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.

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.