The Future of Internet
EIFFEL
3.6 The EIFFEL think tank’s view on the future networked society
The white paper by the EIFFEL think-tank (http://www.future-internet.eu/) discussed several aspects associated with the future networked society: the main technical and socio-economic drivers, the technical challenges, policy aspects, risks and opportunities for Europe, and finally some thoughts and means to getting there including some recommendations.
The technical drivers to the future networked society are fairly well understood. Mobility is becoming an aspect that will heavily characterize both the terminals and the services and will have to be taken into consideration in future designs. The number of networkeddevices will increase dramatically. More people will be connected, more and diverse devices (multi-device ownership, multi-part devices) will be connected and more devices will be directly communicating (M2M). Wireless bandwidth is expected to increase, e.g. through the release of the spectrum residing in the TV bands, through cognitive radio (e.g., local spectrum re-usage) and technology advances in new radios. The broadband usages will largely evolve. Moore’s law will continue to drive the increase in processing power and memory availability. Digitized media will increase dramatically (e.g., YouTube is expected to push 20% more traffic per month). Location determination will become ubiquitous (knowing where something is when). End-user will be providing infrastructure and services (e.g., through Net2.0 and Web2.0). Security, trust, and handling of multiple identities will become issues of paramount importance.
The socio-economic drivers are important as well. The communication infrastructure will be an inherent part of the future industry and society, the same way traditional utilities such as electricity and water have become. The future Internet will help to increasingly shape modern society as a whole and will play a dominant role in organizational changes to the society in a number of ways: by opening up the possibility of new business models for organizing production and transacting business; by contributing to the development of new products and markets; by creating new and far closer relationships between businesses, the public sector, citizens and consumers; by reshaping the structure of organizations leading from hierarchical to network- centred structures; by making new channels of knowledge diffusion & human interactivity possible; by forcing firms to re-examine their business models, cost structure and competition strategies.
It is not clear as to whether such important socio-economic and technical drivers will simply drive an evolution of the current networked techno-economic landscape or cause a disruption. Such predictions are very difficult to make, judging from the recent past and the technological landscape. Fifteen years ago the Internet was in its infancy technologically (no Web) and socially (no Internet payments, no e-Government, no Intranets), with companies such as IBM, Digital, no Google, no Yahoo, tiny Nokia, and technologies defined by a couple of Kbps transmissions and analogue mobile communications. Today’s Internet world is dominated by Google, MSN, Digital and many other vendors have disappeared or deeply restructured, mobile Internet is emerging. Consequently, drawing the trajectory from today’s landscape to the world in 15 years is a difficult business. In addition, the increasing end-user driven innovation, with movements like Web2.0, increases the probability for disruption and unforeseeable socio economic trends.
The technical challenges that the current Internet faces should be pursued by following some general design principles that are likely to make it possible to address them effectively. Such design principles are: openness and wide-scale accessibility; genericity, neutrality and transparency; network security, survivability, robustness, performance, scalability, flexibility and adaptability; facilitation of host attachment and accommodation of variety of access technologies (wireless and wireline); support any type of transport layer protocols (facilitate mobile communication) and any type of traffic attributes; distributed control and management; cost effectiveness; accountability (trade-off accuracy vs. privacy and anonymity vs. trust).
The technical challenges are substantial and will affect the timescale and impact as well as the broad technical trajectory. Technical challenges should be orchestrated and keep complexity under control or limit it. Several tools will need to be invoked / developed to pursue the technical challenges, including: networking tools, monitoring /measuring tools, testbeds and demonstrable open/usable environments. In short, the pursuit of the technical challenges should invoke the following three processes: thinking, structuring and sustaining an open and broad technical trajectory; steering, evaluating objectives, achievements and feedback; equipping with appropriate tools, right tool at the right time.
The technical, business and sociological challenges need also reflection from and solution through policy and governance perspectives. The current Internet model is not perfect for many reasons. International policies and control needed to enforce rules and to guarantee free competition, to establish a legal framework for global networking and to enforce rules that are currently too weak or non-existent.
To this end, debate and actions are needed. The proper risk analysis on the future development is not done. For instance, the concern about who is in control, of what needs to be addressed along the technological debates. Similarly for privacy, including a public debate on the need for it (e.g., there exists very little awareness about technical assets for anonymity). The pros and cons between a non-regulated and a regulated approach should be discussed, with the aim of preventing monopolies and oligopolies whilst maintaining neutrality and transparency.
Debate is also required on citizens’ needs and wishes, as well as on policies and governance. EC needs to mobilize itself to address these issues at the highest level. The scientific community can help as “consultants” and provide the options, but it can not decide. The issue goes beyond academia or commerce. Some complementary socio-economic research also is urgently required to understand the interactions and possible trajectories better.
As for the planning, appropriations and the means to getting to the future Internet, There are various views. From the start, it seems that there are various assessments of the state of the Internet. Opinions range from an Internet that is completely broken, to a problem-free Internet. Some also believe that the US initiatives (GENI-FIND) will create the future Internet and Europe will be left out. Others think that there is nothing out there to invent really and that the future Internet will gradually appear as a result of a normal evolutionary process.
The future Internet issue is a bit more complex. There are too many questions on how the Internet will develop in the future. Today’s Internet was never designed to be a critical part of an economy’s infrastructure, but it “just” works. The re-engineering is justified, if the justifications are right. A lot of work has been done, but the field is still fragmented and there is a clear and present danger for continuing fragmentation. First and foremost, Europe needs to move from fragmentation of efforts to cohesion and co-ordination.
Academia has a tendency to favour the «clean slate» approach, which may also have several drawbacks. Industry tends to think more in terms of innovation and foreseeable exploitation of research results. It is hard to predict the future and favouring one approach to the detriment of the other may be risky.
The landscape is clearly a fuzzy one. Discerning the right path and getting out in front is key to gaining the leadership in the future Internet rally. The EC itself has to take leadership role on starting to shape policy and governance recommendations. The project portfolio and working items therein need to be monitored and better co-ordinated. The EC itself, with help of independent scientific advisors above any doubt of bias, has to take a responsibility and leadership on this.
Testbeds need also to be considered carefully. The amount of high risk research in the portfolio of projects should be increased. The best possible people should be mobilized and motivated towards the common goal of “networked society”. The excellence should not be just organizationally justified, but exhibited through the profiles of the principal investigators and participants. The well known problem of “me too” research should be avoided.
A holistic and wide spectrum approach should be followed. Specifically the wireless and mobile communications role should be put in perspective, considering also all other issues. Following only the known and safe paths should be avoided and the objectives should be renewed dynamically. The on-going work needs to be monitored and impartial feedback on general level in peer review fashion should be required.
Both exploratory and evolutionary efforts should hence be allowed to flourish, as they will likely both help get to the final goal. What is also very important is to encourage interactions and co-ordination between the two approaches in all stages of their journey to the final goal. All should join into the “evolutionary revolution”. The pursuit of the future networked society should be undertaken by different actors; they all have a role to play.
The European Technology Platforms (ETP’s) have their important role to play, especially at the later stage in setting up IP’s. NoE’s have their role too as community at large. More small-risky projects are also needed.
A phased approach in the research must be adopted. Phase I should focus on exploration, high-risks and limited-stakes. Phase II should include the initial efforts for integration. Phase III should be dominated by integrative efforts and testbeds. The full complement of the available instruments should be used. But effort should be put not to fall into the managerial trap of believing own marketing. Testbeds should not be financed in the first stage; experience and advice is first required. GENI type of massive launch should be debated. Europe has already a lot of existing infrastructure. The missing pieces should be carefully identified instead. Business research and thinking is good, as long as we do not get bogged down.
The EIFFEL think-tank wants to be part of the future Internet effort and provide mechanisms to help contribute to it. It is not an ETP, NoE, or a traditional forum; it is not there to compete, block or be closed on purpose. In FP7 EIFFEL will continue and undertake jobs and objectives as needed. It will propose a SSA or a similar action to establish and expand the group, undertake orchestration, roadmaps, peer-review, continue to be academically driven and act as a type of “science council”, cooperate with the main NoE’s and ETP’s, act as a “debating society” maintaining a small core group.
EIFFEL intended actions include: a “School of Architects” to lead architectural debate, design and research and which will help figure out how to “architect” the network, provide service to other projects and provide a “revolutionary cell”; the Future Networked Society Forum, taking in account other players too, such as ISOC.
è White Paper The Future Networked Society