SGER: Preliminary study for a new Internet architecture

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This is a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) proposal to undertake a preliminary framing study of a new design for an Internet. There is no doubt that the Internet is both a technical and a world-wide success. However, there are two factors that justify a fresh look at the basic design principles of the Internet. First, the Internet design was initially articulated over 30 years ago, and the set of requirements that it now has to meet were not fully understood at that time. Second, many incremental improvements and modifications have been imposed on the Internet, and the resulting design is getting harder and harder to evolve. There is a fear that even though new requirements continue to emerge, we will have less and less success incrementally trying to change the design to meet them. A radical proposal, framed as a question, is the following: Can the research community devise a fresh, new design for an Internet-a design that takes into account both the wisdom in the original design and what has been learned since, a design that takes into account the requirements the network now faces and those we can predict in the future-and demonstrate a network with sufficient appeal and merit that we might persuade the world to move to it? This is a proposal to explore the above question: to frame the set of requirements, to survey what we now know about network design, to articulate some initial design choices and to propose an outline for a possible major research effort that might bring together a large segment of the community to address a common goal-a new architecture for an Internet.