The Internet may soon be scrapped April 15, 2007
Posted by Al in : Internet , trackbackAlthough, if it is scrapped it will be to allow a new, and possibly better, network to take it’s place. I do agree that some aspects of the Internet’s current design leave a lot to be desired. The ability to spoof your details, and to sniff other people’s details, is a problem with the open way the current system passes data. The system of ports is rather outdated, and whilst most data is transferred as quickly as possible, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.
I’m hoping that the people who are looking into replacing the Internet will also be looking at it’s associated technologies as well. Mail systems currently lack standards, such as how long to wait before resending a message if the original send is rejected, or at least not acknowledged. This means very little to you at the moment, but as more and more companies start to use “greylisting” to cut down on spam, then this lack of standards will begin to annoy you. P2P networks have grown in popularity over the last few years, and now VOIP providers and even content providers are making use of P2P. However the P2P system has had to be written to overcome limitations of the current Internet – in fact a largescale P2P network functions in much the same way as the Internet, but better. It’s possible that P2P may be a possible map for the new, replacement system. What is certain is the any replacement for the Internet will have to provide a more secure environment, make the addition of mobile devices easy, allow data delivery in guaranteed timescales, give police and government agencies better access, allow virtual networks and distributed networks, provide for P2P, and still allow the user to enjoy themselves. A tall order, and it’s no guarantee that any new system would actually be better than the current Internet.
It’s not worth worrying about this yet, though. First, we will have to go through the joys of switching to IPv6. I would expect this massive upheaval to start to gather momentum next year, as the growth of mobile Internet access causes a lack of IPs. I’m pretty certain that the change from IPv4 to IPv6 will not go smoothly, despite the best assurances of the IPv6 crowd. Still – it will certainly be interesting.
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