New society aims to 'save' the Internet

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 April 2009 04:33

Business IT - Technology

A new body, the Pouzin Society, has been formed "to provide a forum for developing viable solutions to the current Internet architecture crisis." The society, named after Louis Pouzin, the inventor of datagrams and connectionless networking, will hold its initial meeting in Boston MA from4-7 May in conjunction with FutureNet. Through an ongoing series of meetings, collaborative efforts and publications, its seeks to "guide the emergence of a new network architecture that will support user needs for the decades to come."

According to its web site (http://pouzinsociety.org ) "About 15 years ago, it became clear that IPv4 was reaching its limits, and the IETF responded by creating IPv6. In 2006 came the tacit admission that there continue to be fundamental scaling problems in the Internet routing architecture which would only be exacerbated by IPv6, and that Moore's Law could not save us this time. Several solutions were proposed, all based on revising IPv6 addressing using the concept of a locator/identifier split.

"Work has proceeded diligently, but a few months ago, it became clear that not only was this approach fatally flawed, but by implication, so was IP, or any variation of it. Academic efforts, beginning with NewArch and continuing with FIND and GENI are no closer to finding a solution than we were a decade ago."

The society sees salvation in the ideas contained in "Patterns in Network Architecture" by John Day which it says " takes a unique approach to solving the problem of network architecture. Piercing the fog of history, he bridges the gap between our experience from the original ARPANET and today’s Internet to a new perspective on networking. Along the way, he shows how socioeconomic forces derailed progress and led to the current crisis." (more details on the society's web site.

The initial meeting will comprise a one day organising meeting on May 4 to discuss collaboration and next steps. On May 6 and 7 there will be a working meeting at Boston University on the specific topic of the current addressing crisis with the aim of "forming a group that builds implementations of this new network architecture to evaluate its scalability, security, and other pertinent characteristics."

Membership is open to qualified members of the networking community, both academic and commercial. Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.