THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

Introduction

The widespread notion, which holds that, the security problems in the modern age are a result of the loopholes in the network system, is entirely a misconception. Most of the problems exist in the endpoint devices such as mobile phones, computers and other widgets which have a connection with the Internet. The Internet is not malfunctioning, instead these devices misbehaves; therefore, the best solution is to protect these endpoint devices.

Book Report

Zittrain's book “The Future of Internet and How to stop it” explains the mechanism that has thrown the internet from behind to ubiquity. It also explains the security problems in a very convincing manner, while simultaneously providing better ways to think about the issues. According to Zittrain, integrating security within the Internet will help in crippling the permissiveness and flexibility because of which it has become a constant source of surprising and unpredictable innovations. This book has three parts; Part I covers the history of Internet. This history is there in order to bring two design principles of TCP/IP architecture into limelight. The first principle is about procrastination stating that “The network itself should not be designed to do anything that can be taken care of by its users.”

The Second principle is about trust, stating that “The Internet is a bucket-brigade partnership in which network neighbors pass along each other's packets, and the assumption of co-operation and fair dealing is present in its design. So the Internet has no built-in security or identification mechanism; anyone can join the network; and there is no quality of service guarantee for packets it delivers”. Generative dilemma is the issue which these two principles identify (Zittrain, 2008).

Moving Forward Trend

Part II covers the dangers which, according to the author, Internet is most likely to bring to the society. Amongst these dangers, one is the hike in the number of internet appliances, for instance iPhones', iPods', TVios and Xboxes. They all represent the products which cannot be modified by anyone else except for their manufacturers. These devices, at one hand, are providing a secure environment; however, they are also restricting the programmers' creative abilities. The new web 2.0 platforms; for instance, Google maps, Sales force, Facebook and some other hosted websites, poses the second danger because they provide conditional programming environments. As a consequence, ...