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1 Future Internet Architecture and challenges of the current Internet CHIRAG ARORA S1456717 Master Thesis Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences University of Twente Supervisors : Dr. JOHNNYHARTZ SØRAKER & Dr. MICHAELNAGENBORG 1 2 Acknowledgements As there are no clear oreven obscure boundaries between my lifeandtimes in writing thisthesis and my lifeand times in general, thepeople Iam about tothank have had contributed more tolifethan just helping mein writing thisthesis. Of course, thisputs me intheprecarious positionofchoosing afew among many.But, perhaps thereader and I can agree that my failurein acknowledging everyoneis somewhat inevitableand only trivial,and hopefully Ihave paid my respect to most,ifnot all, whilesharing our conscious experiences. With theabovecaveats inmind, Iwould first liketo thank my supervisors Johnny Soraker andMichael Nagenborg, who have provided mewith good advice but more importantly,witha lotof fuel for interesting thoughts both beyond and withinthe classroom.Along with Prof.Ambuj Sagar,who has been afriend, mentorand inspiration tomefor a numberofyears now,they epitomizewhat Ilikebest aboutAcademiaand why Isee alife formyself within it. Being a newcountry,far away from where you were born, can make you think and re-think themeaning oftheword ‘home’.Thevery fact that I have notformed any clear opinionsorfound anyreal answers to what that word may mean, is in itselfatestimonyto allthe friends I havemade in Enschede and Europe in general.Among my ‘international’ friends who really deserve a mention are Jurjen,Thijs, Jannis, Sabrina,Tunmisseand Jerfy who have lived through my incessant story-telling and my lovefor exploring the ‘other’sidein debates, and who have also played along justas well.Asimilarrolehas played byVinayak andAteeth, whohavealso madesure that Iam able toget myshare of exercisein theweek bybikingto a place that isaway from thegrey of thecity.Thetime spent withthem and thetrees who have witnessed ouraverage poetry recitation skillshas been as free from thefetters of thepast and future as any timecan be. Athesis about Internet shouldn't go withoutacknowledging therole ofthistechnology in 2 3 lettingmefeel even among thosewho are physically far away.Most ofthem have been longenough inmy life toexcludeany possibility ofan acknowledgment that can be written in afew lines and stillreflect everything Ihave to say.SoI am justgoing to put outsomenames: Geet,Anuraag, Ritesh,Abhishek, Chetan, Rajat,Ankur,Ashu,Amit, Parv.Finally,Iwould end thisrather vain exercisebythanking my Parents and my Brother,who have been great friends and hadan overwhelmingly pleasant role in my Being. Let mealso just addthese words byRilke,which reflect what Imay ormay not have achieved onthispage, orin my thesis, orlifein general, but aspire(d)to: “...And Iwant mymeaning trueforyou. Iwantto describe myself likeapaintingthat Istudied closelyfor along, longtime, likeawordIfinallyunderstood, likethepitcher of water Iuseevery day, liketheface of mymother, likeaship thatcarried me through thedeadliest stormof all.” 3 4 Abstract In thelast three decades, theInternet has seen unprecedented growth, scaling from a few hundredearlyusers to morethan 3billionglobal users,enabling a transformation of a wide range of economic, social, political and cultural practices. However, along with this growth, Internet has also witnessed a wide range of growing conflicts among its stakeholders. The issues raised through these conflicts, which include concerns over privacy, security, censorship, etc., are at the heart of debates over Internet’s design and regulation held between stakeholders such as governments, private enterprises, activists and designers. Given the impact of Internet’s technical architecture over human life, a number of scholars within the Internet research community, arguing that the current architecture is too constrained to cater to contemporary concerns, advocate for a clean-slate architecture design for a future network. Whileaclean-slate architecture provides us with anopportunity tofind solutions toour current moral dilemmas, italso leaves us with theresponsibility ofanticipating moral dilemmas that may arise in future because ofsuch adesign. This thesis aims to take up this responsibility and provide a step towards a future Internet. Using the conceptual notion of ‘architecture’, which allows for a decomposition of a complex system, like the Internet, this thesis argues for four critical meta-requirements for a future Internet architecture. These meta-requirements, which are properties of the system critical to it beyond its basic functionalities, cater to four characteristics of a complex system like Internet which underlie its current as well as potentially future challenges: inherent uncertainty and lack ofpredictability offuture useof anetwork likeInternet, diverging stakeholder interests and views, lack offeedback ordata about howthenetwork is being used, and diversity of societies Internet isembedded in.Iconclude the thesisbyprovidingdesign principles, which are philosophical guidelines,fora future Internet, along withevaluation tools thata research team,which I argue shouldbe multi-disciplinary,involved in development ofa futureInternet can useto evaluate thedifferent specific implementationsof thesedesign principles and hence, movetowards thedevelopment ofafuture network that can support thesocio-economic goals ofadiverse world. 4 5 Table of Contents Chapter1:Introduction....................................................................................................7 Chapter2NetworkArchitecture andSome BasicPrinciples......................................16 2.1System Properties or Meta-Requirements............................................................17 2.3.1Modularity.................................................................................................20 2.3.2Layering....................................................................................................22 2.3.2.1Layering inNetworkArchitectures................................................24 2.3.3End -to-End Principle................................................................................25 2.3.3.2BroadVersion.................................................................................27 Chapter3OriginalInternetArchitecture......................................................................30 3.1Layering...............................................................................................................30 3.1.1Link Layer.................................................................................................30 3.1.2Internet Layer............................................................................................31 3.1.3Transport Layer.........................................................................................31 3.1.4Application Layer......................................................................................32 3.2TheEnd-to-End principle.....................................................................................33 3.3 End-to-End principleand controversies surrounding Internet Policy Guidelines35 Chapter4TheInternet andits Challenges....................................................................38 4.1EconomicChallenges for Internet Service Providers (ISPs)...............................38 4.2Qualityof Service andNetwork Neutrality.........................................................39 4.3Cybersecurity.......................................................................................................41 4.4Emergenceof conflicting viewand goals............................................................43 4.5Extensionsto Internet architecture.......................................................................43 4.6Reflecting ontheproblems ofcurrent Internet forlessons for afuture Network44 Chapter5Reflections forafutureInternet...................................................................46 5.1Uncertainty: Challenges and Opportunities........................................................46 5.2StakeholderConflicts,ValuesandValueSensitiveDesign..................................51 5 6 5.3Network can benefit from added ‘Intelligence’...................................................57 5.4Architecture should beminimally defined...........................................................60 5.5MovingBeyondValueSensitiveDesign(VSD)..................................................60 5.6Meta-requirements for afuture Internet...............................................................63 Chapter6Recommendations forFutureInternet........................................................65 6.1Modularity............................................................................................................65 6.2Design for‘Tussle’...............................................................................................69 6.2.1ModularizealongTussleBoundaries........................................................70 6.2.2Design forChoice (to exertcontrol over tussleoutcomes).......................72 6.3Designing forNetwork Intelligence.....................................................................73 6.3.1FuzzyEnds Principle.................................................................................74 6.3.2Knowledge Plane......................................................................................75 6.4Designing anevolvable, heterogeneous, intelligent Internet fortussle: Recommendations for Futurework............................................................................77 Chapter7Concluding summary.....................................................................................79 References.........................................................................................................................84 6 7 Chapter 1 : Introduction In the past three decades, Internet has gone from a small community of users with mutual trust to one with a wide variety of stakeholders who do not know each other, and often find themselves having diverging and conflicting interests. For example, many users want privacy in their communication, while governments want to tap conversations for a variety of reasons. Certain users want to exchange media, such as music and movies, with their peers while the media industry, as the legal right holders, wants to stop them. These conflicts, along with other challenges borne by the increased size of the Internet, have seen a number of short-term technical fixes that may be harmful in the long term (Braden et al, 2000). For example, the increased incidences of security attacks, in the form of hacks or computer viruses, has seen deployment of Firewalls on computing devices which block potentially (but not always actually) harmful applications. Similarly, to provide additional services, network providers use technologies such as Deep Packet Inspection which breach the privacy and transparency of Internet communication as it looks through the data flowing across the Internet. These changes violate the Internet’s original design principles and are being widely debated among scholars, policy makers as well as in forums such as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (Braden et al, 2000; Van Schewick, 2012:!5). These debates raise the concerns that such short-term fixes may destroy, or atleast hinder, Internet’s capability to facilitate innovation, economic growth, free speech, knowledge exchange, and democratic exchange. Forums such as IETF, and other Standards Developing Organizations (SDO), have also become important sites for raising and addressing questions over the moral as well as legal responsibility of technical designers to protect or enable exercise of ‘human rights-by-design’(Cath and Floridi, 2016) and thus, highlight the growing impact of the technical architecture on human life (Brown et al. 2010; Clark et al. 2005; Denardis 2013,2014; Lessig,1999). 7 8 As aresponse to thevarious conflicts over Internet’s design, usage andregulation, which need to be ethically addressed, anumber ofscholars within theInternet research communityhave suggested a clean-slate architecture design, that is, anew network that is unconstrained bythecurrent system.Whilea clean-slate architecture provides us with an opportunityto find solutionsto ourcurrent moral dilemmas, italso leaves us with the responsibilityofanticipating moral dilemmasthat may arise in future becauseofsuch a design.Thisresponsibility demands a contribution from ethicists and philosophers, and thisthesis isdedicated towards this responsibility. However,before conceptualizing thedesign ofaclean-slate architecture fora complex network liketheInternet, we require anuanced understanding ofa.) what the term architecturemeans, as well as howthey are designed inthe contextofnetwork systems, b.)what is thearchitecture ofthecurrent Internet, c.)howdoes thisarchitecture lead to theconflicts ofInternet’s design andregulation, d.)what can we learn from these conflicts and its relation to architecture in orderto design anewarchitecture.The aim of thisthesis isto address all ofthese issues incorresponding chapter 2-5. In Chapter 6,I willdraw onthese lessonsand discuss howdesign ofanew architecture can proceed. Here, Iwill also argue that any research aimed at designing anew network architectureto match thescale andutility of Internet, should involveamultidisciplinary team which includes not justtechnical experts but alsonon-technical expertssuch as thosewith knowledgeofeconomics, social science, philosophy,lawand policy making. Thecomplexity oflarge systems, such as theInternet, requires thedesigners to decomposethesystem into smallercomponents.Thearchitecture ofa system describes howsuch adecomposition is to takeplace as well as howdifferent components interact witheach otherto produce thedesired functionality.As BarbaraVan Schewick (2012) defines it, architecture isa “high-level system description that specifies the components ofthesystem, theexternally visibleproperties of thecomponents, and therelationships among components”.Different architectures can however,map onto thesame functionality.Yet, thesearchitectures, with samefunctionality,might differin someother system properties such as reliability,modifiability,security,and soon.Someofthese 8 9 system properties can beextremely critical to thesocio-economic impact ofthesystem. Forexample, for asystem present underconditions ofextremeuncertainty,itmight be advantageous for thesystem to have acapability tobe modified easily. Designers may often have tomake trade-offs between thedesired system properties as onesystem property may negatively affect someotherproperty.For example,security as aproperty may negatively affect asystems capacity to support new applications. Building security into software systems may require designing specific features to bedesigned into applications, which may decrease the incentivefor application designers. Similarly, additionof security features may also block applications originally compatiblewith the system. One exampleistheuse ofFirewalls on network systems. Firewalls monitorand filterdata trafficgoing inand out ofacommunication network based onpredefined rules. Sincedesigning rules to separatebetween malicious and non-malicious datacan an error-proneexercise, particularly in large networks, firewalls often result in blocking of non-malicious dataorfunctions (Braden et al, 2000).The decision oftrading offone system property can therefore becritical in determiningthe behavior ofthesystem, such as itssocio-economic impacts.In thecontextof thisthesis, which aims to providea step towards a newnetwork architecture, thisdecision regarding thetrade-offbetween different critical system properties (also referred to as meta-requirements in this thesis), is central to thedesign ofanew architecture. In order tofacilitatethedecision making regarding thetrade-offbetween different meta-requirements, I discusshowthese meta-requirements were mapped ontothe architectureof thecurrent Internet, as well as howthat architecture relates to thecurrent conflicts overInternet’s design and regulation. In the former discussion,I introducethe concept of‘design principle’,which is used to translate thedesired meta-requirements ontothesystem architecture. Design principles describe theknown interactions and outcomes in different architectural choices andguide thedesign of asystem forspecific meta-requirements. In particular,I discuss threedesign principles, modularity,layering, and theend-to-end principle and howthey are implemented inthe Internet architecture. As design principles are conceptual tools, scholars often disagree over theirtechnical 9 10 implementationwithin theInternet architecture.Therefore, in thisthesis, Iwill discuss and clarify thesedebates. An understanding ofdesign principles in thecurrent architecture, and thesystem properties they facilitate, provides afoundation to better understand thedebates surrounding theconflicts over Internet’s design andregulation, inrelation toits architecture. In thisthesis, Iaim to unpack theserelations and showhowthecurrent debates such as thoseover ‘Network Neutrality’or thelack of security measures against cyber-attacks through hacking and computerviruses can be conceptualizedas debates overthedesign ofInternet architecture. For example, theopponents ofnetwork neutrality argue that itrestricts theprovision ofQuality ofService (which can enable services such as faster video streaming for customers willing to pay more) whiletheproponents argue thatgoing against network neutrality would involveviolation ofthedesign principles of theInternet andthat theresulting network would not onlybe architecturally incoherent butalso less conducive to future innovation(Schewick, 2012). However,since thecentral aim ofthisthesis is to provideastep towards afuture Internet architecture, theanswer to thequestion ofhowthesedebates should be settledwithin the contextofcurrent Internet is not particularly important.As mentioned earlier,designing a clean-slatearchitecture not onlyprovides an opportunity to cater to someofourcurrent problems, butalso aresponsibilityto anticipate orcater to problems that may arisein future.Therefore, inthis thesis, Iaim to identify somecommon underlying conditions thatnot only give riseto themultiple challenges forcurrent Internet (such as debates over network neutrality,cybersecurity,theeconomic challenges for service providers, conflicts overcensorship and privacy ontheInternet, and so on), but which may also give rise to future, albeit different, challenges forany network deployed globally onalarge scale. In otherwords, thetask in handisto identify andaddress theunderlying conditions that give riseto conflicts in theirgeneral, rather than specific technical forms. Idiscuss theseissues inChapter 5,which builds uponthediscussiononthe relation between architecture and challenges of current Internet presented in chapter 2-4. In Chapter6,I give recommendations forthedesign ofa future network liketheInternet, bearing in mind that 10

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1. 1. Future Internet Architecture and challenges of the current Internet. CHIRAG ARORA . Chapter 2 Network Architecture and Some Basic Principles. security attacks, in the form of hacks or computer viruses, has seen deployment of. Firewalls on .. architectural styles, see Shaw and Garlan, 1996).
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