Post on 27-Jun-2022
A Human View of the Internet
Session: Information Network and Social
Development
STEPHEN WOLFF
CTO, INTERNET2
JUNE 3, 2014
CONTENTS
A HUMAN VIEW OF THE INTERNET
1.0 A SOCIETAL ANALOGUE
2.0 EARLY INTERNET EVOLUTION
3.0 NETWORK EFFECTS
4.0 EROSION
5.0 REVERSAL AND RECOVERY
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1.0 A SOCIETAL ANALOGUE
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Societal systems, just like biological ones, are subject
to punctuated evolution
…with new eras ushered in by disruptive technology
memorialized in iconic images
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Reconstruction
of a 14th c.
peasant’s
cottage,
Sussex, UK
Corliss steam engine
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19th c. factory
France
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ENIAC
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IBM 650
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Internet
W. R. Cheswick
2.0 EARLY INTERNET EVOLUTION
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The Internet itself was the culmination of a
sub-trend of the Industrial Revolution:
The evolution of communications technology
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Telegraph, telephone (1-to-1)
Conversation
you me
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Radio, television (broadcast media)
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“Content”
“Listening/viewing audience (consumers)”
“Broadcaster”
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Internet
We are all connected to each other
We are all producers
We are all consumers
ISOC: The Internet is for everyone
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Thus, in its original intent, the Internet
Was egalitarian,
Had no distinguished nodes, and
Offered equal privileges for communication among nodes
– i.e., feedback and feedforward were equal
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But Manuel Castells says all societies have been networked
So why have we not see network effects until recently?
Castells’ theory – delay in the links led to essentially one-way
command and control
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Engineering and design
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• Engineering is design under constraints – Wm. A. Wulf,
President, (US) National Academy of Engineering
• Design is guided by principles
• Two principles of Internet design –
“end-to-end” principle – i.e., intelligence at the periphery
Consensus-based standards
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1997
A view - from within Bell Laboratories
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“We reject kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.”
David Clark, Chair, Internet Activities Board, 1981-1989
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⬅︎ Users of packets
⬅︎ Bits into packets & move the packets
⬅︎ Sources of bits
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A candidate for the nodes of the
NSFNET, 1986:
BBN Interface Message
Processor (IMP) as used on the
ARPANET
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DEC PDP-11
“Fuzzball” NSFNET
Backbone node
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• The first NSFNET
– a response to the
Lax report (1982)
• Interconnected six
supercomputer
centers at 56 kb/s
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• NSFNET v.2
• 13 nodes, 1.54 mb/s
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Internet2 today
100 Gb/s
3.0 NETWORK EFFECTS
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Externalities
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• Every computer had an address
• The network moved the packets
• Anything could be a producer of packets
• Anybody could build a consumer of packets
• …and it was instantly accessible to everyone
• You didn’t mess with a packet unless it was addressed to you
• And so – well beyond what the original designers imagined - we got:
The Web
Google, Yahoo!, Baidu, …
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BitTorrent, …
eBay, Amazon, CraigsList, …
Spam, worms, viruses, …
The Internet was for everyone
4.0 EROSION
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• “Differentiated Services”
• Some packets are more important than others
Remote terminal (telnet) packets in the Fuzzball
Voice-over-IP
• Some are less
Scavenger service
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Middleboxes
an engineering
approach to
security
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• Middleboxes in the
home
• RFC1918 addresses
• Network/port address
translation
• An engineering
solution to address
depletion
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NAT444
Carrier-grade NAT
…and your computer is now buried two layers deep
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…perhaps even three layers deep
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• Thus
Looming address depletion, and
Desire for security and privacy
• Have led to
An erosion of the end to end principle
And middlebox friction in the network links
• And by analogy with Castells’ theory, resulted in an Internet that
Is less egalitarian
Has greater concentration of power
And diminished capacity for feedback
• The Internet isn’t for everyone any more
5.0 REVERSAL AND RECOVERY
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Solutions?
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• IPv6 has no need of NAT
• Trusted enclaves and the Science DMZ
• New architectures that
Either eliminate the need for middleboxes, or
Incorporate them as organic elements, and
Achieve security without firewallls
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Science DMZ
Basic configuration
Source: fasterdata.es.net
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Solutions?
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• IPv6 uptake is glacial (CERNET2 is an exception)
• More than 50 research institutions and universities have installed a
Science DMZ, and it is becoming a recognized feature of campus
network architectures with the surge of Big Data
• New architectures proposed and developed over the last few years
are in active trials globally, and do not require a “flag day”
SDN
NDN
RINA
…
• Stay tuned!
Information Network and Social Development
STEPHEN WOLFF
CTO, Internet2
SWOLFF@INTERNET2.EDU
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A Human View of the Internet
…Thank you
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