NSF Preps New, Improved Internet By Mark Baard Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68667,00.html
02:11 PM Aug. 26, 2005 PT The National Science Foundation is backing a major initiative that could lead to a completely new internet architecture, with built-in security measures and support for ubiquitous sensors and wireless communications devices, among other things. The Global Environment for Networking Investigations, or GENI, will include a research grant program to fund new architectures and an experimental facility, which has not yet been planned in detail. The little-noticed initiative was announced Wednesday at a meeting of the Special Interest Group on Data Communication in Philadelphia. The GENI experimental facility will be "designed to explore new (network) architectures at scale," according to the SIGCOMM announcement. GENI (pronounced "genie") will "enable the vision of pervasive computing and bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds by including mobile, wireless and sensor networks," the NSF announcement read. GENI came out of an idea for a "clean slate" internet, which has been discussed by NSF Networking Technology and Systems program director Guru Parulkar, MIT senior research scientist David Clark and other network architects in recent years. Clark served as chief protocol architect for the government's internet development initiative in the 1980s. He believes that new network designs are needed to overcome the viruses, identity theft and other threats plaguing the internet's decades-old infrastructure. The original internet was not designed for security from targeted attacks, said University of California at Los Angeles professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led the development and installation of the internet in the late 1960s. "Security is one of those stepsisters of our field," said Kleinrock. "It was not built in to the original internet. We had a philosophy and culture of trust. Everything we do now (for security) is patchwork, which makes it much harder." The initiative will promote network architectures that balance "privacy and accountability and vary protections for individuals based on "difference and local values," the announcement read. A new internet could also be made to support the privacy choices of individuals and communities as sensors and communications devices become more ubiquitous, GENI organizers hope. People already lack privacy and security on the internet, said Princeton University professor and SIGCOMM chairwoman Jennifer Rexford, one of the GENI organizers. "(Security) is an incredibly important problem today," Rexford said. "And if you don't solve that problem, you haven't solved anything." Princeton is one of three universities that manages the PlanetLab experimental network, which provided some of the inspiration for GENI. Princeton professor Larry Peterson, a member of the PlanetLab steering committee, is also working on GENI. Too little privacy on the internet will further erode confidence in e-commerce, said Rexford. But too much privacy could make it difficult to detect attacks on the network. Rexford envisions a network that could strike a balance between the two "by offering a vast spectrum of opting-in and opting-out." The GENI experimental facility will likely be connected to the National LambdaRail and Internet2 experimental networks. But GENI will be a unique facility, with experimental hardware, "new classes of platforms and networks" and "new computing paradigms enabled by pervasive devices," according to the announcement. GENI will also bridge the gap between current high-speed research networks and ordinary internet users. The program will invite large-scale participation from individuals drawn by exciting new applications running on the network. "One metric of success is that (GENI) actually fills a need for people," said Rexford. "It won't just be focused strictly on nerdy users, but a broader group as well." Similar to the PlanetLab network, GENI will allow its participants to use "slices" of server and network time simultaneously, without siphoning networking resources away from each other. "The idea is that I can run my 10 percent and you can run your 10 percent in parallel," said Rexford. Some GENI servers and networks will work as full-time production servers, which are expected to be available to users at all times. "But we don't want that to prevent someone from doing work that is speculative, too." Kleinrock also welcomed the GENI organizers' plans to have built-in performance-measurement capabilities for the new facility. "Those measurement capabilities were one of the hallmarks of the early ARPANET," said Kleinrock, referring to the network that preceded the internet. GENI organizers plan to stress the experimental architectures with artificial traffic generators, Kleinrock said. "You want to create the conditions that might lead to deadlocks and lock-ups, which are so important in the early stages of design," said Kleinrock. You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
