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Re: WORTH READING Researchers Explore Scrapping Internet
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:22:14 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com> Date: April 14, 2007 8:47:19 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: Re: [IP] Researchers Explore Scrapping InternetThe original Internet was not a "clean slate" approach. It explicitly focused on how to make all networks (existing ones and future ones that would be invented) *interoperable*.
That's why the Internet focused on the hard problem of interoperability, and not the fancy problems that were the domain of communications theorists - those who constructed problems in simple domains so they could prove "optimality" with paper studies or limited prototypes.
There remain very hard problems that relate to world-scale networking. Issues of privacy, power relationships, evolution in a practical stepwise manner.
There is lots of stuff to do in the future of networking - many unsolved problems amenable to academic and industrial research.
But I personally suspect that the idea that the Internet was a "clean slate" approach in 1975 will cause those who promote the new effort to construct what is called a "second system" by Fred Brooks.
Those who are proposing this venture or boondoggle are practicing a version of "cargo cult" thinking, if they are not careful to understand that the Internet was grounded in struggle with some real problems that had huge *societal* implications - not just searching for a way to pay for mathematical or programming research.
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- Re: WORTH READING Researchers Explore Scrapping Internet David Farber (Apr 15)