I'm forwarding a message I sent recently to the IANA (later also to IETF), that I though you might be interested in. It's about the creation of a united content-centered Internet, similar to the what happened with physical netoworking back in the 90's. mark Santa Fe, NM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Janssen <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:08 PM Subject: Internet Evolution, Internet 2.0; post SOPA To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Hello, My name is Mark Janssen. I've been a network engineer "back in the day" and hooked up my University to the Internet back in 1993 (WHOIS: MJ24). I remember when the potential of the Internet seemed unbounded, with thousands of unique sites that would pop up on the radar weekly. I'm hoping this email message gets to some IANA network architect who remembers and appreciates John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Feel free to forward to others who may be relevant as well. While to many eyes, there's no problem with the Internet as it stands, I wish to make the case for the development of Internet 2.0. (This touches upon, but goes well beyond the issue of IPv4 address space; in fact, the solution I'm going to propose makes IPv6 a red-herring -- the right solution to the wrong problem.) The problem is that the Internet evolved as a server- and geo-centric phenomenon, where only large institutions could host content and where one could depend on "always-on" networking; hencefrom came DNS, all the way to hyper-links and HTML. Since the government/RIAA shutdown of Napster and P2P networking phenomenon, this [geo, server-centric] limitation of architecture has *balkanized* the Internet. The billions of users now spend most of their time on so very few sites. The economic and cultural loss of this is hard to measure, but I insist that IT IS IMMENSE. There are a number of us that have been working on these problems, mostly under-the-radar, debating the solutions for this. The networking landscape of 2012 has millions of users with large hard drives and ubiquitous, mobile network connections, NONE OF WHICH can host the dynamic content that users are generating by the giga-bytes *everyday*. My generation (GenX) has the creative and intellectual potential to participate in a rich dynamic cultural experience, but our current economic system fails to provide the engagement to take advantage of it. This is part of the impetus of the Occupy Movement -- we're simply tired of participating in the Industrial Model. The Internet can provide the alternative for the 21st Century. What I'm proposing is the creation of a content-centric Internet, a true web 3.0 -- a Web 3D, where users navigate the internet, not by domain names, but by interests. It's tentatively called Pangaia (pangaia.sf.net). Take the first 3 to 4 layers of the OSI network stack (up to TCP) and leave it as is -- that's the physical network. Then, separate out the top 3-4 layers, set them *orthogonal* to the physical layers and create a *unified content-network topology*, wholly independent of the details of the underlying network Internet 2.0. IP address assignment will be dynamic and a function of the hosted content -- a more efficient fractal-IP layout can occur rather than the fragmented IP assignments that we have presently. It would take a killer-app to pull it off, and I think Pangaia can do it. The Pangaia project has developed some sophisticated algorithms that can self-organizing the content of the Internet and scale to the billions. It comes out of various research in complexity theory and analysis of the various problems o community internet sites who have tried to solve the problems of decentralization without devolving into chaos. Pangaia provides what could be called a "Physics of Information", the rest will be provides by the community. It will re-organize the whole internet (the top content layers of course where billions of users spend a large part of their day). Think Wikipedia + a voting model that allows per-revision voting, plus a reputation model. It will create a whole new realm of economic activity, and the votes count as a type of currency. It is hoped that it will upturn the outdated and dying Industrial Model and create a new society. I've been working at this at a non-profit hackerspace/technology incubator called the Santa Fe Complex (sfcomplex.org) here in Santa Fe, NM. I'm writing to you guys to see what awareness there is about the issues mentioned, and what interest there might be to have further dialog. I believe the Mozilla Foundation will be interested (cc'd on this message) and is working on some similar explorations, but have not heard from them yet. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Mark Janssen pangaia.sf.net Santa Fe, NM