Why have the Internet at all?

No, I am not calling upon the abolition of the Internet. I am instead trying to make a witty reference to a radical paper I read called "The End of Internet Architecture." The author, Timothy Roscoe, essentially throws out the rather extreme view that the current Internet architecture is not good enough for the functionality we need and that no other architecture will fix the issues the current Internet is experiencing. Instead, his idea is to virtualize the Internet, with applications taking on every role that the current Internet architecture has, effectively removing Internet architecture.

Though Roscoe's claims may seem ludicrous at first, there are some merits to his line of thought. For example, he proposes that removing the architecture of the Internet essentially opens up the functionality of the internet. It is no secret that many Internet application developers have to spend a large amount of time to create a workaround for the application to work with the current architecture of the Internet, rather then seamlessly working with it. Roscoe proposes that a world of creativity could be opened up if applications did not need workarounds, or weren't tied down by protocols.

Overall, Roscoe isn't really trying to create a new architecture, the paper seems more like a call to arms to push research in networking into the field of systems research. Roscoe doesn't delve very deep into the idea of mixing systems and networking research, but he does give a few ideas of areas that other researchers could focus on in order to push forward. Although I don't entirely agree with Roscoe's approach, I applaud his ability to think outside the box in terms of trying to find new avenues of networking research to explore. Who knows, maybe some of his ideas will come into practice as the Internet evolves over the next few decades.