DARPA's network research direction has been somewhat aenemic over the last couple of years, given the force protection focus and GWOT mission to which DARPA has adapted. It's pretty easy to overreact to the DARPAtech stuff, esp. when a PPT slide or news article says "IP is broken".
IP isn't broken. From a program management perspective, "IP" is merely referring to a large number of interacting protocols, from the lowest level physical layer to the application layer. If one reads the article with a little more care and not as a manifesto, DARPA is interested in a protocol suite where static (wired) networks are a special case. What exists is a network system where the dynamic (mobile/unwired) network mgmt is grafted onto the static network, treating the dynamic network as a special case. DARPA wants to change the way protocols are designed, where the network is primarily designed for dynamic nodes (and all of the overhead that entails). I wouldn't read much more into the program statements than that, despite the fact that controversy makes good press. One really good example of what the program is most likely aiming toward is the MIT RON research. It's not the IP routing protocols or the 2-tier routing hierarchy that's broken, it's the fact that these protocols converge so slowly to repair the network. Thus, RON is successful in the fact that traffic can continue to get to its destination via the RON overlay despite the routing reconvergence and the time it takes for reconvergence. Currently, RON claims to improve reliability by orders of magnitude rather than fixing routing protocol brokeness. The article also mentioned something along the lines of "Redesign The Seven Layer Model!" Frankly, I've always preferred the four layer IETF model because it didn't have the extra useless layers; but hindsight is 20/20, after all. I could look at the ceiling and foresee the session and presentation layers suffering the death they truly deserve, but the remaining layers staying intact. Layers may need subdividing or even outright addition to the current model so that overlays and the recovery semantics they provide are more explicit. SMTP is not a good example of what's wrong with IP and I'm not even sure why COL Gibson or the other presenters even used what's arguably the most successful Internet protocol example. As the article points out, SMTP's promises are pretty weak regarding whether e-mail gets delivered, if at all, or the timeliness with which delivery occurs. Then again, the USPS doesn't make any strong promises either for regular letters. When the USPS does make promises, you pay extra for them, and even then, delivery confirmation is not a gauruntee if the return address is hosed. Of course, if DARPAtech had worded their presentations with less controversy, most participants would have yawned and said "Oh, yeah, business as usual -- nothing interesting here." Death and complete redesign of IP? Not likely in my lifetime 'cos "It just works, mate!" On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 11:08:31AM +0100, Anthony G. Atkielski wrote: > Jeff Williams writes: > > > Seems that the self styled "father of the internet", Vinton Cerf's > > IP [ Internet Protocol ] has finally begun to be recognized as > > obsolete for wireless networking. > > As compared to what?
