Future Internet

Our audio, video, and print media have all become digital and the Internet is increasingly being used as a media distribution network. Unfortunately, it was designed as a communications network and, while communication and distribution networks share many elements, they are essentially different. As carriers attempt to augment their infrastructure to handle an exponentially increasing flood of media, these differences are driving high CAPEX and OPEX and resulting in missed opportunities and marginalization.

There are some relatively simple, incremental improvements to routers that would allow carriers to easily evolve their infrastructure to do optimally efficient distribution while reducing both CAPEX and OPEX. These improvements, generally referred to as 'Content' or 'Information' Networking, are at the heart of most of the World's 'Future Internet' research efforts. Van Jacobson, PARC Research Fellow and Lead, Content-Centric Networking Program, will describe a few of those efforts, particularly the US NSF-funded NDN (Named Data Networking) project, and try to suggest how carriers and equipment vendors could start to apply the ideas to solve problems today.