Well, OK, not so much “wrong” as “not the best it could be.” But for all its problems, we can’t rationalize a radical departure from the technologies that currently comprise the Internet. Why?
There’s a software engineering philosophy called Worse Is Better that’s been around for a good 18 years. In that time, it’s come to mean that an inferiorly designed system or piece of software may be more successful than its better-designed competitor, based on subjective or unexpected market criteria. A perfect modern example is that, while most Web applications are poor facsimiles of their desktop counterparts, they’re successful because there’s nothing to install and collaboration is a snap.
The Internet is the “Worse Is Better” poster child. We now know, for example, that IPv4 won’t scale to the projected size of the future Internet. We know too that near-universal deployment of technologies with inadequate security and trust models, like SMTP, can mean millions if not billions lost to electronic crime, defensive measures, and reduced productivity.
We know these things now, but it doesn’t matter. The Internet as we know it is long since “in production”; it works most of the time for most people; and, above all else, it makes enough money that it seems foolish to question whether or not it’s acceptably engineered. Worse is better when worse is profitable.
In a keynote speech in 1997, Alan Kay affirmed the success of Arpanet, the Internet’s predecessor, on which he worked. Yet almost as an aside, he decimated our conceptions of the worth of standard Web technologies, such as HTML: “HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that understands its formats... You don’t need a browser, if you followed what this Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961. You just read [data] in. It should travel with all the things that it needs, and you don’t need anything more complex than something like X Windows.”
“Worse Is Better” happens because systems are multi-layered. Users interact with the topmost layers of a system, and this superficial interaction characterizes their perception of the system’s value. In the case of the Internet, users valued easy publishing of information (the layer provided by HTTP and HTML). But the engineering value in the Internet is in its scalable, resilient design, not the surface-layer technologies that have come to comprise the Web. But the Internet’s market value is now tied up in the Web. Worse is better.
So when will better actually be better?
Van Jacobson, an award-winning specialist in networking to whom the Internet owes its continued existence, gave a talk at Google in 2006 outlining a content-centric approach to networking. Jacobson’s approach leverages wide distribution of data across a variety of devices and media, while baking in security and simplifying the development model for networked applications.
If the majority of Internet usage continues to be about content, an approach like Jacobson’s would be not just prudent, but necessary. You needn’t do more than attempt to watch a streaming video on a busy office LAN or oversubscribed DSL circuit to understand that even the best-served markets for Internet connectivity are struggling to keep up with demand for networked content. Add to this that providing adequate security models for such content is a virtual impossibility on today’s Internet, and the need for a better approach is even clearer.
Yet it’s only seasoned engineers like Kay and Jacobson that have the guts and experience to question the decisions behind today’s popular Internet technologies. The majority is content to subscribe to the iterative philosophy of “Worse Is Better”: As users demand it, small improvements will be made. Users will be so conditioned to accepting mediocrity that even iterative improvements will seem like miracles. Technologists are then rewarded as miracle-workers for delivering the bare minimum.
We know the Internet could be better. We can quantify what we lose daily because it isn’t. The question remains: What will it take to push us forward?
— Alex Payne is API Lead at Twitter, where he works on the site’s stability, security, and developer outreach.
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Let's take a step back. Before we go jumping on the internet as being broken... let's back the truck up. Saying the internet is broken because of some protocol limitations is like saying that the highway system is broken because your car is a complete piece of junk.
The INTERNET... like DARPANET is nothing more or less than a large group of INTERconnected NETworks. They use a common networking language (TCP/IP) [thank you Dr. Vint Cerf] to communicate between routers and servers.
Admittedly, IPv4 will not scale to the future projection of interconnected computers. But your telephone company can't keep up with the number of phone subscribers so we now have 3 and 4 area codes and areas that were once 7 digit dialing require 10 digit dialing... oh my... telco's are broken!!! [not]. It is going to take some time for brilliant engineers to find a workaround. Perhaps some of the larger public IP blocks can be reclaimed and the addresses reused... (GO GREEN!! Recycle your IP address)
Now, is HTTP the best protocol in the world?? NO! And it has been corrupted and coopted by so many things for which it was NEVER designed. But conversely, how many protocols do we need to support? Do we need a protocol for streaming video that requries its own servers?? Do we want a protocol for VRML??? Should security be on an entirely different protocol??? I think "good sense" needs to come into play. But again, a cautionary tale... nothing is beyond the reach of the criminal mind. If people think they can exploit the technology or the people using the technology, then they will. So, again, blaiming the protocol for criminals is like blaming the victim of the crime for making themselves available for the crime.
Let's just be certain to lay the blame where the blame belongs.
that is certainly a question for discussion. I have Charter's broadband service and this includes TV, Internet, and VOIP.
Each service has its own purpose although the service is all delivered over the one cavble. The TV service includes the pay per view option that lets me select a movie and play it over the cable just as though I had rented or purchased a DVD
with that in mind I don't see that I need to download any movies to play them on my computer: not the best tool for the job.
re. security
VPN is just one tool that can provide a secure connection. SSL is another and is more applicable to web-browsing. We use VPN for fixed point-to-point connections.
so you see there is a selection of tools for the job for computing on the Internet, just as there is elsewhere. we are all individuals though so your selections may not be the same as mine. You may find, down the road, that Internet Service may have a higher price if you want continuous data streaming as opposed to web browsing. that has been a contentious issue recently...
As we speak, the Web is moving to 3.0- not a cloud viewed thru a 17 inch screen. It will be the pervasive internet that is anchored on devices and follows us everywhere, anticipates our needs and tends to our business.
These devices will be built on robust technologies like IPV6, DPWS and 802.11n. With low power computers these devices will be mobile, or built into device like cars, TV sets- whatever. Equipped with sensors, these computers will be situation aware.
In Web 3.0, the fragile internet for the PC and sever will be replaced with the device and the cloud.
IPV4 for one. But that issue can be addressed by going to IPV6, and strongly mitigated throug the use of NAT.
The Internet certainly has difficulties with streaming video. Streaming video needs a "broadcast" architecture, not the peer-to-peer architecture of the Internet today. That's a topic of contention: do we really want to change the structure of the Internet from peer-to-peer to "broadcast" just to support streaming video? And at what cost (financial, technical, structural, and institutional)?
The Internet has difficulties with security. Any PC attached to the Internet is attacked within minutes and compromised unless locked down. Financial transactions, e.g. credit-card transactions, online banking, are insecure. But those problems can likewise be addressed. VPN is the solution of choice for those who wish to have secure connections over the Internet within a known group of people. Broadband connections can be fed through routers that also have forewall capabilities, and PCs can have their own firewalling software installed. Financial transactions can be made secure through two-factor identification.
The Internet is not "child-safe" and has an enormous amount of trash, pornography, pirated music, films, books, and software. That however asks a little discipline on part of the user to neutralise. There are filters, ranging from those that limit access to sites that are guaranteed to be "clean", to those that block the most shocking content.
The main success factor of the Internet
--------------------------------------------------------
It seems to me however that the single most important factor in the success of the Internet is that it is free and open. And that's based firmly on it's peer-to-peer structure. Moreover, no single entitty controls it, and therefore practically everyone can use it for their own purpose. That I feel is a great and sometimes misunderstood advantage.
Just consider why services like Compuserve (in the US) and Minitel (in France) lost out. People do not *want* a single authority that controls access. Sacrificing the Internet's peer-to-peer structure is tantamount to *specialising* the Internet to a particular purpose. Sure, that will serve *that* purpose better, but how future-proof is that? And who tells me that Jacobson etc. with their "content-based" proposals (a euphemism for broadcast-centered networking) leave room for the ordinary peer-to-peer structure? Commercial interestes will be guaranteed to play a hefty role. And do we really want where that's likely to take us? Considering our current experiences with cable TV I'm very very sceptical.
Alternative networks
-----------------------------
Of course there are many candidates who would love to supply a carefully controlled broadcast-centered version of the Internet. And we all know where that leads. Commercial interests that dicatate what is and is not available online. Commerical interests that stipulate that level of service or commercial products can be bought from whoever organises the service. And commercials ad nauseam.
This ought to ensure the viability of streaming video from mayor news outlets, but at the expense of freedom.
Well thanks, but no thanks. I scrapped Compuserve long ago (and had a devil of a time to get them to stop billing me). That was once but never again. For all its faults I prefer the basic Internet Internet as it is over something like Compuserve, and net neutrality is something I value highly. If it doesn't always support high-quality streaming video, fine.
Alternative services
----------------------------
Well ... anyone is free to offer their services *over* the internet. Like Twitter. Only ... let such services compete in an open market, and don't use the "this networking could be done better" argument as a crowbar to open the door for a trade-in of freedom for convenience or commercial interests.
The free and open character of the Internet is its greatest asset, and its peer-to-peer structure is the best guarantee that it stays open.
First, the situation you describe is neither bad nor unusual. If you haven't, I encourage you to read Amory Lovin's indictment of the automobile industry in Winning the Oil Endgame (http://www.oilendgame.com/ReadTheBook.html). SMTP is the steel of the Internet: stable, well understood, malleable, cheap. But not optimal.
Everyone I know who understands SMTP knows it's broken. Any number of alternatives/fixes have been proposed. But spam-fighting has so far been cheaper (and more profitable!) than moving to a secure mail transport protocol.
It will take the IETF or its equivalent. The last major insecure technology to be displaced was telnet. It was shoved aside by ssh when OpenBSD got mad as hell and wouldn't take it anymore. (Heh, the movie was "Network".) Eventually PuTTY brought Windows into the fold, and now you can pretty much ssh anywhere telnet used to go.
What will it take to push us forward?
Rough consensus and running code. As of now, there's no accepted replacment for SMTP. When there is, and universities and geeks deploy it, and it works, it will gain acceptance and slowly -- for the masses do not move quickly -- displace SMPT. But not before and not until then.
So you are saying the internet is garbage because "you need a browser"? So that must mean i cant have any applications that can communicate over the net right?
IRC must not exist, MSN/AIM/ICQ/etc.
SMTP/POP3/IMAP must be figments of my imagination.
I expect this sort of nonsense from my mother, but I am quite frankly disturbed by your equating the web with the internet.
Just because you build rubbish web app in a toy language does not mean that the internet is for the sole purpose of making rubish web apps built in toy languages.
The second half of your 'argument' seems to say that all data should come across the internet with its own execution environent. ok...that doesnt seem stupid. The reason that the Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew what to do in 1961 was because he didnt have to deal with unix vs windows, gnome vs kde. win32, does this machine have a jdk? what version? .net? The Staff Sergeant was able to just read in the data because he knew the data would be sent to him on a schedule. Did the Staff Sargeant initiate the transfer? presumably the program that opened the socket to listen for the data would have had to check for its correctness, or did the SS do that too?
Alan Kay's no browser scenario, taken to its logical end, would require a full os with all the libraries needed to interpret the data to be transmitted. And you are talking about a taxed network. He claims that nothing more sophisticated than X is needed. What version of X does this site run on? Does X have to maintain backwords compat just so they dont break the 'net? That seems like a hideously stupid dependency to put on X
The simple fact is that the beauty of the internet is that the client becomes responsible for rendering the data how it sees fit. If i want to render everything in IE4 i can. I have the option to drop down to telnet and interact with my smtp server or issue a GET command if I need to see the lower levele data. I can read the data in as the SS did in 1961. But I dont need to, I dont want to. Thats why myself and others develop programs that will do it automatically.
So...Van Jacobson is proposing a CDN with "security" baked in? yeah that is a gutsy move...
And if you feel you have been mistreated by the editors hacking your words...Post the unedited work. Let your argument free and it will either sink or float.
BTW, 57% of people that particiapated in the poll on this post believe twitter is a fad, and will fade away.
For what it's worth, I agree, in this way: I think of the Internet as a set of tools. Each tool within the set is only as good as the the people and technology that developed that particular tool. A lot of the tools out there just plain suck.
My favorite example: back in the early 90's, databases were finally starting to get interesting - things like event-driven forms and time-aware database structures were beginning to emerge. Along came crappy old html as a front end for databases, and all that progress went away. Searching online databases pretty much sucks, as does the population of those databases with data. I'm not going to elaborate on this.
That said, virtually every company has a web presence based on current technology. That means dependencies on available technology and available trained labor pools. These dependencies are so pervasive that it's unrealistic to expect them to change suddenly. There's a lot of risk involved in changing the infrastructure of the web, and nobody has determined that the risk is worth the reward yet.
Things will get better gradually. In the meantime, we just have to deal with what we've got.
I was just at a meeting today learning how to integrate vodcasts and podcasts for teachers on the i-Tunes U area. Jerry Rigging metatags in the comment file to denote which grade level, artist would be the teacher's name or class name. This is exciting stuff to put up a student's work on i-tunes so they could download it and have others around the world listen to it, but reinventing something that was made for music and putting tape and bandaids to fit the design is not the perfect way to do things. We are in a growth phase that is morphing into things we want and may need. I think this is ingenuity and the hopefully never get a perfect internet, because it would mean the lack of ideas.
...is over on my personal blog: http://www.al3x.net/2008/10/lessons-in-being-edited.html
This piece didn't end up reflecting the discussion I wanted to start, and clearly, the discussion we've ended up hasn't been particularly productive. I'll take a more measured approach next time. Thanks for your comments.
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