EPI is fundamentally stable. The routing infrastructure doesn't
have to track them -- it just needs to deliver packets to a nearby way
station which is what it already does but only a special case -- the
gateway. An end point can be a conversation that uses a particular computer
as a way station for routing. The conversation can move to another machine
without disruption because it is defined by the EPIs and not the computer of
the moment. The host computer isn't an issue, NATs are not an issue and a
particular provider's routing addresses are not an issue.

Since the EPIs are all first class addresses and decentralized there is no
need for the DNS to provide stable handles nor ICANN et al to dispense
identifiers.

Crypto is necessary in order to avoid dependency upon the benevolence of
every way station along the route. WEP and all that are also nonissue.

Obviously I'm only touching upon the concepts here and will be writing about
this in more detail as well as working with others to drill down on the
design details. Even if people don't accept my contention that it is very
doable the very idea of getting past all of those issues should be
interesting if not exciting.

I realize that this short explanation will probably confuse a lot of people
but that's the risk of giving a short synopsis of ideas whose simplicity is
based on underlying principles that take time to absorb. In reading the WSJ
article I'm amused by the idea that we should resurrect the concept of
circuits -- people are confused anyway.

The real power of this approach comes from becoming fundamentally and
intrinsically decentralized. It can be implemented by those who choose to
without asking permission. The current Internet provides an initial set of
routing options so there is no need to build a new physical Internet just
for the new protocols.

Sometimes it's easier to repave than keep patching. It is far simpler to
just assume stable names and use whatever routing is available than
requiring even more complex routing. It is infinitely simpler than dealing
with the ICANN debacle or hoping the DNS works or hoping your operating
system does V6 at all let alone with encryption.

- -------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

------- End of Forwarded Messages

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 00:56:10 -0800 (PST)

You can get 100Mbit service to your house in the Tokyo area from either 
usen or ntt for as little as $73 a month. why don't you just move there 
for three months and try it... 

There's nothing really magical about fiber to the home other than the fact
that we're (the US) letting largish multi-year grants to reachers to study
the implications of deploying technology that has no particular
technological impediments, only the capital investment one.

joelja

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