Researchers Want to Take Away the Internet

Researchers are mulling over the idea of scrapping the Internet and starting over; all with the government's blessing!!

With the Internet about two and a half years away from its fortieth birthday, serious thought is being given to the idea of scrapping the Internet and starting over.

Sept.2, 1969 is generally the date given to the birth of the Internet when UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines. And now, forty years later the Internet has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon that a lot of people, and business' cannot live without in their daily lives.

Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects, said the Internet works quite well for many situations, yet the Internet was designed for completely different reasons than the way it is currently being used. Dr.Raychaudhuri states he is also amazed the Internet continues to work so well today.

Because of the technological advances in connection and computer processing speed, researchers think the time is now right for developers to rethink the underlying architecture of the Internet. This change in the Internets architecture could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the
existing pipes.


Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internets founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."

The biggest challenge is any reconstruction of the Internet will be the ability to incorporate the needs of various constituencies. Developers will no longer be able to work quietly in a lab like they did in 1969. Instead, these developers will now need to balance the needs of business' because of the huge role the Internet now plays in how companies operate on a daily basis. In addition, law enforcement officials may also want to have a say on the new Internet configuration because of the wiretapping possibilities of the Internet.

The National Science Foundation wants to build an experimental research net known as GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations). This Foundation is now funding several reconstruction projects at universities and other sites through the FIND ( Future Internet Network Design ) programs. Universities such as Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are involved in the FIND program. Also involved in the program is the Defense Department and other government agencies.

Government officials and researchers in the European Union are also exploring architecture reconstruction projects through their FIRE ( Future Internet Research and Experimentation) program.


One idea currently under discussion is to run a new network parallel to the current Internet that could possibly replace it, or perhaps incorporate aspects of the research that could lead to a major overhaul of the existing architecture.

These so called "clean-slate" efforts are still about ten or fifteen years aways from bearing fruit. Some analysts estimate it may cost up to a billion dollars to replace and/or modify the current software and hardware in the current Internet design. Congress will still have to come up with funding if any research is going to be successful, and with such a high price tag many elected officials may think twice about allocating money for any Internet 'upgrade'.

Advocates of the 'clean-slate' program point out that the researchers world of the '70's and '80's no longer meshes with the realities of the current commercial Internet because of the ever evolving dependence that worldwide commerce has on Internet usage. When the Internet was originally designed, this system was based on the trust users had with each other. But as usage of the Internet became more widespread, hackers and spammers slowly eroded away this user trust system.

Another fact advocates mention is the portability issue now in place with Internet users. Early researchers always thought Internet usage would be limited to fixed user stations. However, with wireless access growing more popular, researchers realize the need for better connection points and security need to be developed so users have more security and less 'black' spots in connectivity.

With the Internet be used for many diverse applications, clean-slate advocates feel it is no longer good strategy to just keep patching in workarounds because even small delays in transmitting data could possibly lead to life threatening situations. Just think of the doctor who is receiving surgical assistance via teleconferencing when all of a sudden there is a five to ten second delay, or even garbled transmissions, in input from another physician. This delay could be make a big difference in the outcome of this doctors surgery.


The ever increasing reliance on high speed connections, wireless access points, and the increased need for better security may mean the end to the Internet as we know it. But if developers around the world have their way, the Internet will come back a stronger, faster and more secure entity the world will need as remote work and commerce sites become more and more a reality in everyday life.

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