Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Small: Creating An Extensible Internet Through Interposition

通常来说，互联网是我们可以从手机，笔记本电脑和其他个人设备访问的应用程序和服务的集合。然而，在网络研究界，术语“互联网”更具体地指的是这些应用程序和服务所建立的基本通信基础设施。令许多人感到惊讶的是，虽然这些年来应用程序和服务的集合发生了巨大的变化，但互联网本身的基本架构-即通信基础设施中的功能安排-自大约40年前首次形成以来几乎完全保持不变。这种缺乏变化不是我们的选择;我们知道有很多方法可以改进基础设施，为用户提供更好的安全性、隐私和性能。相反，缺乏变化是因为发展如此庞大的基础设施本身就是一个困难的设计挑战。更具体地说，任何互联网架构变革的建议都必须面对双重挑战：（i）如何在不破坏旧设计的情况下部署新设计，以及（ii）如何创造激励机制，使所有主要的基础设施提供商都能从这种变革中受益（否则就不太可能发生）。这个研究项目旨在通过我们称之为可扩展互联网的设计来克服这些障碍。如果成功，这将不仅仅是一次性的变化，而是将互联网变成一个平台，可以很容易地在持续的基础上纳入变化。从技术上讲，这项工作是建立在这样一个核心观点之上的：最初的互联网架构的IP的窄腰合并了两个角色：将所有第2层（L2）网络捆绑在一起的角色，以及为终端主机提供服务模型的角色。可扩展互联网通过在层L3和L4之间插入插入层来分离这两个角色，该层（i）构建在L3之上，并且可以不加改变地使用当前的L3，以及（ii）向终端主机提供服务模型。可扩展互联网设计的全部重点是构建这一新层，以便在此插入层之上无缝部署一组可扩展的服务-从安全证明到改进的隐私到多点交付到各种其他交付模型。研究挑战包括：如何构造数据路径以使其既完全灵活又高效;如何构造全局服务以使其具有高弹性;以及如何可行地支持不断发展但统一的服务模型（即，由所有网络提供商支持）。我们将在各种网络测试平台上演示最终设计，包括NSF自己的FABRIC测试平台。此外，我们在这个项目中创建的所有软件都将是公开的和开源的。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In common parlance, the Internet is the set of applications and services that we can access from our phones, laptops, and other personal devices. However, in the networking research community, the term “the Internet” refers more specifically to the basic communication infrastructure on which these applications and services have been built. What many find surprising is that while the set of applications and services have changed dramatically over the years, the basic architecture of the Internet itself – that is, the arrangement of functionality in the communication infrastructure – has remained almost completely unchanged since it first took shape roughly forty years ago. This lack of change is not by choice; we know many ways the infrastructure could be improved to provide users with better security, privacy, and performance. Instead, the lack of change is because evolving such a large infrastructure is a difficult design challenge in itself. More specifically, any proposal for architectural change in the Internet must meet the twin challenges of: (i) how to deploy the new design without breaking the old, and (ii) how to create incentives so that all the major providers of the infrastructure benefit from this change (or else it is unlikely to happen). This research project aims to overcome these barriers with a design we call the Extensible Internet. If successful, this will not just be a one-time change, but will turn the Internet into a platform that can easily incorporate change on an ongoing basis. More technically, this work is built on the central insight that the original Internet architecture’s narrow waist of IP conflated two roles: that of tying all layer-2 (L2) networks together, and that of providing a service model to end hosts. The Extensible Internet separates these two roles by inserting an Interposition Layer between layers L3 and L4 that (i) is built on top of L3, and can use the current L3 without change, and (ii) provide the service model to end hosts. The entire focus of the Extensible Internet design is architecting this new layer so that an extensible set of services – ranging from secure attestation to improved privacy to multipoint delivery to various other delivery models – can be seamlessly deployed on top of this Interposition Layer. The research challenges include: how to structure the data path so that it can be both fully flexible and highly efficient; how to structure global services to be highly resilient; and how to feasibly support an evolving yet uniform service model (i.e., supported by all network providers). We will demonstrate the resulting design on various network testbeds, including NSF’s own FABRIC testbed. In addition, all software we create in this project will be publicly available and open source.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.