News IDF Keynote Day 3: The New Net

Intel introduced IDF attendees to their vision of the new internet this morning.

Introducing Vincent Surf, now of MCI Worldcom and one of the original architects of the net, Intel's Pat Gelsinger discussed the problems of the internet today.

Right now, Pat suggested there were several problems with the net. These included addressability (including the long-term move to IPv6), bandwidth, load, security, accessibility, and regulatory concerns such as privacy and tax.

Pat introduced Planet Lab (www.planet-lab.org) as a blueprint for what the net of the future might look like, based on the principles of rough consensus and code testing. Currently, Planet Lab is an open working group that is running 440 nodes in 22 countries. The network replaces dumb routers in the net with intelligent servers, running Intel hardware.

In an interesting tangible demonstration, Pat showed a webcast of his IDF speech going over the Planet Lab network. He then demonstrated the difference in load scaling by connecting 6 new nodes directly to the host machine via a router - causing major frame skips - and by then using an intelligent Planet Lab node to drag those 6 nodes away from the source to act as a go-between. The same number of nodes were connected, but thanks to the intelligent scaling of the new net, there was no loss in video quality.

Pat announced that Intel is working with HP on the the commercialisation of this new net. We quizzed him on how he felt an early move to commercialisation might stunt the acceptance or growth of the new net, giving that much of the success of the internet as it stands is attributed to its open structure and platform-agnostic architecture. He replied that he felt the sheer power of what had been put together so far justified early economic work, and that he believed that working on economics and innovative research simultaneously would yield the best results. He felt the money that could be made would enable a strong, thriving research community to evolve much more rapidly.

No date was given as to when Intel expect Planet Lab to go online to the masses.