Enabling a permanent revolution in internet architecture

Abstract

Recent Internet research has been driven by two facts and their contradictory implications: the current Internet architecture is both inherently flawed (so we should explore radically different alternative designs) and deeply entrenched (so we should restrict ourselves to backwards-compatible and therefore incrementally deployable improvements). In this paper, we try to reconcile these two perspectives by proposing a backwards-compatible architectural framework called Trotsky in which one can incrementally deploy radically new designs. We show how this can lead to a permanent revolution in Internet architecture by (i) easing the deployment of new architectures and (ii) allowing multiple coexisting architectures to be used simultaneously by applications. By enabling both architectural evolution and architectural diversity, Trotsky would create a far more extensible Internet whose functionality is not defined by a single narrow waist, but by the union of many coexisting architectures. By being incrementally deployable, Trotsky is not just an interesting but unrealistic clean-slate design, but a step forward that is clearly within our reach.