Intel says Internet needs to change 228
Nurgled writes "At a recent Intel conference, CTO Pat Gelsinger said that something needs to be done to avoid the Internet buckling under the strain of new technologies and millions of new users. The BBC reports that Intel is attempting to layer a 'new Internet' over the existing network which can detect and counteract things like worm outbreaks and route traffic more intelligently during low and high traffic periods. Intel's prototype, PlanetLab, has 441 nodes but claims to be an open platform with documentation available on the site. What's in it for Intel, though?"
Agreed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious do-las I imagine. The question is can they do that and will companies like Cisco play along.
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Funny)
They'll route all the worms to people using AMD proccessors, and then claim they are more vulnerable than Intel ones.
Re:PR from the Investor Relations Dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
They need something that looks like a new huge market to try to stem the bleeding and loss in investor confidence.
Its unlikely that the likes of Cisco and Juniper and Huwei are simply going to stand still anytime soon. Indeed Cisco just indicated that they will attempt to double their product offerings and rate of introduction of new products over the next 5 years. Juniper continues to move forward on the high end and Huwei is busy outpricing everyone worldwide on the low end and begining to ramp up into higher end products. The PC market is stalled as our president has successfully diverted much IT spending toward paying for higher energy and borrowing costs.
Current investments in existing infrastructure including the steamroller of lobbyists behind the new internet 2 roll out are out of Intel's control. The core of their business model is now under attack by AMD and its Opteron, so announcements like this are critical for them to keep their heads above water.
The real issue here is whether they can win any of the super-scret contracts to route and anlyze all internet traffic through the new NSA mainframe filters that are straining to keep up with the explosion of foreign and domestic internet use or whether they can win any of the contracts larger corporations are now issuing to keep track of everyones internet device and VOIP use on a 24/7 basis. Now that is where the real new growth in the market is not on selling to the few folks who still have a little money to spend on IT.
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Funny)
HA!
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
In other media, advertisments are tolerated because they pay the cost of the development of the content and the fixed cost of delivering the content to the audience (primarily the TV and radio broadcasting costs, and magazine paper and distribution costs). That is not so with the Internet. They are getting the medium for free and filling it with content specifically oriented to their private financial gain.
Governments and laws can not and will not stop them due the transnational nature of the medium. It is up to the technological community to stop them, even if the spammers have manipulated the legal structure to make attempts to stop them illegal.
It is up to the technological community that created the web to set enforced guidelines for its use. No one else has the ability to do it.
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story here is Intel is struggling for relevance. You do realize they're planning to run their new dual cores at 200watts? Have you seen the heat sinks that are going on these things? They're enormous. This is a totally irresponsible move at a time when energy resources are at the forefront of the political stage.
So, no wonder they're looking to scare up some attention elsewhere. But the fact is, the Net is damn fine. The scarry thing is that it's better outside the US than in. If the Net is in such danger then why is it that in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and major cities in China things are so smooth. And yes, as a matter of fact it is both smooth and cheap here. Thank you very much.
Fix the net? Hah. You'll have to build it and then break it first. Of course in the States it's easy to create the image it's broken, but actually it hasn't hardly started yet.
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? It doesn't matter how good your filter is, the parent is pointing out that a lot of bandwidth on the net is being wasted pushing junk around only to have it automatically deleted at its destination. Fine, its not a problem for you but it is a problem for the Internet.
Spam is not a technological problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter that the spammers are transnational, the biggest spammers are all in the US, no matter where their servers are, because it's a rich country with weak privacy laws. For the forseeable future, big spammers are going to want to live in rich countries, and they're going to want to operate from countries where their very databases aren't illegal. If there were US laws that addressed the behaviour that causes the problem without loopholes for 'well behaved' spammers, and these laws were enforced, this WOULD reduce spam from a universal pollution to an annoyance.
This means: ban unsolicited broadcast email. This means: don't force people to opt out, don't make exceptions for popular spammers (we don't make exceptions that allow charities or political parties to hold regular "tire bonfires" in their parking lots), don't allow "properly labelled" spam, just ban UBE, commercial or not.
That means, if you're mailing to more than a few people (let's say, 100 copies of a message a week as a limit... that's plenty high enough for any legitimate purpose and far far below what a spammer needs to stay in business) then you better have (a) a verifiable signup record for each person if it's a mailing list, (b) record of an explicit request from each person, if it's a response mailing, or (c) a proof that you have an existing business, professional, or membership relationship that each recipient is in a position to terminate.
No exceptions.
Re:Spam is not a technological problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lucky for us the internet is world-wide and the track record for legal control is absolutely abysmal. I'll take spam over EFFECTIVE government control or regulation of the internet any day of the week.
Spam is the LESSER of two evils here.
Max
Re:Spam is not a technological problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
For years I argued that way, but the only result of that is you get the laws anyway, and the spammers get to write them.
The door labelled "no anti-spam laws" got bricked up long ago. The only remaining exits are marked "laws that end up helping the spammers" and "laws that actually target spam", and the spammers in the DMA are laying a trail of hindred-dollar bills from the capitol to the greater of the two evils.
Re:Spam is not a technological problem. (Score:2)
No, banning UBE (not UCE, not 'blocking', not 'filtering', just making UBE illegal) is the only way to keep valid email lists functional. All the problems you list are caused by the fact that people are trying to use content-based methods to block spam, because without a social sanction for UBE that's one of the few effective things you can do.
And banning UBE, regardless of content, is probably the only way to
Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
As if there were such a thing as a WANTED commercial message.
Max
Re:Agreed (Score:2)
Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
- Messages from my credit card company, saying that I have a new statement, or my payment is due.
- Messages from a computer company, saying that I may have defective hardware and be eligible for a replacement.
- Order notices for my products.
- Various newsletters that I've signed up for.
Note that any replies of "but I hate X" or "but you can get X in another way, like so" are irrelevant; I like getting these things by e-mail,
Stick to making computer chips (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stick to making computer chips (Score:3, Insightful)
As to the original article, "What's in it for Intel?" Maybe they have an interest in people using their computers more because they sell... computer chips? (Not to mention that the market for high-end servers is very lucrative.)
Re:Stick to making computer chips (Score:3, Funny)
Don't be afraid, I'm sure Al Gore will protect his baby...
Re:Stick to making computer chips (Score:5, Interesting)
If I was going to make a guess, it would be that Intel was about to launch a new series of network processor, and this is the start of the sales pitch.
IPv6? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IPv6? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand - I would second a more rapid adoption of IPv6 any day. Maybe whatever intel feels neccessary to add to the Internet can be introduced at this level instead of trying to add a solution to IPv4 and therefore delaying IPv6 even further (since it will cost resources to adapt v4 and on top of that additional resources to plan this for v6 and re-implement it there as well)...
Re:IPv6? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, once you start delaying 1000ms per packet, there ain't gonna be much going on.
Re:IPv6? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my £0.0111123, tho I'm not that knowledgable of IPv6 yet... Apart from that nice article the other day. That was good, that was. Probably should read it though.
Re:IPv6? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the NAT that stops the traffic, it's the firewall. NAT does not in any way enhance your security.
Every time anything about IPv6 comes up, someone says something to the effect of, ``but if there's no NAT, how will we secure our boxes!?'' That just makes no sense to me. The fact that a computer has a real IP address does not imply that it can accept connections from any machine on the internet. That's just silly.
Re:IPv6? (Score:4, Informative)
The only thing that stops _me_ from sending him such packets is routing controls at his ISP (well, probably mine, and whatever routers lie between me and him).
The point is that NAT != firewall. Nothing prevents you from dropping unwanted packets with IPv6, or even IPv4 without NAT. And yet, we have lots of clueless people thinking that NAT black boxes _are_ firewalls, rather than that they can act as a firewall.
When you only have a hammer...
Re:IPv6? (Score:2, Interesting)
My point was that it was my understanding that if you were to run IPv6, then a router or other internet connection device could enable an internet user to connect to a client directly without transversing any subnets; as each machine is defined uniquely.
To me, this would imply that a IPv6-enabled TCP/IP worm (like blaster was for IP
Re:IPv6? (Score:2, Troll)
Too lazy to switch (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IPv6? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it wouldn't require anyone to upgrade CPUs.
Re:IPv6? (Score:4, Informative)
PlanetLab is like Akamai. Each "node" is a server somewhere on the web. You can write a program and, if PlanetLab approves it, you can submit it to be run on some nodes. The set of nodes you get access to is called a "slice", and each of your sandboxes on a node is called a "sliver". I said it's like Akamai, in that it's distributed and when you run your program you'll be able to load-balance for shortest latency, etc.
IPv6 is an orthoganal issue, because PlanetLab is just an application-layer thing. Right now we're writing a toy program that does a traceroute from each sliver to a target ip, and that's pretty much the same whether it's IPv4 or IPv6 afaik. Intel and my prof keep hyping it like it's totally new, but bring up Akamai and they admit it's been done before.
What's in it for Intel? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe - just maybe - they're doing something nice.
Then again: to quote the article
" If the net grows to 100 billion devices connected to it, our goal is to have a piece of Intel inside in every one of those hundred billion "
Pat Gelsinger, Intel
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:4, Insightful)
but this doesn't really seem like a solution to the problems they're painting.. "he said building a new network on top of the old".. just somehow I don't think that's really innovative way of handling the the problems(and isn't using isolated vpn's over public internet already something like this? building a network on top of the existing one to fix some problems)..
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:3, Funny)
They did it with their cpus and it worked so far
But I agree, that's a bad way to handle problems.
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:2)
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:2)
the Meta network [24.125.12.101] (scroll down on the page to read the intro)
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:3, Insightful)
However if some 'nice thing' is viewed internally as being a path to more profit, then they'll do it. If it doesn't pay off after a time, it will go away, or be sold.
wbs.
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:2)
This is the same reason Intel is putting so much research into DARPA's Smart Dust [internet.com] concept. Right now Smart Dust is a bunch of engineers geeking around (or to some extent, a solution looking for a problem), but when/if it hits big, and micropower sensors are deployed in the hundreds-thousands-or-millions at a time, they would love to step up to potential manufacture
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:2)
Or maybe - just maybe - they're doing something nice.
Or maybe people have finally realized they don't actually need a 3.2ghz cpu to browse web pages and read email. So Intel have decided to put all that extra power to "good use" by proposing a new abstraction layer over the top of the TCP/IP stack. It's certainly not to lessen the traffic...
Applications... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the SMTP protocol. It was designed WAY back, and only a few people had problems with not being able to verify the sender of an email, but that was being ignored. If someone would want to make such a protocol nowadays, it would contain a HELL lot more security measures. But if you want to change the protocol right now, you will need a pretty big front of important people in order to do that...
My point is: Intel can say they want to make a new layer on top of the internet, which is all fine, but I think in order to really make a 'better' internet, you need to change the way application communicate with each other too...
Re:Applications... (Score:5, Insightful)
However in order to do this, you need central control (aka the Phone Company), which is exacty what the modern Internet was designed to avoid.
So, no, you're not going to get a wonderful replacement for SMTP that's spam/virus/fraud proof and still allows you to do things in a decentralized manner (like setup your own mailserver). Any fix people have come up with can easily be applied to SMTP email.
(If the government wanted to do us a favor, they'd give you a X.509 certificate along with your driver's licence.)
Re:Applications... (Score:2)
And piss off privacy advocates everywhere?
Besides, email is a worldwide thing so individual government-based initiatives are bunk.
Re:Routing protocols (Score:5, Funny)
Internet2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet2 (Score:5, Funny)
However, in Japan, Intelnet would still be called...
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Re:Internet2 (Score:5, Informative)
Makes sense as a way to go from where we are, even if it wouldn't necessarily be what you'd design from here.
Internet 2 is quite different -- it's a high-capacity backbone combined with a testbed for some new protocols.
IPv6 (Score:3, Interesting)
They are probably envisioning (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, (Score:5, Funny)
"What's in it for Intel, though?" (Score:5, Interesting)
Obvious is the answer: total domination of the next generation of technologies. Intel realizes that microprocessors, the market on which it built its business, is fast becoming a mature industry. Margins will drop as competition between AMD64 and Intel64 heat up. In search of new areas of grow, Intel is branching out into other areas: routers, WI-FI, etc.
Intel does nothing out of generosity. More than 30% of the company is H-1B workers, and they retain the same ruthlessly competitive attitude that they had in their homelands (e.g. China, India, etc.)
Re:"What's in it for Intel, though?" (Score:3, Interesting)
'Mr Gelsinger said Intel wanted its hardware to be at the heart of this overlay system. "If the net grows to 100 billion devices connected to it, our goal is to have a piece of Intel inside in every one of those hundred billion," he said.'
Re:"What's in it for Intel, though?" (Score:2)
" If the net grows to 100 billion devices connected to it, our goal is to have a piece of Intel inside in every one of those hundred billion "
Pat Gelsinger, Intel
An obvious point.
As for what they are planning to do about it, it seems they are trying to head in two directions at once. They want majority share in the heart of the beast, and they want each device to sport the "Intel Inside" sticker.
While software and hardware capable of heading off worms and other malicious attacks would
Profits and research (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same kind of thing they're looking forward to doing. Intel may not end up ow
Um...Chips... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um...Chips... (Score:2)
I think we should exhaust some other avenues first before creating a whole new layer. FreeNet project? [sourceforge.net] ... maybe not ... although it does have potential.
Can't change the internet (Score:3, Interesting)
but does this article have anything to do with "Internet2"? i'm a little confused, because the description sounds like Internet2.
Reminds me of when Microsoft... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me of when Microsoft... (Score:2, Insightful)
the Internet needs smarter users. the Internet needs less corporate and government hands trying to change it to their desires.
IPv6 does help. Muticast helps more. Anycast helps as well. Mesh netwo
Re:Reminds me of when Microsoft... (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. It seems that a lot of bandwidth is being wasted with pr0n and spam, both of which would probably saturate any pipe you cared to use.
So if you can solve the spam problem, and your ISP can build a massive cache exclusively for pr0n, the backbone bandwidth issues would simply disappear.
Re:Reminds me of when Microsoft... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah! In fact, it sucked so much that now nobody uses Windows!
What's in it for Intel? (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting things under control will help reduce wasted costs due to the things they are trying to address.
Perhaps too, they will sell hardware with this 'open standard' in native silicon.. Make a bit of cash while improving 'service'...
Just because its a large company doing something doesn't mean its automatically a 'world takeover' attempt...
What's in it for Intel? (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, you want to keep the field you play on in good shape. You need to take care of your arena so people find value in your products. If the Intel research will make internet use greater for more people, this directly benefits Intel as it will lead to presumably more chip sales in the end.
If they really get something good going here and fail to keep it open and free, no one will adopt it and they will have just wasted money on research that will not pay off and not have increased chip sales.
Then again, I could be entirely wrong here and Intel needs to figure out a way to increase their already huge profit margins. This may be the way?
Re:What's in it for Intel? (Score:2, Informative)
The internet as we know it is a collaboration. This entire discussion about Intel owning this planetlab by posters above is kinda funny, shows that they don't read fully, when the links are provided, or even do research before posting.
PlanetLab is also a collaboration, not just Intel, but also includes acadamics and other corporations such as google and hp. Look at the consortium link to see who is involved at http://www.planet-lab.org/ [planet-lab.org]
Also, be thankful that corporation
Oh no... (Score:2, Interesting)
They need to rebuild Internet. Make it better, faster, stronger. A 6 million dollar Internet!
Holy shit (Score:2)
No thanks, I'll keep the broken system we have rather than the awful mess that would result.
Maybe if Intel had a track record (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep It Simple, Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
As everything becomes more and more embedded, we need to strip functionality that we don't use anymore and build applications to what we do, not what we did five (or ten, or twenty) years ago.
Open-source has always strived to provide less bloated and overall better quality software. This comes from the Unix mentality. Intel does not yet understand this approach to computing. Intel provided a hardware architecture that rivaled IBM for monolithic and for lack of innovation and growth. This is mostly thanks to Microsoft and the users of Microsoft products.
We in the open-source world and of the Unix generation have never had severe problems with viruses. We learned from the mistakes of the [original] Internet worm, and we haven't made those same mistakes again. We don't neet smart networks. We need streamlined networks, systems, and applications. Small progams with single purposes: to do one thing well.
Strongly disagree, core needs intelligence (Score:2)
This would also help caching - caches like Akamai are described in high level detail as being at the edge but you have to peek into the interior of the network to locate your edge cache in the first palc
Coral Webcache runs on Planetlab (Score:3, Informative)
runs on Planetlab.
This is about control. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly - about control of TRAFFIC (Score:2)
Re:This is about control. (Score:2)
Misleading article (Score:3, Interesting)
You can read a more informative article about the background here:
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/03/q2/0624-plane
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that most of the work on the PlanetLab infrastructure is done by grad students at Princeton University, not by Intel.
open means what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we are talking about mandatory authentication, then there needs to be some way to securely authenticate. We have optional authentication now, which is good, but too easy to circumvent. Secure authentication requires a protocol and secure hardware and software. Both are right up the Wintel alley, with thier embedded ID chips and closed OS. Again, the protocol could be open and free, but only certified machines are allowed ont he network. Will certification be anything other than a $50 bill slipped to Intel. Maybe not.
Buckling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Layer? (Score:2)
Wankers.
Umm, what if Intel's wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
I see the major flaw in Intel's idea right there where they say their network would be optimized for web services. Umm, what if web services aren't the big thing in a couple of years? IBM optimized SNA for the kinds of networks they knew were going to be built, but we don't see much SNA outside mainframe data centers. Corporate America doesn't have a very good track record of predicting how things will actually turn out. The Internet's strength is that it isn't optimized or designed for any one application, so while it may not be ideal for any one application it's at least usable for all of them. I'd be wary of changing that.
As far as worm outbreaks, those don't require fundamental changes in the Internet. Stopping them requires the people responsible, the ordinary users, to get a clue. It doesn't even have to be much of a clue, just something on the level of "Running that red light at a busy intersection might be a bad idea." or "Putting my hand on the red-hot stove burner might hurt.". That's not asking that much. (NB: that wasn't in the nature of a question.)
In the worst case, HTTP is a web service (Score:2)
Re:In the worst case, HTTP is a web service (Score:2)
HTTP is probably the most overrated protocol of all time...
Intel needs to change (Score:5, Insightful)
What should Intel do? They have to do something that makes the market believe Intel is at least part of the future. Pushing that Internet needs to change seems to be a way to get heard at all.
Maybe Intel is part of the future - and maybe they will revolutionise Internet. But primarily it Intel that needs to change - not the Internet.
who's gonna' get what? (Score:2)
What was in the original Internet for DARPA? Go back in history and see. Sometimes answering a questions with a question is the best way. :)
What's in it for Intel? (Score:2)
Rest assured their "new" Internet will be full of DRM and other horrors. One might even require a crypto certificate signed by an oligopoly-approved CA in order to con
Usually, when Intel says something like this... (Score:2)
My point... (Score:2)
I think its sensible to re-evaluate the underlying infrastructure and protocols now to see in what ways it can be made better. However we should be careful not to let one megacorp control the technology.
Nic
Something's Rotten Here (Score:2, Insightful)
And watch who piggy-backs that cause.
Bullshit. (Score:2)
OT: firewalls in NICs (Score:4, Interesting)
Home-user PC manufacturers could set to to
"block all unrequested inbound traffic and block all outbound traffic except:
web, ftp, ssh, dns, bootp, tftp, dhcp" and maybe a few others, and provide a web interface where the 1st question after "please enter password" is "who is your email provider" to open up email ONLY to that location. Better yet, if the email provider isn't configured, beep during POST and give the user an opportunity to enter the NIC-bios-setup screen to set it.
Of course, it would need to be at least as configurable as the firewalls built into most "home routers."
The technology to do this is already there, and you can argue it's already been done given that a PC with a network-interface and a software firewall amounts to the same thing, and it's "obvious" that such a system can be burned to firmware. As such, any patents would be narrow and probably serve only to prevent cloning of a specific chipset.
Anyone working on any of the http://www.aloha.com/~knowtree/links.html#BIOS [aloha.com]ope
Redundant (Score:5, Interesting)
"How?"
"Build a new internet on top of the old one!"
"Uhh..."
The internet doesn't need fixing, it seems to run just fine. What it does need are less people running virus magnets and creating all kinds of problems. The lack of security is *not* the internet's fault; it already does what it needs to do. Security should not be the job of the transport. The job of the transport is to transport stuff, be it unencrypted data or the next generation of uber-encrypted VPN for those who want security. (This is my gripe with all these "wireless security" methods. Just build a damn base station with a built in VPN server and be done with it. But then they couldn't introduce "new and improved security" every other month and sell more stuff.)
Got virus problems? It's not the internet's falut, nor its responsibility. The responsibility for that should be on the client side. I see attempted windows exploits coming to my network all the time: in my denied connections for my firewall. Packets dropped, no harm done. Same with my Apache logs. I scan my incoming and outgoing email for viruses, firewall everything, and make those in my family who use Windows aware of issues like don't click on random shit in your email you know nothing about. And guess what? Everything works smoothly and plays nice.
The idea is nothing more than buzz to create some interest from people who have money in the hope that they'll part with their money. "Look what we can do, we can fix the internet! Now, we'll just need you to write a check for..." Besides, how long will it be before an internet tunneled over an internet gets overloaded? Then what? Tunnel another internet over the internet tunneled over the internet? If you want a new, faster, better network, you gotta build one from the ground up.
The blurb is very misleading (Score:3, Informative)
and has never been in control of it. PlanetLab is primarily an
academic project that receives funding from a number of corporations,
including HP, Google, AT&T, France Telecom, and Intel.
The steering committee consists of faculty members from four
universities along with one representative from HP and one from Intel.
The research staff is composed mainly of people from Princeton along
with at least one from Berkeley.
I think I've seen this before (Score:2)
Max
What's in it for Intel, though? (Score:2)
More internet bandwidth means more things to do with a pc, and therefore, more reasons to buy a pc.
Re:Can I join (Score:3, Informative)
So is your institution on the list [planet-lab.org]? Or is it a second planet-lab? Stephan
Re:Can I join (Score:3, Insightful)
Let us know when your organization is part, then we can join your organization instead of going to the consortium directly.
Or maybe slashdot.org can sign up.
Stephan
Re:Can I join (Score:2)
Re:More Wintelmac Monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel does have an interest in keeping the Internet going, they just might be foreward thinking enough to realize that if they want to stay in business they are going to have to support things like this even if it does not have immediate financial returns.
Also, Mozilla has to run on somebody's chips, Int
Re:Fix Windows. That's the problem. (Score:2)
Just another case of trying to solve a problem without even LOOKING at the cause. Instead of eliminating the cause they just seek to treat the effects.
I don't understand why these people are so narrow-minded. It's frustrating as hell.