So how will the Internet evolve?

Who knows. From what I have studied it seems unlikely that the Internet will get a complete overhaul, but there are certain pressing issues that need to be addressed, such as security, and so I predict that, within a few decades, the Internet will be very different from the one that we use today.

From the papers we discussed in our networking class it seems as though the trend of architecture research is focusing on data-centric approaches (although there are some radical application-centric ideas floating around). This is based on the idea that the current trend of internet use is to find data.

People don't care about where the data comes from, they just care that they get the data. Although I agree that this might be useful right now, it suffers from the same problems that plagued the original creation of the internet. The original designers were focused solely on what they needed for an internet right then and there. They didn't look forward to the future to try and incorporate ideas for a more data-centric network. If we follow suit and do not look a little ahead to the future, we may be implementing a data-centric network when the trend is shifting away from that type of network.

However, I do understand that researchers need to work with what they have and that it is incredibly difficult to predict the future. After all, who knew that the internet would grow to permeate the entire world?

I don't have any solutions to the current problems of the internet and at first I felt that the internet is extremely useful for everything I need, so why fix what isn't broke? Studying internet architecture has opened my eyes to the real struggles behind security issues and, from some radical papers, I have come to understand how limiting the internet architecture can be at times. I wasn't looking at the big picture of the internet before and now I better understand what people are trying to do and what kind of areas I need to look into if I want to help brainstorm the future of the internet.

So what's everyone else doing?

In studying how to improve the architecture of the internet, one must look at what has already been done. One of the architectures we studied in class was DONA, which stands for "A Data-Oriented (and Beyond) Network Architecture." Although I didn't understand all the nuances of the architecture, the basic idea of DONA is to improve the efficiency of the internet by understanding that internet usage is data-centric, rather than host-centric, and modeling an architecture to support this trend.

The main problem I see with the proposed architecture is the feasibility of its implementation. Although this aspect of DONA is covered in the article, I feel that a key point was not addressed: how to successfully market it to the masses. In order to successfully launch the 'Internet 2.0,' the millions (or billions) of users must be able to use the system. While DONA is not impossible to use, it is different and, as mentioned in the article, it is more difficult.

Although a data-centric internet would benefit the masses, explaining to them that they must work harder so that the internet can work better may be a difficult task, especially when we consider that the current internet has workarounds in place that allow them to essentially have aspects of a data-centric internet, without having to learn a new naming convention.

Some may argue that this is a problem for psychologists, not students of networking, but I would counter that that type of thinking is what caused the networking problems in the first place. The Internet was created for certain tasks, while research into how users would use the Internet was not even considered at the time, since the entire idea of the Internet had not been completely realized.

I believe that in order to have a successful 'Internet 2.0,' not only should we improve the architecture of the Internet dependent upon its usage in modern times, but we must also properly prepare for its implementation. I won't go so far as to say that the perfect internet would not require users to change their behavior, but if I would propose that if a change in behavior is necessary, then we as researchers should effectively determine a manner in which we can help transition the masses into a new world with a better Internet.