The Problem

"A system as complex as the Internet can only be designed effectively if it is based on a core set of design principles, or tenets, that identify points in the architecture where there must be common understanding and agreement."

D. D. Clark, K. Sollins, J. Wroclawski, and T. Faber, "Addressing Reality: An Architectural Response to Real-World Demands on the Evolving Internet"

For almost 30 years, the Internet has been coping with ever increasing traffic and new applications, including voice and video, while retaining its original architecture, drafted almost 40 years ago. Despite its success, the Internet is suffering from several key design flaws, most notably an imbalance of powers in favour of the sender of information, who is overly trusted. The network accepts anything that the sender wants to send and will make a best effort to deliver it to the receiver. This has led to increasing problems with unsolicited traffic (e.g. spam e-mail) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, forcing companies and users to conceal their e-mail addresses and place their systems behind firewalls.

The worst consequence is that the full range of possibilities offered by the Internet is not being exploited and trust in its proper operation has been lost.