The Future of the Internet Protocol

The explosion of interest in the Internet puts stress on what was originally designed as a research and education network. The sheer number of users is requiring new strategies for Internet address allocation; multimedia applications are requiring greater bandwidth and strategies such as "resource reservation" to provide synchronous end-to-end service.In this series of eight interviews, Carl Malamud talks to some of the researchers who are working to define how the underlying technology of the Internet will need to evolve in order to meet the demands of the next five to ten years.

• Steve Deering is a member of the research staff at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and a prolific contributor to the Internet protocol suite. Steve is the father of IP Multicasting, the basis of much of the video and audio conferencing work done on the Internet. Steve is also chair of the mobile IP working group in the IETF and an active participant in the SIP work for a new version of IP.
• Bob Braden is the Executive Director of the Internet Architecture Board and a long-time participant in the Internet. Braden discusses the DARTNET experimental network and research in the areas of resource reservation and other topics related to his work in the End-To-End Research Group.
• Christian Huitema is the new chair of the Internet Architecture Board. Prior to taking on his bureaucratic burden, Christian was chair of the SIP working group. SIP (Simple Internet Protocol) is one of the strong participants in the race to become the next generation of IP. Christian talks about the importance of simplicity in protocol design and gives a unique perspective on issues such as policy routing, resource reservation, and other key considerations at the network layer.
• Bob Hinden is an active participant in the development of SIPP, considered to be the leading candidate for the next generation of the IP protocol. Hinden discusses how the SIPP developers are considering the issues of a careful transition, support for multicasting and other leading edge techniques, and how he sees SIPP being deployed into the Internet.
• Peter Ford is one of the leaders of the TCP/UDP with Bigger Addresses (TUBA) effort. TUBA, based on the ISO Connectionless Network Service (CLNS), is one of the candidates for the next generation of Internet Protocol. Ford talks about TUBA and its relationship to other research efforts in the Internet.
• Steve Casner is an active participant in the work on a multicast backbone and instrumental in setting up the IETF TV video multicasts of working group meetings and technical presentations to the Internet. Casner talks about the future of multicasting and audio/visual work on the Internet.
• Craig Partridge is a noted networking researcher at BBN, currently focussing on very high speed networking. Partridge discusses different data link strategies for gigabit networking and how these technologies integrate into the TCP/IP protocol suite.
• Noel Chiappa, the architect of the Proteon router, is a researcher with a long history of involvement in routing protocols. Chiappa explains why we don't need a new Internet Protocol, how the Internet will replace the telephone system, and how addresses can become complicated. If you're intrigued by such topics as Internet "multicasting" of audio and video; or think your job might one day depend on understanding some of the following buzzwords: IPNG (Internet Protocol Next Generation), SIP (Simple Internet Protocol), TUBA (TCP and UDP with Big Addresses), CLNP (Connectionless Network Protocol), CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing); or if you are just interested in learning more about the people who are shaping the future--give these tapes a try.