Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007

The dawn of a new internet?

Experts believe that we must develop a new web if we are to deal with the plethora of online problems we now suffer from.

Across the world internet experts are working on various concepts that will make the internet safer and more effective. Some believe they must develop a completely new internet, intrinsically starting again from scratch. This brings the internet age back to the era of experimental research that went on almost forty years ago. Is starting again really the way to go? Some believe not, and others think that if they do develop a new concept to deal with the internet’s problems such as fraud, child porn and spam, they new system may not be able to do the things that the old internet could do very well. What is not in doubt is that something needs to be done to halt the online decent into chaos; in 2006 a reported record amount of 93% of all email sent in the UK was spam, and internet fraud cost the economy upwards of £400 million.

Companies such as the Global Environment for Network Innovations (Geni), are working on a concept, but say they need at least £175 million to continue with it. Similarly, the EU’s Future and Internet Research (Fire) programme will cost in the region of £27 million. Geni have the support of the National Science Foundation in America, and report that they plan to have the new stage of the internet developed within the next 10-15 years. One of the ideas being developed in the concept of a ‘mesh network’ in which many computers all share the same connection, making the internet faster and safer, as hackers will find it harder to infilitrate one pipeline than many. Whatever the experts come up with we are not likely to see any great developments for many years yet, but one thing’s for sure, the internet is changing.

Source: Guardian