The
Future Of The Internet: "
While the framework of governance continues to evolve
there is a widespread belief that along with the growth of the
internet, more and more problems such as spam, viruses and 'denial
of service' attacks that can cripple large websites shall begin to
be felt. It seems reasonable to assume that the number of devices
on the network will continue to multiply in new and unforeseen
ways. So researchers are starting from the assumption that
communications chips and sensors will eventually be embedded in
almost everything, from furniture to cereal boxes - 'hundreds of
billions of such devices'. While today's internet traffic is
generally initiated by humans- as they send e-mails, click on web
links, or download music tracks- in future, the vast majority of
traffic may be 'machine to machine' communications: things flirting
with other things – all ready to be connected wirelessly, and will
move around.
The Economist has a related article titled Reinventing the Internet. Asking the question
if a can a ‘clean slate’ redesign of the internet can ever be
implemented.
Few solutions float around:
- One is ‘trust-modulated transparency’. The network's
traffic-routing infrastructure shall judge the trustworthiness of
packets of data as they pass by and deliver only those deemed
trustworthy & dubious packets might be shunted aside for
screening. The whole system would be based on a ‘web of
trust’, in which traffic flows freely between devices that trust
each other, but is closely scrutinized between those that do
not.
- Another idea is a new approach to addressing, called
‘internet indirection infrastructure’ - It would overlay an
additional addressing system on top of the internet-protocol
numbers now used to identify devices on the internet. This
would make it easier to support mobile devices, and would also
allow for ‘multicasting’ of data to many devices at once, enabling
the efficient distribution of audio, video and software.
With Activenets or metanets, devices at the edge of the
network could then dynamically reprogram all the routers along the
network path between them to use whatever new protocol they
wanted.
While the research is still on there some hopes of making some
progress on the technical front – but It may well transpire that
the greatest impediment to upgrading the internet will turn out to
be political disagreements like this , this, over how it should work, rather than the
technical difficulty of bringing it about.The OECD hosted
a workshop titled The Future of the Internet in Paris on 8 March
2006. Some of the presentations look good and a few of them make
a compelling reading.
Category :
Internet,
Emerging Technologies,
Emerging Trends"
(Via Sadagopan's weblog on
Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and
Cyberworld.)
InternetEmerging TechnologiesEmerging Trends