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This man wants to control the Internet. And you should let him

discovermagazine.com — He and his colleagues have created a theory that has revealed some simple yet powerful ways to accelerate the flow of information. Vastly accelerate the flow: Doyle and his colleagues can now blast the entire text of all the books in the library of Congress across the United States in 15 minutes.

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  • agf102, on 10/30/2007, -2/+101it's a hell of a long article just to say that he wants TCP to consider delay as well as loss
    • thebaron2, on 10/30/2007, -6/+22True, but without the other stuff I wouldn't have a clue about what control theory is or how it applies to life and technology today.

      I, for one, thought the whole article was extremely interesting. If this guy wants to be the President of the internet, he's got my vote.
      • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -3/+34Those who would give up their freedom for TCP considering delay as well as loss deserve neither freedom or TCP considering delay as well as loss.

        - Thomas Jefferson

        Okay, I changed it a bit...sorry
      • lordmetroid, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1He can't have my parts of the internetworks so tough luck!
        • tkotam, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2wait a second.. how does this fit into the dump truck theory??
      • Terr01, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1Hey! I've heard of this project: It's called the "Aquinas Protocol".

        Thank you, Page Industries, for your gift of effectively free and unlimited bandwidth.
    • themastersb, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1If he wants to control the internet he will need to get a better laptop first.
    • drakethegreat, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1Read 3 pages on control theory to figure out that he just wants another feedback loop... Its not like this guy has the all telling solution to the internet's most fragile center. If he can solve this problem then I guess evolution truly does lose to human ingenuity but I think there is a reason he hasn't...
    • takeda, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2"We could wake up one morning and nothing works."

      I'm sorry, but when he's saying this it activated my *****-meter.
      The congestion avoidance algorithm is designed to prevent just that. Without it the mentioned catastrophe, would happen already long time ago.
      I trust more my teacher (she has better credentials than him, she has master's and PhD in Computer Science from MIT she was also one of the list of "Brilliant 10" of elite researchers, she specializes in networking).
      I wonder what she will say. She never talked about possible problems like that. In fact quite opposite. There apparently was a lot of skepticism, to how Internet was designed (lack of optimization etc.). Another big surprise, was HTTP. Almost everyone was skeptic (using text to communicate, instead of more condensed binary transmissions, making new connections for every file etc etc)

      In fact I got impression, that the biggest problem currently is lack of congestion control, for connectionless protocols (e.x. UDP), but DCCP seems to solve it, and it looks like it is getting implemented.
    • esc27, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1If you really read the article, you should notice that 1) it isn't just about changing TCP, but about the man, control theory, etc. 2) The new protocol described toward the end is just a short term improvement, and the bulk of the work is yet to be done.
    • VladYBingi, on 10/31/2007, -0/+0'Control' is not used in the most common sense of the term in this title or in this article. Doyle doesn't want to OWN the Internet. His s theory describes the mechanisms that complex systems like the Internet need to remain stable and robust.
  • Error601, on 10/30/2007, -6/+74Well, that was 99.9% fluff.
  • mrkuhn, on 10/30/2007, -4/+18John Doyle = Toby Flenderson from The Office :).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Flenderson
    • nreynolds, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2he's everything that's wrong with the controlling internet industry?
  • webcure, on 10/30/2007, -11/+26I actually read all 3 pages and learned quite a lot. Call me a newbie, but this guy John Doyle sure isn't one.
    dugg!
    • Sangatious, on 10/30/2007, -3/+20you're really John Doyle, arn't you?
    • whataboutdave, on 10/30/2007, -11/+2Newb.
    • d03boy, on 10/30/2007, -3/+2There wasn't more than 2 sentences of factual information in that entire thing. There was nothing to learn.
  • AuburnTigers, on 10/30/2007, -10/+25I don't want that guy controlling anything...
  • Jereso, on 10/30/2007, -23/+8The only person I want controlling the internet is Maddox.

    After all, he does run the Best Webpage in the Universe.
    • Ramble, on 10/30/2007, -2/+30If that happened the internet would only be updated every year and all sites would be forced to use 18pt ariel.
      • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1I'd prefer 15 pt Verdana please.
    • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -12/+1 (BART SIMPSON WHINY VOICE) Well if you like him so much why dont you marry him? (/BART SIMPSON WHINY VOICE)
      • Klarth, on 10/30/2007, -6/+1I'd like to imagine the same statement in the GLaDDOS voice.
      • Klarth, on 10/30/2007, -6/+1I'd like to imagine the same statement in the GLaDDOS voice.
      • Klarth, on 10/30/2007, -4/+1What the *****, all my comments are doubling up tonight.
  • Ascendancy5, on 10/30/2007, -7/+2I inherited the internet?
  • graviplana, on 10/30/2007, -14/+6*****. Candy Coated MIT Degree'd *****. Buried for FUD. Problem - Reaction - Solution. Don't believe the Hype.
  • graviplana, on 10/30/2007, -7/+13Agreed. This guy shouldn't be controlling anything. Oh Gee - "Control Theory" sounds great! War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, etc.
  • riddar, on 10/30/2007, -2/+45Interesting article, but why must all articles contain a phrase such as "blast every book in the entire Library of Congress in 15 minutes," "enough data to make a stack of books reach the sun and back 5 times," or other useless phrases. It is like how hard drive boxes feel the need to tell me how many hundred thousand of my favorite family photos I can store on their drive. Using the Library of Congress as a unit of measure does not help me as a reader. 3rd page, I found that it ran at 17 gb/S. That is an actual useful figure, no reason for it to be pushed to the end.
    • merreborn, on 10/30/2007, -6/+10To the average American, "17 gb/s" is meaningless. "One library of congress in 15 minutes", on the other hand, has *some* kind of meaning.

      Articles like this one aren't meant for you and I. They're written for the lowest common denominator.
      • riddar, on 10/30/2007, -1/+6What the hell is the meaning of a Library of Congress in 15 minutes? That literally translates into "they are poorly describing what may very well be a large number" in my head. I have NO idea how many books are in the Library of Congress, and can't even guess within several orders of magnitude. Past that, are we talking text? Page scans? What format? Compressed? The Library of Congress is not a useful metric to anybody.

        Besides, a website with a tagline about Science, Technology, and the Future should embrace fancy terms like the Gigabyte. It's an article about future file transfer protocols over a global network, anyhow; if they don't know what a bit or byte are, they won't understand the article even with the poor analogies to exercise and travel.
        • zenoizen, on 10/30/2007, -0/+5Maybe the article should have said "it can send a ***** of stuff hella hella fast!"
        • scottadges, on 10/30/2007, -2/+0hella hella fast
        • spinningobo, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1@zenoizen
          buried for use of hella.
      • scottadges, on 10/30/2007, -1/+0Why not put it in some real LOC terms:
        - 30 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages
        - more than 58 million manuscripts
        - over 1 million US Government publications
        - 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries
        - 4.8 million maps
        - 2.7 million sound recordings

        Can all that barrel through at 17 gb/s?
    • positron, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1In my opinion, it is at least partially this need that media has to treat people like idiots that ensures they stay idiots.
    • cnot3, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1its like putting too much air into a balloon!
    • scottadges, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1Why not put it in some real LOC terms:
      - 30 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages
      - more than 58 million manuscripts
      - over 1 million US Government publications
      - 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries
      - 4.8 million maps
      - 2.7 million sound recordings

      Can all that barrel through at 17 gb/s?
    • drakethegreat, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1One library of congress is to data transmission rates as horsepower is to engine power.

      How's that for a Simile
      • riddar, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1It's a really bad one.

        First, that is an analogy, not a simile.
        Second, an LoC would theoretically be a unit of storage space, which is not a rate. An HP is a rate: power over time.
        Third, a horsepower is a clearly defined and accepted unit of measure.
  • Upas, on 10/30/2007, -9/+2tl;dr
  • supermanred, on 11/03/2007, -5/+78Nobody should control the internet.

    I repeat,

    Nobody should control the internet.
    • SpykerSpeed, on 10/30/2007, -1/+6...B-but the government built the highway system and sent a man to the moon! Surely THEY should control it! ;)
      • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -1/+15In my city, the government (provincial: Ontario) said they were building a toll highway called the 407 but that once the tolls had paid off the highway's cost they would remove the toll system and it would be our new highway.

        As soon as the ***** thing was paid, they sold it cheap to friends in business and it is still a toll road today.

        Don't trust them. They are all the same. Here's the new boss, same as the old boss.

        NOBODY SHOULD CONTROL THE INTERNET.
    • vinecrawler, on 10/30/2007, -4/+4Ron Paul controls digg.
    • stympman, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2Your statement has my vote.
    • osbjmg, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3If you read the article, you would realize it's a play on words. He's talking about re-tooling TCP or changing it to something else. He's a "control theorist" so the words kinda fit together. He's a scientist, and you are a jump-to-conclusionist.
    • melve, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2You're supposed to actually read ... Oh, never mind.
    • esc27, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Clearly you don't understand the internet at all.
      Several regional organizations such as ARIN (US) are responsible for "controlling" who "owns" the different IPv4,IPv6,etc. subnets.
      MAC addresses I believe have a similar set of control organizations.
      ICANN is ultimately responsible for domain names.
      Many of the different TLDs (top level domains such as com, edu, net, etc.) have a sponsor and/or registry which controls them.
      Other organizations control such things as official HTML and CSS standards, RFC documents and filings, etc.
      Not to mention the physical backbones of the internet tend to be owned by various governments and telecoms.

      So while no one person "controls" the internet, it is not as free, wild, or even democratic as you would like to think.
    • brenbart, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Um, my understanding of the article made it seem like the title was to grab the kneejerk reaction and make you read the article. Would you have been as interested if it was titled "Man proposes new TCP protocol"?
  • cyclopssmiley, on 10/30/2007, -3/+4Don't tell me that I should let someone control that I spend 3+ hours on everyday. I mean if I beat him in halo he could just never let me on the internet again or something.
    • osbjmg, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3If you read the article, you would realize it's a play on words. He's talking about re-tooling TCP or changing it to something else. He's a "control theorist" so the words kinda fit together. He's a scientist, and you are a jump-to-conclusionist.
  • vwvan, on 10/30/2007, -7/+7Without Digg, these kinds of presumptive headlines would go unchallenged.
    Digg is the complete future of news.
    Do you find yourself not even wanting to use news that doesn't let you Digg back?
    Please tell me Rupert Murdoch doesn't own digg.
  • Zetex, on 10/30/2007, -4/+35We don't need this guy. All we need is MORE TUBES MORE TUBES MORE TUBES!
  • Wolt, on 10/30/2007, -4/+5The internet is a series of tubes.
    • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2*****, I thought it was a truck. Thanks for the enlightenment.
      • ParaSwarm, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1A truck? You think you can just stick a bunch of crap on it? It's a series of tubes.
  • Joeyshinobi88, on 10/30/2007, -2/+9needs more jiggawatts.
    • Rodman930, on 10/30/2007, -1/+3And a new teragigle posessor.
    • brad77, on 10/30/2007, -1/+11.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts?

      Great Scott!
  • gtapro92, on 10/30/2007, -2/+6damn hes pretty jacked for a geek
    • ufia, on 10/30/2007, -1/+5He runs four miles while holding his laptop, typing Chuck Norris facts over the internets.
  • asspants, on 10/30/2007, -3/+3shooped photo is shooped.
  • SpykerSpeed, on 10/30/2007, -4/+2This is an example of an academic overachiever who's desperate to get a better-paying job at Cisco. He's analyzing a manmade system as though it were natural... why not just ask the guys who actually designed the internet?
    • Lindane, on 10/30/2007, -2/+2He's good at taking simplistic ideas and wrapping them in jargon and buzzwords. Nothing more profound than you'd hear from someone getting their first hits of cannabis. "Everything is like a network myaaaaan. It's like, it's like it mirrors nature myaaaaaaan. Everything is all connected and it feeds back onto itself.... myaaaaaaan."
    • cowlike, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1I don't understand your comment. What is so unusual about analyzing man-made systems? That's what engineers do and it's the way technological progress is achieved, by building on past achievements. In addition to control theory and electrical engineering, he's also a professor of bioengineering so yes, he studies natural system as well.

      In the case of the internet, he basically did "ask the guys who actually designed" it by reading and understanding the protocols that evolved, and then improving upon them.
  • Murdats, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1what? no doctor who reference yet? you people disapoint me.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_vi ...
    scroll down to Henry van Statten
    • supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1LOL, he wasn't much of a Doctor Who villain. I mean, if the Daleks wanted control of the internet, then who would stop them? Except maybe the Oncoming Storm...

  • scoottie, on 10/30/2007, -2/+0What really needs to happen first, especially in the USA, is for companies to stop making wireless internet sites and dig up their old copper wires and lay some damn fiber optics. Wireless is slow and insecure and not the future of the internet. The only major company really doing this is Verizon with FIOS
    • trubbleshute, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1More bandwidth to you isn't the answer. If I give you a 50mb connection some sites will still lag for you, because you have to traverse your ISP's network to get on to the internet and then you can see some latency as your traffic traverses the world. So the copper connection going into your house isn't the problem.
    • osbjmg, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3You are too focused on the consumer market - this is just a segment. It's the core we are talking about here.

      Fiber is just a way for providers to save money - less points of presence. You can get that much bandwidth in many other mediums, but it's just harder for them to maintain. I would bet if you cracked your cable modem and removed the policer, you could get some ridiculous speeds today.
      • mrkuhn, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Not really..Cable Modems, on DOCSIS 1.0 or 1.1, can't even hit 50Mbps. They are closer to 42. Euro DOCSIS barely does, thanks to an extra 2 MHz for bandwidth. However, DOCSIS 3 hits 150 at a minimum thanks to channel bonding. It is easy to hit 8-9Gbps. Not many places do have DOCSIS 3 though.
  • BigKoala, on 10/30/2007, -4/+1This article is too ***** long. Jeez.
    • saqer, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2"typical" digg user....educate urself and stop bitchin
  • kernel16, on 10/30/2007, -6/+2No thx, I like the internet just the way it is.
    • saqer, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3i don't think u have the slightest idea of what the article is about, then
  • yunus, on 10/30/2007, -1/+3Saying I proved the space shuttle design was safe is about the last thing I would advertise when trying to say my theory's are reliable.
  • frigid04, on 10/30/2007, -3/+2"This man wants to control the Internet. And you should let him"
    ok let's see ummm......................... NO!
    • saqer, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Control doesn't automatically mean censorship. In this case he wants to fix the dymanics of the internet so it will continue to function properly with the influx of all the information and users, etc, etc
      • Blueee, on 10/30/2007, -2/+0May i remind you HE HAS A HUGE FOREHEAD!!!
        He's a red! He wants to "Control and improve it", when all he wants to do is take it over and make money on it and eventually control everything...
        F*cking dumbass...
    • osbjmg, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3Another non-reader joins the comments section. Welcome. If you read the article, you would realize it's a play on words. He's talking about re-tooling TCP or changing it to something else. He's a "control theorist" so the words kinda fit together. He's a scientist, and you are a jump-to-conclusionist.
  • Kanidia, on 10/30/2007, -3/+4Wait how exactly is he controlling the internet? What a crap article title they chose.
    • saqer, on 10/30/2007, -2/+2agreed, the article is not about controlling the internet as it is more on "tweaking" it
  • ajimmykid, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Dolye Rules!
  • VicVega, on 10/30/2007, -3/+1"The current packet-receipt feedback system (known as TCP) has worked wonderfully for years to control the flow of Internet traffic, but it won’t be able to cope with the coming jam, when fridges will scan the RFID chip on a milk carton and send an alert when the expiration date arrives."

    OMG an empty milk carton alert will take up loads of bandwidth, TCP can't handle that! We're doomed!!
  • Weather, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1Is there a readers digest version anywhere?
  • Hazardc, on 10/30/2007, -1/+5I'm not so sure al gore is ready to sell the internet yet..
  • D3koy, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1Put me in control of the internet....I wouldn't do anything, my policy is "If a method works, others will adopt it; if a method fails, users will abandon it"
    • d03boy, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1What if it works now but will fail later? You obviously don't know much about the current internet. People adopt whatever is more mature at the time, not what is going to be better in the future.
  • grimw, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2Did they really take 3 pages to get to the point? After I couldn't find the point in the first 5 paragraphs, I ended my search. What a horrible writer.
  • saqer, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2His insights stem through his observations of how certain things in nature work and operate. The concept is simple but the application is complex.
  • Blueee, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1Look at his forehead! it's huge! Automatic communist...
    Exactly why he wants to control the internet... "Oh I can improve it!" Then, WHA BAM!! You're in a Gulag and dead in two weeks.
  • ahpro, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1I give up near the end of the first page. They could've said what he actually was gonna do at the start of the article.
  • wblackh, on 10/30/2007, -1/+0just have him put the internet on steroids.
  • jonintc, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3i made it to the 3rd page, and i was wondering what his "secret" is with the "box about the size of a DVD player that you can plug into a server"
    • jonintc, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2i found it, "FastTCP uses algorithms that measure the round-trip time it takes from when a packet is sent until its acknowledgment is received. It uses that information to deduce the maximum sending rate that the link can support. It then adjusts the sending rate accordingly. FastTCP interoperates with normal TCP." -- http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com ...
  • randmc323, on 10/30/2007, -1/+0His name is Doyle. I don't trust him.
  • nphase, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3This is actually very, very old. The one thing they took all article to explain was that he's one of the researchers behind the FastTCP implementation. It's only effective for high speed (read: not your cable modem at home) connections.
    • Duncan3, on 10/30/2007, -0/+0Correct, I've been using multi-stream stuff personally for 15 years now. But thats how the press works.
  • TitanX13, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1afterwards....... "while your at it can i have control to all of the nuclear weapons on earth and in space....and throw in the largest military or two if you will"
  • spb063000, on 10/30/2007, -3/+0They said he proved the safety of a space shuttle in the early 80s. If memory serves, didn't the challenger blow up in 86. I know he dealt with re-entry, but c'mon. Also, it sounds like they are really screwing those of us who don't hog bandwidth by using their cheat boxes. The internet as it is has a set of rules, they are talking about him currently breaking those rules.
  • Nabinkm, on 10/30/2007, -2/+0Is it controlled at all?

    http://www.ajabgajab.blogspot.com
  • xTRUMANx, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2The internet'll be fine. Everyone just needs to relax and turn off the routers for a few minutes. Also, put your routers in the fridge if they get too hot and you need to get back online fast.
  • Sheff, on 10/30/2007, -1/+0Actually, we should be putting more steroids in the hamster food.
  • addikt, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1lol once again the comments are far more entertaining that the article itself!!
  • atdakore, on 10/30/2007, -0/+117 Gigabits per second!!!! That is serious speed
    • palehorse74, on 10/30/2007, -0/+0no doubt! those speeds indicate some excellent PPDR! (Potential Porn Download Rates)

      I want one... some.. whatever!

      ps: the article took too damn long to get to the point, and their analogies were pointless... I'm surprised it wasnt published in USA Today!
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