Colleges team up to create faster, updated Internet

To fuel the appetite of an efficiency-hungry nation, private institutions and researchers are cultivating a recipe for a new, cutting edge Internet. This ambitious operation, called the "100x100 Clean Slate Project," is expected to simmer for 10 to 15 years before the raw data will become useful. Its goal is essentially to rebuild the Internet from scratch. When the Internet was originally built, it was under the assumption that computers were forever going to be stationary and that files would be very small. People have worked around these issues, but students, teachers and researchers all agree it is time to evolve. The new Internet is expected to run parallel to the current Internet and eventually take it over. Instigated by creative technological researchers at Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton and Carnegie Mellon universities, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the project's mission is to re-prioritize the fundamental principles of network design and application. The National Science Foundation is the main source of financial support in this project and has already spent more than $10 million. By the time the mission is complete, funding for research and administration is expected to reach $300 million. A number of research offices at the Pentagon are beginning to invest in the clean slate project but are unable to provide details. The Directorate for Public Analysis for the Department of Defense acknowledges that the undertaking is indeed a feasible task but awaits extensive research before determining what the project will entail for the government. For many technological analysts, including personnel at Syracuse University, the clean slate approach is hard to swallow. Paul Gandel, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, voiced a number of concerns about the Internet's redesign. There are a number of controversies in the way that network applications are built, he said. Some people believe that you have to start with a whole new set of technologies, while others just work on developing more advanced technologies that run on the same foundational technologies. "It is important that you always keep an eye on what may happen on the horizon," Gandel said. "We will be watching the developments, but it's not like we are going to get a new networking and Internet infrastructure overnight." SU works cooperatively with many of the educational institutions involved in the project, and has been working on a number of different issues in watching developments involving high-speed networking, Gandel said. "Understand that the idea of the clean slate project is to reconceptualize the protocols, and the idea is that by starting essentially from scratch, and by running this new network in parallel, that they can overcome some of the present-day problems." For students, this is a positive notion, because it means people are looking for ways to improve the way society connects and the way people are educated, Gandel said. Universities such as Carnegie Mellon and Stanford are collaborating with independent research groups, specializing in communication technology. Together, the research institutions and the universities are combining principles in the clean slate initiative. "We are all interested in the same topics," said Sandy Fraser, chief executive officer of Fraser Research, a non-profit institute for communications research. "We all want to know how one can plan a better future for the Internet, and through this process we have come to the conclusion that the Internet is insanely difficult." Fraser warns this is a very speculative activity. Unlike the development of a product, it is a unique project in the sense that there are endless outcomes, and the universities and research companies are studying different pieces of the problem to put together something rational, he said. "We are a technology generation," said Caleb Sheldon, a freshman economics major. "We can adapt. We have adapted to wireless Internet and iPods, and a new Internet will just be one more transition." Sheldon said he thinks rebuilding the Internet would take care of security issues and inherently make the Internet faster, creating new opportunities for interpersonal communication. Companies will enter the business until it becomes affordable, and then the old Internet will become outdated and the new Internet will suddenly become mass-produced. "I think it will work because eventually, if it comes down to necessity, they will need it," Sheldon said. "When they need a more secure system, the government may make the transition."