|
|
 |
 |
| Keynote: Thursday,
August 26, 2004 Virtualizing the Net - a strategy for enabling network innovation Jonathan Turner Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Washington University in St. Louis The rise and growth of the Internet is one of the great technology success stories of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the Internet's very success is now creating obstacles to innovation in the networking technology that lies at its core and the services that use it. Even the deployment of relatively modest changes of widely acknowledged importance, such IPv6, has proved quite difficult. The ossification of the Internet is a natural evolutionary stage in the development of any highly successful technology. However, the problem is more acute in the Internet context, because dominant network technologies are naturally shielded from effective competition by the deployment obstacles raised by the high cost of infrastructure and the need for agreement among a large collection of organizations with often competing interests. At the same time, advances in technology now make it both feasible and practical to deploy high performance network elements with unprecedented flexibility and programmability. These capabilities can be used to enable a wide range of virtual networks to co-exist within a common physical infrastructure. A virtualized Internet can enable new network protocols and services to be developed and deployed on a large scale, stimulating innovation in both core network protocols and advanced services that combine computing and communication in creative new ways. By exposing incumbent technologies to such competition, we can not only allow radically new and innovative approaches to flourish, we can also create an environment in which incumbent technologies are under constant pressure to innovate and change. An Internet that enables the rapid introduction of new network technolies can stimulate innovation and lead to a broad range of new services. |
|
|
|