The Internet was not conceived or designed to become the commercial juggernaut that it is today. The dilemma is that as the Internet grew, its flaws as a commercial platform became more apparent at the same time it got harder to fix because there are increasing numbers of systems to migrate.
Even though scientists have been designing new systems, you cannot just install a software patch and reboot. It's just not easy to rebuild an airplane while its flying.
So what event will be large enough to force a dramatic shift in Internet architecture? It could be China.
There are a lot things to think about in this article from CIO magazine.
The US has been very slow to invest in infrastructure (cut taxes and war take priority) but other countries are investing heavily.
The US pioneered the Internet but that control rankles some politically and can lead to false pride.
Will we stand still and watch China run past? Only time will tell.
The vision of a unique IP number for every person and every device is an intriguing idea with some very useful applications. From a consumer's view however, improving securtity and creating an email system free of spam would be much more valuable and readily understandable features.
There is a lot of talk about "Web 2.0" - perhaps Internet 2.0 is closer than we think.
China Builds a Better Internet
Americans have been hogging Internet addresses for decades, leaving late-comers like China to divvy up the few remaining slivers. But China is fighting back by vaulting to an addressing standard that could rewrite the rules of the Internet—and business innovation—for decades to come.
July 15, 2006
China is betting that by moving to the next-generation Internet before the rest of the world, China's researchers, academics and entrepreneurs will be the first ones to develop applications and services that take advantage of the new capabilities. (China isn't alone in this thinking. Japan and Korea have also launched national initiatives to move to IPv6.)
And while China's first-mover advantage is by no means a given, China has already established itself as the world's leader for IPv6, and, accordingly, is positioned in IPv6-related standards organizations. That could mean that the next-generation Internet is China-centric, the way the rest of the world feels the current one is U.S.-centric. "We used to be behind on the Internet," says Xiang Yangchao, executive vice president of Digital China Networks. "But we hope that we can become the leader of the IPv6 Internet."
China, which is expected to surpass the United States as the world's biggest Internet user later this year, has just 2 percent of the world's IP addresses, or around 60 million—about as many as Stanford University.
Given that China will have almost twice as many broadband users as the United States by the end of 2007, the sense of injustice among China's Internet officials is palpable. "When 26 Chinese share one Internet protocol address, while each American possesses six IP addresses…this is the quandary facing China in the IPv4 era," Zhao Houlin, director of the International Telecommunications Union, said in 2005.
The innovation potential provided by IPv6 is enormous. Every device, from cell phones, to street lights, to a household thermostat, can have its own unique position on the Internet and be connected all the time. Utility companies will be able to read meters remotely over the Internet. Consumers parked outside a grocery store will be able to download shopping lists from their Internet-connected refrigerators to their BlackBerrys. Since every computer will have its own permanent IP address, users will be able to authenticate the source of e-mails or other requests, providing the means to track and prevent today's hacking, spam and phishing schemes.
The United States' reluctance to invest in IPv6 makes it more likely that China will be in a position to gain the first-mover advantage it seeks. A draft version of a January 2006 report by the Department of Commerce on IPv6 contained a section on competitiveness that highlighted several threats to U.S. Internet leadership, including a further shift of high-tech R&D and product innovation eastward and less available investment capital because of the higher costs of maintaining IPv4 networks.
