The future of data networking is in understanding its origins, John King, University of Michigan vice provost for Academic Information, said Thursday.
"But there are problems built into the Internet," King said, "and it needs to be replaced."
He said the problems in the Internet result from the Internet Protocol.
"There is continued innovation, but not with IP because it is in everything," King said.
Testing the IP could potentially lead to destruction of the Internet because everything is linked through IP.
That doesn’t mean science won’t move forward, he said.
"But pay attention to big science and the Net," King said. "(Some things are) just getting started."
King said the internet hasn’t been sufficiently tested since its inception.
The technology boom after World War II, known as Big Science, and the Cold War jumpstarted the information age, he said.
"The dawn of data networking started with nuclear tests," King said, referring to the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
The creation of nuclear weapons by the former Soviet Union led to the U.S. military developing the early warning system, or Semi-Automatic Ground Environment.
"The biggest (information technology) development of the 20th century was Project SAGE," King said.
Each SAGE building housed two of the world’s largest and oldest computers in the basement and was connected to various radar stations around the country, he said.
Personnel in the U.S. Air Force spent hours looking at computer screens similar to air traffic control screens searching for possible incoming enemy planes, King said.
SAGE led to the creation of the Internet’s predecessor, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, in 1969.
ARPANET and the Internet Protocol were created because the military wanted to have the ability to log in to computers remotely and build fewer computers, King said.
The military didn’t want ARPANET used for commercial purposes because of its competition with the Soviet Union, he said. The National Science Foundation later took control of ARPANET in 1986 after the military backed out.
The NSF used a "set of supercomputer centers to create the NSF Net," King said, and this network eventually became the Internet.
The term "Internet" was formalized in 1995 and defined as a "global information system" which uses IP and provides services tied to the communications infrastructures, King said.
He said that improvements to Internet communication are needed, and driving forces such as enterprise and Big Science are developing major innovations, King said.
These forces are "building bigger and faster computers," King said, referring to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN lab, a giant underground laboratory in Switzerland used to study particle physics.
Global Environment for Network Innovations and PlanetLab, a worldwide network that researches and develops information technology, are attempting to develop new technology similar to the Internet within the existing Internet, he said.
"The problem now is we can’t risk destructive testing," King said. "Everything is tied to IP, and that doesn’t allow continued innovation."
