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Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

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Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#61

Post by quesera »

doctor_eval wrote: post #27

I’d make sessions independent of IP addresses. So that as I move between wifi, fixed and mobile networks, my sessions would remain active even as my interface addresses change.

Session persistence can be achieved on top of IP.

E.g. for ssh, there's mosh (uses UDP to work around the control part of TCP).

Come to think of it -- everything I use is either stateless (http), or can use ssh for transport (ssh, sftp, sshfs, rsync, ...).

I'm sure some other protocols still break, but I haven't felt that pain in years!

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#63

Post by nitwit005 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #52

Canonical User Identity. I know this is massively controversial but if we were starting at the beginning, an internet without anonymity would be a kinder, safer internet. One where data asymmetry and it’s enterprises wouldn’t have a toehold. A place that extends reality rather than contorts it. Privacy and anonymity have a place, and should be a right for consumption but never for creation.

People would just buy some fake identity from some poor island somewhere, and governments would spit out a few billion fake people for espionage and propaganda.

And need some sort of identity management for all the automated processes to assume, which would be a huge nuisance.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#64

Post by p1mrx »

wmf wrote: post #3

Maybe make the DNS less US-centric (e.g. .com vs. .co.uk) and replace the PKI with DANE. We should have had DHCP prefix delegation for IPv4 so people wouldn't need NAT.

DHCP-PD for IPv4 would eat up all the addresses on day one. It only makes sense to automatically delegate prefixes when those prefixes are an abundant resource.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#65

Post by aaomidi »

Nevermark wrote: post #14

End to end encryption and tracking-resistance at a low enough protocol level that most developers or users would never know the pain of even thinking about either. Imagine how many times security and privacy have been reimplemented in different contexts. And that patchwork approach will incentivize security breaches and manipulation through dark surveillance until ... no end in sight.

Technically tls is end to end encryption. Between you and the service provider.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#66

Post by tester756 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #52

Canonical User Identity. I know this is massively controversial but if we were starting at the beginning, an internet without anonymity would be a kinder, safer internet. One where data asymmetry and it’s enterprises wouldn’t have a toehold. A place that extends reality rather than contorts it. Privacy and anonymity have a place, and should be a right for consumption but never for creation.

>Privacy and anonymity have a place, and should be a right for consumption but never for creation.

What makes you think so?

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#67

Post by mikewarot »

First, you have to secure all the computers. Capability Based Security for everyone. This lets us all run mobile code without danger. (No more virus or worm issues)

Next, we use 128 bit IP addresses, 32 bit port and protocol numbers, and absolutely forbid NAT as a way of getting more addresses. (no ip address shortage)

Next, all email has to be cryptographically signed by the sending domain using public key encryption. (No more spam)

Next, selling internet access [EDIT]ONLY is strictly prohibited. Either connections can host servers, or find a different business model. Any node of the internet should be able to run a small server. (No more censorship in the walled gardens) Yes, I know it's stupid to try to host a server on the upload bandwidth I get from a cable modem, but it shouldn't be prohibited. If I want to see my webcams from anywhere, it shouldn't require someone else's server.

DNS should be done using a blockchain, it would need some iteration to get it right.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#68

Post by spullara »

ollerac wrote: post #5

Web app capabilities built in to the foundation of HTML and the browser. Elements that know they're user-editable (images with upload controls attached to them to replace the image that's there, dates that trigger calendar controls when clicked, and inline editing for other elements that actually works and is consistent across browsers). An offline database in the browser that has the concept of user accounts and res…

You are talking about the web, not the internet.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#69

Post by crehn »

nickysielicki wrote: post #9

IPv6 dates back to 1997 and it really should have been adopted more urgently. IPv4 isn’t a huge issue but it sucks that so much of the internet is dependent on cloud providers because it’s the simplest way to get a public IP address. The decentralized web didn’t happen, in part, because of this. Facebook was famously started and hosted in a dorm room. But this was only possible due to the history of Harvard within th…

What about the security aspects of NAT?

e.g. Isolating subnets and restricting outbound access. Seems like a useful defence-in-depth mechanism in case of misconfigured firewall rules.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#70

Post by EvanAnderson »

1. SCTP instead of TCP (doesn't suffer from the maddening layering violation in TCP/IP w/ the host IP being part of the TCP tuple). This would solve mobile IP.

2. SRV RR's instead of "well known ports". Solves load balancing and fault tolerance as well as allowing lots of like-protocol servers to coexist on the same IP address.

3. Pie-in-the-sky: IPv4 semantics w/ a 96-bit address space (maybe 64-bit).

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