Replace The Internet?

Ben Warthen interviewed scholar Ben Lazowska, the computer scientist who says that "The Sky Really Is Falling " as he describes Internet security in the United States. Ed Lazowska says of the Internet:

Patches and updates won't solve this problem. "Many of the protocols that we use are inherently insecure," Lazowska says. "They can't be made more secure by evolution. They need to be rethought."

Unfortunately, the only solution is replacing the Internet with something new, just like CIOs have to replace old Cobol systems that wear out.

The entire Internet was actually replaced once before in the early 1980s when the whole Internet switched over to TCP/IP on one prearranged day. Back then there were only about 1,000 computers connected to the network, however. Today, says Lazowska, "It will be a big, expensive, worldwide job. The United States does not currently have a plan for switching to a more secure and more reliable Internet, but it needs to have one," he says, "because the cost of not doing it is too great."

-DD

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Note that Lazowska is a big believer in the positive future which technology may bring: