I'm coming to this thread late, so I'm amazed that no-one has mentioned Named Data Networking - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking and https://named-data.net/ . The basic idea is to manage the "what" rather than the "where". This looks like the future to me.
Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
261–270 of 327 posts
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#262Can we fix email so that it provides authentication, integrity, and confidentiality protections by default? And also while we're at it make it support binary attachments so that we're not stuck wasting bandwidth and disk doing base64 for everything?
why not just extend the email protocol to really support open calendars, open social networks (decentralized) and open p2p chat? email is a nice way of addressing, but we underuse that address compared to all the balkanized post-email systems.
Email has nothing to do with calendars. It happened that people in offices used email and attended to a lot of meetings. Microsoft built a client/server system (Exchange) that managed both email and calendars. There were probably previous systems like that, I don't remember. We need only a calendar client now (usually on phones) even if most systems send an email notification.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unblockable ads and popups, uncopyable text, yay!
You can still block ads by recognizing them at the pixel level. Same for copying text. Advantage: you can also select text in images, and block ads that are images.
Lol, sure mate.
if pixel.isAd {
pixel.color = black
}
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#264First, 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 encryptio…
You had me at cabsec (I don't think this terminology has taken hold, but I see it on one of your blogs https://capabilitiesdigest.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-cabsec-f...), lost me at blockchain. Fortunately the first item is conceivably remediable without other changes in Internet design, e.g., Fuchsia, right?
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#265Can we fix email so that it provides authentication, integrity, and confidentiality protections by default? And also while we're at it make it support binary attachments so that we're not stuck wasting bandwidth and disk doing base64 for everything?
I agree. In my opinion, the number one thing that needs to be done is to ensure that email can only be sent encrypted. I have had the following information sent unencrypted over email in recent years:
1. medical/health information.
2. sensitive personal financial information.
3. HR related information.
4. Billing information.
5. payrol information.
I basically refuse to give out email to health care providers or any corporate entity because I can't be sure what they will put in plain text email. I have to carefully explain to them that email is not encrypted and I have to explain what encryption is, some get it some don't.
I am also trying to get friends and family to encrypt because I am also concerned that they will put health/medical etc into the email, so far no takers on encrypting. It takes like 15-30 minutes to do it the first time and 5-10 minutes for each contact (just need to send and verify fingerprint).
Email is great in that it is federated and not centrally controled, the encryption needs to get fixed.
I would suggest somebody create an SMTP server that will only accept encrypted connections and will scan and reject any received email that is plain text; i.e. will not store the plain text and will issue appropriate SMTP code indicating that it is not encrypted.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#266I'd add some micro payment system. Todays internet is based on ads because that's the only way to get some value out of users. If the internet had something like payd phone numbers, people could get actual money for their site without sleazy ad companies. Minitel did it, and it worked.
I'd add a way to boot abusers from the network. Botnets would become the problem of the IOT device owner etc. This means protocols where routers could complain about an abuser to their upstream. If upstream receives eniugh complaint/votes, an end device gets booted off.
I'd like some way to re-decentralize the internet. There are some wrong incentives in the current internet, causing centralization.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a student (or visitor), when you joined the network (wired or Wi-Fi) you weren’t allocated some internal IP behind a router but a PUBLIC As an interesting detail, which seems alien today, is that this was also true at my various employers throughout the 90s. My desktops at work all had public IP addresses and were directly on the Internet, no firewall or anything. I ran mail and web servers, fully internet acces…
so the modem was just connected to a switch?
I had a biz customer who had an early cable internet connection. ISP plugged their dumb modem directly into the hub and every PC had a public IP.
This was awesome for about 3 hours until the worms showed up - because Win98 didn't come with a firewall.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IPv6 reintroduces equity to the internet that facebook benefited from in it's inception Except for the fact nobody can type, much less remember any IPv6 address.
and how many people remember public ipv4 addresses besides a couple of easy to remember ipv4 addresses like 1.1.1.1 for instance? rfc1918 address space is easily remembered because people use mostly 192.168.xx.xx. but ipv6 has the same idea and when writing it shorthand isnt significantly larger.
They are easy enough to remember for a few seconds if you need to configure it somewhere. I always ping 8.8.8.8 to verify my internet connectivity. I don't think people should underestimate how much IP addresses are entered manually on a daily basis.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I worked at a company with about 5-6 servers and a couple fixed remote workstations, all the programmers knew all the IP addresses by heart, if there were names for anything but the www host I didn’t know them. Obviously doesn’t scale, but I would assume this was normal back when you only interacted with say <10 servers.
That’s a false issue nowadays. Basically any cheap router supports Avahi/Zeroconf/Bonjour … and allows you to reach any other machine of the network directly by its host name instead of its IP. There is not any reason to learn the IP address of your first MySQL server when you can reach it through « mysql-1 » or « mysql-1.local ». You basically just need a router and an OS from the last two decades and your machines…
I don't think that's true. I've never seen a router that lists hostnames that I can actually ping. Sometimes they do but 50% is always empty. It's a very client dependent solution.
Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I worked at a company with about 5-6 servers and a couple fixed remote workstations, all the programmers knew all the IP addresses by heart, if there were names for anything but the www host I didn’t know them. Obviously doesn’t scale, but I would assume this was normal back when you only interacted with say <10 servers.
That’s a false issue nowadays. Basically any cheap router supports Avahi/Zeroconf/Bonjour … and allows you to reach any other machine of the network directly by its host name instead of its IP. There is not any reason to learn the IP address of your first MySQL server when you can reach it through « mysql-1 » or « mysql-1.local ». You basically just need a router and an OS from the last two decades and your machines…
> Basically any cheap router supports Avahi/Zeroconf/Bonjour … and allows you to reach any other machine of the network directly by its host name instead of its IP.
I regularly run into instances where local hostname resolution is unreliable.
To improve reliability, I setup a local DNS server to hand out a domain name with the IP address. Even then, whether a client requires a hostname or FQDN to resolve a local address - that can vary over time.