[CAnet - news] Will the future Internet sit on top of port 80?

For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 4 Optical
Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
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 [Recently Internet 2 sponsored an excellent workshop on the Management of
Future Campus Networks. Most of the presentations will be posted shortly on
the Internet 2 web site at: http://security.internet2.edu/rtp/

A couple of notable presentation were by David Clark - one of the early
pioneers of the Internet on the need for a new Internet architecture and the
upcoming NSF programs GENI and FIND.  GENI which will be the infrastructure
for the new Internet and FIND which will be the new network research
program.  Ken Klingenstein gave a good over of the challenges that face
campus networks in terms of security, new government regulations, identity
management system and new network developments such as personal lambdas.
Finally Terry Gray of UoWashington gave a sobering overview of the realities
of managing campus networks in today's environment.

Ken klingstein referred to the recent Jericho forum
http://www.csoonline.com/analyst/report3839.html which promoted the concept
of "de-perimerterization" where increasingly campus and enterprise networks
are not going to be defined by their geographical facilities.  Instead
networks (and network management) will extend across campus boundaries and
will be built and operated by communities of interest or Virtual
Organizations.  We are already starting to see this with health and medical
community building their own networks spanning multi-jurisdictional networks
because of HIPAA requirements. The growing number of institutions acquiring
their won fiber and lambdas is further expanding this concept.

As Terry pointed out a large percentage of today's Internet community uses
only a small number of applications - Google, web e-mail, web browsing and
perhaps Skype (all of which use port 80). He noted that 63% of
UoWashington's outbound traffic is Skype. Increasingly many new applications
such as Skype and web services are using port 80  and strong encryption and
authentication in order to set up their global peer to peer meshed networks
of users. 

The Internet has always been compared to an hour glass where IP is the
common bearer service between the applications and the underlying network
infrastructure.  But with the advent of firewalls, NATs and other devices
the end 2 end principle of the Internet may be moving to Port 80. Skype is a
great example of this type of approach.  Web services also use port 80 (SOAP
over HTTP) for this very reason

Some may see use of Port 80 has a hack as it becomes the facility to enable
pervasive applications ( at least the most popular ones), but as port 80
becomes the pervasive gateway for most popular Internet applications, it may
have the benefit enabling new underlying physical architectures.

In fact the need to define a new Internet "architecture" may disappear.
Instead with applications moving to port 80 network operators will be free
to define their own underlying network architectures as long as they support
interoperability at port 80. Indeed this what we have proposed with CA*net 4
& UCLP that all aspects of the network from the forwarding plane, through
the control plane to the management plane be expressed as web service
building block which the user ( or their proxy) can assemble in any way that
best fits their needs. 

A good example of this approach is the recent Cisco IPICS announcement where
they are using web services to enable interconnectivity and data forwarding
between various incompatible wireless systems from cellular to WiFi
http://mobiletechnews.com/info/2005/10/24/144015.html

Finally I think Bob Frankston http://www.frankston.com/ summarized all this
eloquently in a recent posting on Gordon Cook's Arch-econ list:
 
" Protocols that maintain relationships at the edge and encrypt will remove
any ability to control access by controlling a path." --BSA]




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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.



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