Number 292 - September 2007

What's Your Opinion About Scrapping The Internet?
BACKGROUND    Read the article at www.orcopug.org/scrap_internet.html Ira Wilsker - APCUG Director    It is not a totally new idea because the internet as we know it is not a secure medium. There are doubts as to how a mass medium with billions of users could ever be secured in the way that these people visualize.    It was never intended to handle the current bandwidth, video, audio and other forms of data.    You may remember "Gopher" (Go-for) was the original way to locate information on the early internet, as data from the few thousand websites would be cached for search purposes.    E-mail and point-to-point information exchange was the original plan, where everyone on the net could be trusted to follow the written and unwritten protocols of behavior. Problems of spam, spyware, and viruses were not even dreamed up by the creators and early users. Mike Lyons - ORCOPUG President    Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte in their Security Now podcasts have gone through a lot of the points that appear in this article. Considering what they did almost 40 years ago, it has held up pretty well, but security, commerce, and a lot of other things were never considered during the original design. I agree with the idea as it is the only way to curb/eliminate spam. viruses, and other security holes. The last big attack, brought down 9 of the 13 backbone servers. If the bad guys could take down the internet for a week, imagine how much damage they could do to the US/World economy.	Dennis Rex - LINUX Advocate    Interesting research. While I agree that it speaks volumes about the foresight (or luck) of the original Internet designers that their creation has held up so well and for so long, I'm wary of what a replacement might look like or if it's even needed.    I'm glad someone is looking at the problem. That way, we'll have options if we hit the wall. Odd that there's no big outcry about how critical it is like we had with IPv6 or we have with global warming. Pim Borman - SWIPCUG Member    I'm afraid it will never happen. The current Internet could never have happened either if it had been planned ahead of time. Just a fortunate accident and proof that evolution through natural selection works just fine (that should get some attention in certain quarters!).    If anyone in the 80'S had described the current Internet and WWW he would have been called nuts. To start all over again and plan everything ahead is unimaginable--you'll never get anything near a consensus as to what should be done and who'll pay for what. Otherwise we ought to try reinventing Adam and come up with a better Homo Sapiens. Maybe start with Eve II first? Or maybe a dog with opposable thumbs and new and improved intelligence?    And by the time all the participants get their share of the pie it will be unaffordable for most of us. Whatever happens will be well beyond my life expectancy! I'll be happy to live with the current version.
Number 292 - September 2007