TCP vs. Other

If I had to break up transport protocol research into two main areas it would be research into TCP and research into other protocols. Since TCP has established itself as the leading protocol for the internet today, many researchers find success in changing TCP to fit certain needs (as can be seen in Data Center TCP or Scalable TCP).

Others tend to take a more daring approach and look at completely new protocols, which may seem like a fruitless task in terms of improving the Internet, but their ideas make more sense when they are applied to smaller networks (although they may still be large networks) that need specific functionality (such as enterprise networks). The only problem that researchers taking this stance face is that their protocol needs to be "TCP-Friendly."

TCP-Friendly refers to the fact that the new protocol is fair (in terms of bandwidth) when competing with a TCP connection. Vegas was criticized for being less aggressive than Reno, while BIC was criticized for being too aggressive. It seems that in order for the TCP protocol to be replaced form this point forward that the Internet itself will have to evolve so as to demand a new protocol. Such is the case with protocols like Scalable TCP, which may become more useful as high speed networks become more prominent.

As far as the transport layer goes, even though advances are made all the time, it seems as though the field is somewhat stagnant since we are too willing to submit to the current working protocol (TCP Reno in this case) and, although some protocols are better, no other currently available protocol is good enough for the world at large to want to incorporate it on a large scale.

Scalable TCP (and the Future of Networks)

From the Scalable TCP paper and other networking papers I've been reading, many researchers seem to be doing research for an Internet that doesn't quite exist yet. For example, while Scalable TCP may only be useful for a small group of users in the current internet, as High Speed Internet becomes more and more popular, and it may take many years or decades to do so, I am sure Scalable TCP, and related research, will become more useful to a larger number of users. However, by that time, more and more researchers will probably be shifting their focus to interplanetary networks, which may or may not ever come to fruition (but it is still looking toward the future).

Of course, this may seem like an inherent part of research (looking towards the future), but only in these recent papers has the idea really stood out to me. For our networking research, we are looking at Network Tomography as a tool to infer Network Topology. The main reason why researchers claim to use this tool, instead of more active probing tools like traceroute, is in order to be able to continue mapping the Internet while the routers and users become less and less cooperative with network measurement tools. Essentially, it seems that the researchers are preparing for a future Internet where little or no cooperation will exist.

Note that I stated that the researchers claim this is their primary reason for research, but my professors believe that the networking techniques that they are proposing are very useful for mapping networks that certain users, such as governments, etc., don't want mapped. An idea that is useful today, while still preparing for the future. So now I ask myself where I should focus my research. Should I take a gamble and focus on research that may or may not be useful in the future? Or should I focus on research that is important for people now and may have future implications? Just some interesting things I have been thinking about.