ZIZZY’s blog

Everyone is going on about Web 2.0 or Web 3.0. Why not Internet 2.0? That’s what some university researchers want (with the government’s backing). They believe we need a clean slate, and should get rid of the established internet and start from scratch.

Dipankar Raychaudhuri, one of those overseeing the project, says the internet “was designed for completely different assumptions,” and thinks it is “a miracle that it continues to work well today.” The internet began during a time when our storage, connections, and processors were severely limited compared to what we have now - and researchers think now that everything is much more advanced we should change the basic architecture of the internet. Either a separate network would run along side the current internet until it replaced it, or instead what we have now would be upgraded and changed significantly but not completely abandoned. Some of the existing set up would be used, but networking equipment would be replaced and software would be rewritten to improve performance.

While most of the original internet was perfected in labs and such, this time law enforcement will most likely want to have things integrated for wiretapping and the like. Freedom is one of the best things about the internet, and this would completely change it - for the worse. So far they haven’t asked to have anything done, but once the research starts to have potential law professor Jonathan Zittrain says “a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room…wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue.” I can’t see this working if they choose to let that happen.

So, who’s working on this? The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) is a project began by The National Science Foundation (who is also funding others) for research, various universities have individual projects, and even government agencies such as the Defense Department are looking into it.

However, it won’t be cheap. Just GENI could cost $350 million, along with another $300 million being spent by the government, universities, and the industry on their own work. Not to mention the billions it would cost to replace the existing hardware and software.

Even if Congress chooses to provide funding though, it will be another 10-15 years before much happens since right now they are only in the beginning stages.

If you want to know more check out the original article, and look around the GENI website as it has more information.

[Image source, with information on what it means]