This time around I thought I would write about the future of the Internet. Please note the capital “I,” as that’s what you will find in the Future Internet Design (FIND) final report, where the authors suggest strategies to the NSF for funding research into networking.
That initial conference took place in 2009 and looked at 49 projects. One outcome of the NSF NeTS FIND Initiative was to continue funding several of the projects. I was vaguely aware of this work, but I also wondered how in the world anyone could hope to change the Internet, the system of networks we’ve all grown to rely upon—really, to depend upon—at this point in time.
On the economic side, there is the issue of sunk costs: companies have spent billions creating the network we have today. Then there is conservatism: people have learned (at least enough) to work with TCP/IP, with all its quirks. And, finally, any new protocols will require hardware support, and that’s the issue I found worried the people whom I talked to about the NSF project I chose to focus on.
