Crib sheet: Internet of the future
- Article 65 of 77
- Information Age, December 2003
Researchers around the world – at Caltech, CERN and elsewhere – are working to fix the flaws in the Internet, that will make the web faster, more secure, more personalised and more interactive.
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Security and the Internet have not exactly gone hand-in-hand. One way to stop people from knowing the contents of messages would be to disguise the fact that a message was sent. The development of so-called 'chaos communications' could make it so that information is sent as highly irregular waves based on fractals, rather than as traceable binary code, as it is today. Not only does chaos communications effectively camouflage data, but it also greatly increases the speed at which information is sent.
Quantum cryptography, which uses lasers that transmit single packets of light at a time, adds a further layer of security. It takes advantage of one of the principles of quantum mechanics - that any system is irrevocably changed by someone looking at it - to provide a built-in intrusion detection system. What that means is that, even if a hacker gets direct access to the fibre optic cable that conveys a message, he or she cannot examine the data going through the cable without changing it - thereby alerting the recipient that the message has been intercepted. In theory, quantum cryptography could also create unbreakable codes.
Everything will be in the web
The Internet was designed at a time of low bandwidth, where simple data was the only concern and streaming video, voice over IP and other high-bandwidth forms of communication had not been invented. While bandwidth has improved, there is still no way to prioritise data to ensure that voice communications, say, can reserve the majority of the bandwidth. Instead, all data has to take its chances with the rest.
Quality of service (QoS) technology is designed to address this. Currently available only for private networks, QoS ensures that the bandwidth necessary for certain applications is available. The trick is getting it to work on the Internet as well.
Dynamic synchronous transfer mode (DTM), a technology originally developed by Ericsson Telecom and the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, could provide 100% QoS on existing infrastructure, its inventors claim. But it is not yet a fully approved standard, which could pose equipment-incompatibility problems. There are, however, other standards being developed under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force. This has added QoS features to IPv6 (see box, Six is the Magic Number) as well as other networking protocols, which could make technologies such as DTM unnecessary. The race is on to see which technology gets adopted first.
Living life in the fast lane
The Internet of the future will be faster. Researchers at CERN, the European organisation for nuclear research, together with Caltech in the US hold the current Internet speed record: 5.44 gigabits per second while transferring data from Geneva to California - the equivalent of a full-length DVD movie in seven seconds. They achieved this using the same infrastructure the Internet currently uses, only using Fast TCP instead of the current TCP.
Both TCP and Fast TCP break messages down into packets and transmit each packet in turn. It is how they respond to glitches in the network that is the main difference. TCP does not have a built-in mechanism for monitoring network performance. Fast TCP, on the other hand, continually tracks how long it takes for the packets to reach their destination and how long it takes for the acknowledgments to come back. As a result, it can raise or lower transmission speeds far more efficiently to take account of glitches or improved bandwidth.
The main drawback of Fast TCP is the lack of industry support for it - no operating system or hardware manufacturer has yet committed themselves to adopting it. Whether support eventually comes from vendors building Fast TCP into their operating systems, third parties creating add-on software, or IT managers downloading and installing the systems themselves, remains to be seen.
Six is the magic number
The world's supply of Internet protocol (IP) addresses is running out. The current standard, version four (IPv4), can cope with up to four billion users. But the number of devices that can access the Internet has increased dramatically over the last few years, as web-enabled phones, wireless laptops, PDAs and even IP wristwatches have emerged. And 'smart' products, such as fridges that order food when stocks run low and cars that receive information about parking spaces, are coming.
At the current rate, IPv4 addresses will be used up in 2005.
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