Reinventing the Internet

Mar 14, 2006 | Inside: Technologies

New initiatives aim to overhaul the internet. But how can a “clean slate” redesign ever be implemented?

If a planet-wide data network, akin to the internet, were built on Mars, what would it look like? That might sound like a silly question, but it raises an important point. The design of computer networks is constrained by the need to be compatible with the internet and other systems that have grown up over the past four decades. What if network designers could start again with a clean slate, unencumbered by today’s messy reality?

Ever since the internet’s inception in 1969 engineers have tweaked it in a piecemeal fashion. That the system has scaled up well enough to handle almost 1 billion users and blazingly fast fibre-optic links is nothing short of amazing. But as the internet has grown, so too have problems… “We’ve pretty much exhausted the tweaks we can do,” says Tom Anderson of the University of Washington.

Bonus Link: The Economist’s audio interview “Redesigning the Internet”

Read Full Story —The Economist |

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