Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 6, 2006 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

David Clark

"The Internet is Broken"

ABSTRACT -- The Internet is a wonderful success: it has transformed the nature of research, business and society in general. So why would I say that it is broken? In fact, if we contemplate what we might want our Internet to be in 10 or 15 years, we see that there are barriers to that outcome, barriers that arise from the basic design principles of the net. The network that got us to today may not be able to get us to tomorrow. This talk will review a number of such issues, looking at security, network management, the economic health of the communications industry, larger societal concerns, emerging computing technology and application design. It will discuss what some of the fundamental problems are, speculate on some design alternatives that might be a better path to tomorrow, and describe a new NSF research program, Future Internet Design or FIND, that is focusing the network research community on these possible alternatives.

SPEAKER -- David Clark is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he has worked since receiving his Ph.D. there in 1973. Since the mid 70s, Dr. Clark has been leading the development of the Internet; from 1981-1989 he acted as Chief Protocol Architect in this development, and chaired the Internet Activities Board. More recent activities include extensions to the Internet to support real-time traffic, pricing and related economic issues, and policy issues surrounding the Internet, such as broadband local loop deployment. His current research looks at re-definition of the architectural underpinnings of the Internet, and the relation of technology and architecture to economic, societal and policy considerations. Dr. Clark is past chairman of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies, and has contributed to a number of studies on the societal and policy impact of computer communications. He is co-director of the MIT Communications Futures Program, a project for industry collaboration and coordination along the communications value chain.