Planet Gadgets Gadget Blog

Researchers Consider Scrapping Internet And Starting Over

by Darren

There are a lot of things that suck on the internet. SMTP, for example, has always had myriad issues. Plus, concerned people have to worry about problems like spyware and virii. So it’s not completely unthinkable that a group of people is out there considering doing the nearly impossible task of starting the whole internet over again, with the intention that, this time, they’ll get things exactly right.

The Internet “works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions,” said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. “It’s sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today.”

No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet’s underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.

The idea is not that crazy. The internet information superhighway is not that different from the nation’s highway system: roads built 20 to 40 years ago are not up to the task. With so many conditions changing, an improved internet would make sense. That said, changing everything out all at once seems ludicrous.

This debate promises to go on for quite some time.