The Future of Internet Research Scott Shenker (on behalf of many networking collaborators)

Why Not “The Future of the Internet”? We always miss the latest application trends: P2P, Web 2.0, YouTube, etc. We focus on underlying infrastructure (IP, etc.) Building a network that can support the next big thing without knowing what it is in advance Our record of research impact is mixed

Recent Impact of Networking Research Better technologies: optical, wireless, switches Better understanding: measurement, theory Incrementally deployable: AFD, TFRC, IDS Radical architectural innovation: none Why have we failed?

Failure of Need? Many think the current Internet architecture will never be sufficiently secure or reliable Must also deal with many new requirements: Ubiquitous embedded sensors Optical switching New wireless technologies ……..

Failure of Imagination? Many promising ideas in the literature New ideas being floated in every conference Some are “clean-slate” redesigns of the Internet

Failure of Deployment? Not really….. Even if we were put in charge of the Internet, we wouldn’t know what new architecture to adopt!

Failure of Evaluation! Conferences are littered with promising proposals But we can’t tell the good ideas from the bad Because we never see them in operation Evaluations: simulation and toy-deployments Architecture is no longer an experimental science It has become science fiction

The Research Cycle DesignSimulation / EmulationExperiment At Scale Deployment (code) (results) (measurements) A Piece is Missing!

What About Traditional Testbeds? Production testbeds: Can’t try radical experiments Experimental testbeds: No real users Not much better than simulation Both kinds of testbeds: Only one experiment at a time Limited to sites directly connected to testbed Hard to program

What We’d Really Like Usable by many experiments simultaneously Easily programmable Can experiment on any level (optical to apps) Users can “opt-in” even from remote locations Reasonably large scale

Be Careful What You Ask For….. NSF is proposing to build a large experimental facility for networking research GENI: Global Environment for Network Innovations Funded by NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account This would be computer science’s first MREFC

GENI Design Principles GENI is comprised of network resources Links, nodes, subnets,… Resources are virtualizable and programmable Can be partitioned among many researchers Can implement radical new designs Researchers can program GENI at any level of abstraction Optical, IP, application,….

GENI Design Principles (cont’d) Wide variety of networking technologies Optical, wireless, sensors, phones,… Large-scale (~25 PoPs) Users can access GENI through overlay This is PlanetLab on Steroids!

Each Researcher Gets a “Slice” of GENI

And They Don’t Interfere

User Opt-in Clien t Serve r Proxy

National Fiber Facility

+ Programmable Routers

+ Clusters at Edge Sites

+ Wireless Subnets

+ ISP Peers MAE-West MAE-East

GENI Will Enable Us To… Experiment at scale 1000s of simultaneous experiments Long-running services (operational experience) Integrate our designs

Process GENI still undergoing evaluation and review Soonest funding in 2009 Relevant bodies: Interim planning group GENI Science Council GENI Project Office (bid not awarded yet) What about the research on GENI?

NSF Funding Architectural Research NSF’s Future InterNet Design (FIND) Program Funding “clean-slate” research No constraints on backwards compatibility Effort being coordinated by David Clark

Example Ideas Accountable and diagnosable Internet Data-oriented pub/sub Internet Internet without addresses (only names) Secure enterprise networks Super-robust routing algorithms

Clean-Slate as Means, Not End No one expects direct adoption of radical ideas It is the ideas that will have impact Clean-slate designs  Insights  Better Internet

Herding Cats Facility and funding are not enough Community must work together Architecture is not simple sum of 300 papers Product of synthesis and collaboration FIND’s goal is to have community eventually develop a “few” coherent architectures

What Does This Mean for Us? Two important changes: From science fiction to engineering More experimental focus, enabled by GENI From publish-or-perish PIs to community effort Drive towards coherent architecture This is the future of Internet reseach!

What Does This Mean for You? A better Internet…. ….we just don’t know what it looks like yet.

For More Information Discussion Mailing List GENI Design Document (GDD) Series