Researchers: Scrap the Internet and Start Over

[Capper]

NEW YORK — Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.

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.

Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."

Researchers: Scrap the Internet and Start Over

[Panda Man]

HAH! I'd like to see them pull that off :P

[screwballl]

they should be able to do this by just start by getting the DNS servers replaced with a verification algorithm that verifies the origination and target to prevent scams, viruses, spam and many other things that are currently wrong with todays internet. This would also have to coupled with a patch to all OS's that have a part of the algorithm on the computer to allow or deny these connections. The easiest patch would be for linux, the hardest would be getting MS to actually release the patch for all OS's that are seen on the internet including windows 95/98 machines and newer.
The problem is that knowing MS if this was attempted, they would only patch Vista so therefore the ONLY way to get on the internet would be to build/buy a new computer with Vista on it. Or find a firmware modifiable router that can handle the verification algorithms so that the other computers behind it can be any OS.