Telco CTO says internet is no longer fit for purpose

Interoute's Matthew Finnie claims that the internet needs a new architecture to cope with the way its use has evolved

Telecoms operator Interoute has said that the way the internet is currently architected is no longer fit for the way we use it.

"The internet used to be about a destination; where you would go to read content," said Matthew Finnie, CTO of Interoute, speaking exclusively to Computing.

But he explained that today users share and exchange content rather than reading it at one destination.

"The bulk of what drives internet use now is video and social media. Instead of the content being consumed by everyone from one place, you've got lots of individuals exchanging content in many locations."

The move to IPv6 has increased the number of IP addresses available, but does not deal with the change in the way the internet is used.

"The introduction of IPv6 dealt with an issue of running out of address space, but not the fact that how we use the internet has changed in the last 15 years," Finnie said.

The way the internet manages its addressing requirements, using IP addresses, is not an ideal system to manage this manner of content consumption, he explained.

The internet is currently architected in an end-to-end structure in which data is sent from one point to another, but this does not suit the modern need for the dissemination of data from one point to many.

"The IP address is overloaded. It is used as a host identifier, an interface identifier, a network locator and as part of the transport endpoint. This makes requirements such as multi-homing, mobility and traffic engineering difficult to achieve," he said.

The solution Finnie expounds is to rebuild the internet using the Recursive Internet Work Architecture (RINA). This results in less bandwidth wastage because less header data is needed to explain where information is going, its state, and where it originated.

"Development of RINA is still in the early stages and it has a long way to go before it becomes a reality, but the initial research looks very promising," he said.