Subject: Internet 2020 Goals

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 12:57:05 -0400

While we frequently see complaints about where the Internet is headed
on this list and sometimes see proposals to change that direction we
seem to rarely consider what that direction should be.

The only time we have done that recently at a high level has been in
response to the Snowden disclosures. And we will probably revisit that
in the near future when Greenwald drops the final installment of the
documents which is who is being targeted.

Privacy is one important goal that we want to achieve. But it isn't
the only goal that I think is important. And I don't think we will
make much progress even on Privacy unless there is some sort of
deadline.

Hence the need for Internet 2020. We have six years to go before 2020
which is sufficient time to do useful development and deployment. It
might even be possible to do research, development and deployment in
that time frame.

Right now we have a lot of governments that are trying to get involved
in the governance of the Internet. Often without any understanding of
what it is or why it is built the way it is. A risk we face is that if
we do not define what our goals are, others will do that for us.

Another risk we face, one that I think is unfortunately realized
rather often here is that if we don't state our goals, we can't make
common cause with others who have the same set of goals. Most IETF
participants would probably agree with most of what emerged as
consensus at Netmundial. But most IETF-ers still regard the initiative
as a threat rather than an opportunity.

If we set concrete goals and realistic deadlines then there is a
probability that at least some policy makers and providers of research
funds will factor those goals and deadlines into their own decision
making processes. This is how the policymakers themselves work. The EU
did this when they set 1992 as the date for 'completion' of the single
market. Now as everyone who is familiar with the issue knows, 1992 was
neither the start or the end of that process. But setting that date
did act as a forcing function that drove the process from 20% to 90%
complete.

So what are the goals that we might reasonably hope to achieve by 2020?

By goals I mean providing capabilities that meet user requirements,
not the deployment of specific technologies. So I don't see deployment
of IPv6 as the type of high level goal we should start with.
Deployment IPv6 is not an end in itself, deployment of IPv6 is merely
a means to the end goal of ensuring that everyone can get Internet
service. And with a population of 7 billion we obviously need more
than 4 billion IP addresses.

So IPv6 is really just one technology that is serving the high level
goal of Access: The Internet is for everyone. But achieving the access
goal means much more than deployment of IPv6.

Returning to the policy maker interface. One of the problems with IPv6
deployment today is that the deadlines have always been fungible. Even
now with the IPv4 address space exhausted, IPv6 is far from
ubiquitous.

The three high level goals I see are:

1) Security: All Internet protocols should provide confidentiality and
integrity by default.

2) Access: The Internet is for everyone and everyone should be able to
use it regardless of their geographic location or political
interference.

3) Autonomy: [Here I need a concise definition]

The third goal is the hardest to define but probably the most
important. One of the main reasons that the Web is designed the way it
is and why it became so popular was that it gave individual users
control.

At the time the Web was invented, the IT infrastructure at CERN was
centered on a large mainframe system, CERN-VM. The mainframe
administrators were the aristocracy and the users were serfs. A lot of
time and effort went into reminding the users of this. Anyone who got
an account on CERN-VM would have all their mail sent to that machine
by default, that was not a choice. And since it was an ESIDIC machine
it meant that your mail would never work again.

The Web broke up the monopoly of access to the information hoarded on
CERN-VM. It wasn't necessary to have an account on the mainframe to
read the phone book or to find out the Delphi meeting schedules or any
of the other inconveniences that the commissars of CERN-VM had
inflicted.

The Web was designed to break up that information monopoly which is
why it then went on to break up the planned information monopoly of
'Interactive-TV', the future of networking as imagined by Time Warner.
The only interaction in Interactive-TV was that you could buy stuff
from overpriced online shopping malls. Users were just passive
consumers. The designers never thought about about the possibility
that users might actually interact by creating content themselves.

But now as a result of institutional design and network effects we
face forces that threaten to eliminate user autonomy returning us to
the pre-Web model.

My problem with the institutional arrangements in ICANN is that I have
no recourse whatsoever. If ICANN decides to jack up the price of
domain names to $100 each, I have to pay up or lose my domains. And
that is important because when I am using [email-masked], Google
effectively owns my Internet email presence. If they decide to change
terms of service or impose ridiculous fees then exercising my exit
right of switching email providers comes with an enormous switching
cost.

So the starting point for Internet autonomy is to have our own domain
names. Which is why I own hallambaker.com. But while this gives me
autonomy with respect to google, I do not have autonomy with respect
to VeriSign or ICANN.

DNS raises important autonomy issues which is why I have been working
on it for the past five years. But it isn't the only area where
autonomy is an issue.

Autonomy is an important framing on the net neutrality debate. I find
the usual framing highly suspect because there are circumstances where
I would be happy to have free Internet access that doesn't work with
Vonage or Netflix unless those companies pay the provider. My real
concern is whether that is a choice or a mechanism to extract unfair
rents where I pay the ISP for the Internet service and then pay again.

Autonomy is also the reason that I am very concerned by the recent
trend where web properties require the use of one particular social
network to comment on their blogs. The commercial reason they are
doing it is of course that they want the exposure that comes from
linking the comments to that social network and advertising the
comments to their friends. But they are taking away my autonomy and
they don't even register that some people would legitimately see that
as unacceptable.

And lest people accuse me of being anti-corporate here. Time-Warner
made far more money from its Web properties than it would ever have
made from their Interactive-TV. And the Time-Warner management that
was clueless about Interactive TV also managed to burn half their
shareholder value by gifting it to the shareholders of AOL, a business
unit they eventually disposed of for a few percent of what they paid.

My thesis is that companies that back the goals Internet users want
will be the leaders of the Internet in 2020. So if I am right and
Security, Access and Autonomy are the goals they will get behind,
companies that want to become or remain leaders should back them.

So those are my goals. What goals should we be attempting to address?
What are realistic timescales?

Are we just going to be happy with a faster Internet with an
effectively unlimited address space or do we have bigger goals?

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 20:16:01 +0100

I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything you wrote here. The
thing I agree with most of all is the idea of selecting some long-range
goals so we can at least aim for them. My inlined comments are all minor.

> 1) Security: All Internet protocols should provide confidentiality and
I generally agree with this as a default stance, but I do have some worries
that particularly on the constrained client end, we may need to ensure that
we can lose much of the security. It's happened before.

I think we can ensure that the network proxies involved always handle
services which require confidentiality and integrity, though.

This suggests we have a "zeroth law", as Asimov would put it, of:

0) Interoperability: All Internet protocols should be capable of
independent implementation on a range of platforms and deployments with no
visible limitation in functionality.

> use it regardless of their geographic location or political
I think "use" is far too weak here. I'm folding over to your next point, of
course, somewhat, but perhaps "engage", or "take part in". A typical home
user cannot, for example, spin up a webserver. An atypical user can, by
punching suitable holes in NAT devices (oh, if only that were literal), but
cannot run a VOIP service. I'd like to return to an Internet where if you
could read a web page you could run a server.

> 3) Autonomy: [Here I need a concise definition]
I entirely agree with your goals here, and "Autonomy" is a good name for it.

What about:

Autonomy: Every individual on the Internet should be able to assert
ownership and control over their own data, and be on equal footing as
regards both offering and consuming content and services, as well as
communication.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 May 2014 13:48:14 +1200

I can see these as goals that the Internet Society might want to
adopt. I'm not sure that 2) and 3) are IETF goals in any way,
and I think we've got as close to stating 1) in technical terms
as we ever will (see RFC 7258 for the bibliography on that).

One more comment in line...

> visible limitation in functionality.

Frankly I doubt that. Either it's fairly meaningless (a "range" could be
just two types of device) or it's impossible (some protocols are definitely
only going to work in specific environments; see ROLL for example).

   Brian

---

From: Ofer Inbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 May 2014 22:59:03 -0400

I'd propose a goal that I think is familiar to people on this list,
and has probably been stated in various forms over the years.  Your
goals touch on it a bit, but none of them quite exactly say it:

The Internet isn't just for everyone to use, but also, the Internet is
for all of its "users" to *develop*.  The Internet is for participants.

Which means an Internet that welcomes, invites, and has as few
barriers as possible, to people contributing.

Where "contributing" doesn't just mean content in the forms that
others have already defined and built for - be that videos, cat
pictures, or blog posts.  Contributing also means contributing
new applications, new content formats, new protocols.  I think
we really want an Internet where users are invited, encouraged,
and able, to do those things, and where barriers are reduced.

For example, the fact that all RFCs are free and easily available
is something that supports this goal.

On the other hand, the fact that so many millions of people's Internet
access comes with restrictions on what ports are open to them, is
something that works against this goal.  Not necessarily the "fault"
of ISPs; maybe given the current environment, they really do need
to do things like this to fight malware and spam.  But that means
we have an Internet that is deficient on this point.

For another example, the fact that so many people have Internet access
on general purpose computers where they can write their own scripts
or programs, supports this goal.

On the other hand, the fact that so few people learn to program
works agains it.  the fact that so many people are moving to using
Internet devices that put barriers on the way of writing or installing
arbitrary programs, works against this goal.

  -- Cos

---

From: "Niels Dettenbach (Syndicat IT&Internet)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 May 2014 09:53:11 +0200

>for all of its "users" to *develop*.  The Internet is for participants.
ACK,
but exactly these and similiar terms remembers me about the "Web 2.0" pseudo-paradigm with which "IT-analysts" and "experts" tried to make us happy some years ago, but the result was a new set of centralized, proprietary internet services like the "social media" gigants which - by the end of the day - made connectivity between peoples not easier nor flexible at all.

Why i.e. in 2014 it is still not possible for users to have just "one" data record as their "primary internet address" on their i.e. business card (and this while having full freedom about where/on which server/provider having which service or part of service - i.e. in the old "fashioned" form of user@host (like in Email)? 

By RFCs and i.e. DNS infrastructure there still ARE enough open standards / protocols allowing (simplified) to "phone" or "talk" (SIP/RTP,  XMPP etc.), to "email" (SMTP), to "publish content" (HTTP, FTP, DAV etc.) or even "authenticate"/"sign" and much more over the same "address" and but by practice most of that lacks of realized interoperability of systems (i.e. most phones - devices and networks - still did not allow to input / process alphanumerics), XMPP is in a minor market position and "SIP is not SIP".  The DNS still offers features covering most of such an "address resolution" but not all client software can handle DNS so far.

The "web 2.0" aera brought "single points of contacts" for users, but most users have more then a hand full of different "contact addresses", URIs to "be reachable" for different audiences of different customers of different service providers. A business card  is as long as never before in many situations. 

Is'nt that "crazy"?

A similiar situation we have in the widely proprietary "internet search market" where we was "going away" from former (and outdated) protocols/standards without something new, leaded to a oligopolized commercial search infrastructure and it could'nt be a "solution" to have more and more web spiders/robots running each web site or internet ressources, generating more and more overhead for more and more data redundancy in practice  (tried to concept a open  "solution" on http://www.seeky.org some times ago with a couple of colleagues).

What i want to say here: There is a lot of further potential even in "old" and sometimes called "outdated" standards which we did not used in their full potential. On the other hand slightly standard extensions could offer a huge amount of user flexibility/freedom and ergonomics in practice for any user.

Just my two cents...

best regards,

Niels
-- 
Niels Dettenbach
Syndicat IT&Internet
http://www.syndicat.com

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 May 2014 17:22:46 -0700

On 5/18/14, 12:53 AM, Niels Dettenbach (Syndicat IT&Internet) wrote:
>> The Internet isn't just for everyone to use, but also, the Internet
>> is for all of its "users" to *develop*.  The Internet is for
>> participants.
> ACK, but exactly these and similiar terms remembers me about the "Web
> 2.0" pseudo-paradigm with which "IT-analysts" and "experts" tried to
> make us happy some years ago, but the result was a new set of
> centralized, proprietary internet services like the "social media"
> gigants which - by the end of the day - made connectivity between
> peoples not easier nor flexible at all.

You're confusing outcomes and causes...

analysts don't make large economies of scale attractive, numbers do.

> Why i.e. in 2014 it is still not possible for users to have just
> "one" data record as their "primary internet address" on their i.e.
> business card (and this while having full freedom about where/on
> which server/provider having which service or part of service - i.e.
> in the old "fashioned" form of user@host (like in Email)?
> 
> By RFCs and i.e. DNS infrastructure there still ARE enough open
> standards / protocols allowing (simplified) to "phone" or "talk"
> (SIP/RTP,  XMPP etc.), to "email" (SMTP), to "publish content" (HTTP,
> FTP, DAV etc.) or even "authenticate"/"sign" and much more over the
> same "address" and but by practice most of that lacks of realized
> interoperability of systems (i.e. most phones - devices and networks
> - still did not allow to input / process alphanumerics), XMPP is in a
> minor market position and "SIP is not SIP".  The DNS still offers
> features covering most of such an "address resolution" but not all
> client software can handle DNS so far.
> 
> The "web 2.0" aera brought "single points of contacts" for users, but
> most users have more then a hand full of different "contact
> addresses", URIs to "be reachable" for different audiences of
> different customers of different service providers. A business card
> is as long as never before in many situations.
> 
> Is'nt that "crazy"?
> 
> A similiar situation we have in the widely proprietary "internet
> search market" where we was "going away" from former (and outdated)
> protocols/standards without something new, leaded to a oligopolized
> commercial search infrastructure and it could'nt be a "solution" to
> have more and more web spiders/robots running each web site or
> internet ressources, generating more and more overhead for more and
> more data redundancy in practice  (tried to concept a open
> "solution" on http://www.seeky.org some times ago with a couple of
> colleagues).
> 
> What i want to say here: There is a lot of further potential even in
> "old" and sometimes called "outdated" standards which we did not used
> in their full potential. On the other hand slightly standard
> extensions could offer a huge amount of user flexibility/freedom and
> ergonomics in practice for any user.
> 
> Just my two cents...
> 
> 
> best regards,
> 
> 
> Niels
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 May 2014 21:28:24 -0400

> barriers as possible, to people contributing.

I think that gets to the heart of the matter.

Security and Access are uncontroversial. Every government wants them.
They might want security with a hole in it that allows them to violate
users but they don't want anyone else having that power over their
citizens.

Autonomy is the goal that gives authoritarians of every stripe
sleepless nights. They describe the Internet as a 'failed state'
because it gives users autonomy.

It is also a rather better description of the goals of IETF than
'interoperability'.

As of this weekend I have 8 light switches and three thermostats under
IP based control. They all interoperate but the protocols that they
talk are opaque and undocumented.

One consequence of this is that the Revolv hub I have is pretty
useless because the only programming model supported is via an iphone
app. And the user interface is tedious and just not up to the level of
abstraction required. There is no way to say 'turn off all the devices
when I go out'. I have to hand code every action for every event.

Now lets imagine if Google/Nest had started by making customer
autonomy a goal rather than trying the MBA strategy of 'make your
customers dependent on you'. If Nest had started with that in mind
they would have given me a documented API that I can use to control my
thermostats and to send events when people are detected in a
particular room.

Now maybe one person in 1000 would use that API. But one of the people
who did might develop the unexpected piece of code that takes the
whole home automation thing to the next level.

Autonomy seems to me to be at the heart of what the open source
movement is really about and the 'maker' scene that has established a
Technology and Crafts movement that has remarkable echoes of the
Victorian Arts and Crafts movement. I think Ruskin would be quite at
home reviewing steampunk art.

---

From: "Carlos M. Martinez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2014 16:17:14 -0300

I agree with almost everything you wrote, and I think we definitely need
something akin to a corporate 'vision' but for the Internet.

What is our utopia? What do we want the Internet to look like and how do
we want it to work in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ?

I also agree that some of these goals might not be IETF-related, but I
think we (as the IETF we) can set a vision of what we would like the
Internet to be.

cheers!

~Carlos

---

From: Miles Fidelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2014 22:15:23 -0400

At one time, NSF and the National Academy of Sciences used to publish 
"research agendas" for networking - when did this stop?

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 11:00:58 -0700

> "research agendas" for networking - when did this stop?

It didn't, and all such reports (including 2020 visions) have had the 
same amount of impact (lots of heat, but no light IMO).

Unless the IETF is prepared to put up research money to back it up*, 
making statements about the future of the Internet is unproductive 
prognostication.

Joe

---

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 10:05:52 +0200

> making statements about the future of the Internet is unproductive

Yet they spend some bucks on it:

Moving towards a more robust, secure and agile Internet
NSF announces $15 million in awards to develop, deploy and test future Internet architectures
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131248&org=CISE&from=news

Ale

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 09:54:26 -0700

> Yet they spend some bucks on it:

The *IETF* has not.

> http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131248&org=CISE&from=news

The NSF and DARPA absolutely have.

DARPA has been two-faced about it, though - on the one hand, repeatedly 
celebrating the Internet as it's "poster" success story, on the other 
hand undermining the entire concept of shepherding nascent ideas for the 
20+ years it took for the Internet to gain traction. Shame on anyone 
from our community who attended one of these celebrations since Tether's 
tenure there, IMO.

Joe

---

From: "Carlos M. Martinez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 17:32:46 -0300

Interesting reading, but it doesn't really address the original post's
idea.

Setting some goals and a general vision is not prognostication. It's
thinking about how you want things to be, rather than trying to guess
what they'll be like.

You might never get there, and  that's ok. But it helps upholding values
and principles, and guides new work.

It's a bit like writing science fiction.

I, for one, would propose leaving past grievances in the past and to
look towards the future.

Cheers!

~Carlos

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 13:43:13 -0700

> I, for one, would propose leaving past grievances in the past and to

My point still remains; the future lies with those who invent it, not 
with those who want merely to talk about it.

Absent research funds to make things happen, having the IETF - or ISOC - 
host such an exercise serves no useful purpose other than to occupy the 
time of the participants.

That being said, it's a perfect honeypot for those so inclined.

Joe

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 08:00:28 -0400

On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 4:43 PM, Joe Touch <[email-masked]> wrote:
> My point still remains; the future lies with those who invent it, not with
> those who want merely to talk about it.

I think I have invented enough of the present to talk about the future.

The problem I see at the moment is that the IETF has been very US
centric and the response to other governments suggesting they should
play a similar role to the US has been parochial at best.

> host such an exercise serves no useful purpose other than to occupy the time
> of the participants.

The US government has a tendency to plead poverty when it comes to
research funds. What funds that are available are often tied to
military goals.

Turkey is currently in an economic boom. Brazil has dumped $10 billion
on hosting the world cup and is looking to spend twice that on the
Olympics. Both governments intend to spend on networking research to
boost their countries to become the regional technology centers.

There is no shortage of research funds to 'make things happen'. That
being a superset of research funds available to US based researchers.

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 09:15:10 -0700

> I think I have invented enough of the present to talk about the future.

I'm talking about whether the IETF/ISOC is a useful home for the 
discussion. I don't think it is, because for every 100 network 
researchers there are 101 such documents "predicting the future", none 
of which have done much without associated money.

> play a similar role to the US has been parochial at best.

The IETF is an engineering organization, and does its best work when it 
focuses on that. Pontification is for people who wear funny hats ;-)

> research funds. What funds that are available are often tied to

Given the fact that we're having this conversation using the "Department 
of Defense" protocol suite (the original name of the Internet 
protocols), on a network that was originally called (D)ARPANET, I don't 
see why this is a problem.

> Turkey is currently in an economic boom.

Which explains the title of this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/28/business/turkey-economy-election/

> Brazil has dumped $10 billion
> Olympics.

Which explains this as well:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/hope-fades-in-brazil-for-a-world-cup-economic-boost-1401242039

 > Both governments intend to spend on networking research to

That'd certainly be nice, if it happens.

> being a superset of research funds available to US based researchers.

There have been more than a few efforts in this area, and yes, it's a 
superset of the funds available from the US. Examples that jump to mind are:

	Akari - Japan
	4Ward - EU
	FIRE - EU
	FIBRE - Brazil/EU

Do you think the funding agencies around the world are driven by 
documents issued by the ISOC? If so, then why do most of them end up 
writing their own? (hint: because they have the money).

Joe

---

From: Ofer Inbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 12:41:37 -0400

IMO this tangent is off track.

The goal wasn't to "predict" anything, but rather to state the
vision we want to pursue.  So it's misguided to critique that on
the basis that lots of people make predictions and are often wrong.
Having goals and trying to pursue them is not the same as guessing
what will happen.

The critique that it's pointless for the IETF to have a vision because
it can't meaningfully pursue it is more applicable, but I think it's
mistaken.  It'd be more true to say that the IETF cannot make such a
vision happen on its own.

Whatever the Internet becomes will be guided by money and time and
ideas.  By policy and by software and by design and protocol work
and applications and laws and other things.  All have roles to play.
And by ideas - the development, articulation, and spreading of ideas.

IETF is influential in one corner of this, but it's a significant
corner.  If the IETF does put out a clear vision, and if IETF people
do use that vision to guide their design and engineering work, it
can certainly contribute to guiding the Internet towards that vision.

In addition to actual IETF work, the IETF is a nexus of people
involved in all the other aspects of the Internet, so it's not
a bad forum to hash out such a vision in order to give it credence
in other circles.  Other people can than take that and use it
elsewhere, at their employers or in their government agencies, etc.
  -- Cos

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 09:50:30 -0700

> Having goals and trying to pursue them is not the same as guessing

Sure. I would have a few goals in that mind, for the I*E*TF:

- clean up and unify the core (mandatory) requirements for Internet devices

- clean up and unify the optional requirements for Internet devices

- clean up and unify the BCPs for:
	- designing new protocols or modifying existing ones
	- operating networks
	- writing specifications about the above

We spend a lot of time talking about what we want others to do, but it's 
difficult to see holes in the current framework as it's currently 
organized ;-)

Joe

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 20:51:23 -0400

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Joe Touch <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'm talking about whether the IETF/ISOC is a useful home for the discussion.
> I don't think it is, because for every 100 network researchers there are 101
> such documents "predicting the future", none of which have done much without
> associated money.

Well you completely missed the difference between a goal and a prediction:

A goal is an outcome that is desired.
A prediction is an outcome that is expected.

As I pointed out at the start, the money concern here is what to spend it on.

And I am asking the question of people who form the IETF what goals
they are interested in. That seems like the sort of exercise every
organization should carry out. And since the IETF does not have any
form of representative governance this is the obvious place to raise
that question.

Asking what IETF people what they would like to achieve is not the
same as asking them what they think the IETF should do. As you know
very well, when I don't think something is a fit for the IETF, I take
the work elsewhere. And if there isn't an organization that is a fit
we can start another one. Been there and done that four times now.

> focuses on that. Pontification is for people who wear funny hats ;-)

Twenty years ago your government asked me where they could best spend
money on Internet related research. Now there are non-US parties
asking me the same question. Trying to give them an answer is hardly
'pontificating'.

> Do you think the funding agencies around the world are driven by documents
> issued by the ISOC? If so, then why do most of them end up writing their
> own? (hint: because they have the money).

Because they have more vision than ISOC does.

---

From: Miles Fidelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:17:32 -0400

> Because they have more vision than ISOC does.

That's about right.

There was a time when folks in the Internet community rotated in and out 
of Program Manager slots at DARPA (can you say Licklider, Kahn, Cerf, 
Taylor, Roberts, ...) and an awful lot of folks had a lot of input to 
various research and funding agendas.  Not so much anymore.  Networking 
related topics seem to have fallen off the list on the BAAs and SBIR 
solicitations I see - there's certainly important work to be done, but 
folks don't seem to be promoting a research agenda as much.  (Well 
somewhat at lower levels of the protocol stack, but application stuff 
seems to have really dried up.)

Miles Fidelman