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Why China's next-generation internet is a lesson to the west
TECHNOLOGY Gut-twisting tank good for natural-gas cars
–Better connected–
The internet’s new tigers China is way ahead of the West with a faster and more secure internet THE net is getting creaky and old: connect to your network. SAVA fixes it is rapidly running out of space and this by adding checkpoints across the remains fundamentally insecure. And network. These build up a database of it turns out China is streets ahead of trusted computers matched up with the West in doing anything about it. their IP addresses. Packets of data will A report published in the be blocked if the computer and IP Proceedings of the Royal Society address don’t match. Steve Wolff, one last week details China’s advances in of the internet’s early pioneers, calls it creating a next-generation internet a “model that should be much more that is on a national level and on a widely adopted”. larger scale than anything in the West. Even setting security worries aside, At the root of the problem are the internet is running out of room. “two major gaps in the architecture The current standard for assigning of the internet”, according to a report space to computers – known as from the New England Complex “China’s security backbone Systems Institute, compiled in 2008 authenticates IP addresses for the US Navy and released to the of computers trying to public this week. First up is the connect to your network” internet’s inability to block malicious traffic as a whole. While malware can rapidly replicate and distribute itself Internet Protocol Version Four across the net, organisations can only (IPv4) – uses a numbering system respond to individual instances of which has just under 4.3 billion online aggression. possible spaces. Internet engineers China is already coming up with have been working on the new better defences. One of the most standard for years. It is called IPv6 important aspects of its nextand will boost the number of available generation backbone is a security internet slots by a mind-boggling feature known as Source Address 80,000 trillion trillion times. But Validation Architecture (SAVA). Many progress on IPv6 has been painfully of the existing security problems stem slow, and time is running out. IPv4 from an inability to authenticate IP slots are due to run out in multiple addresses of computers that try to regions around the world this year. 26 | NewScientist | 9 March 2013
But China has been planning for that day for a long time, under pressure from its massive population, all of whom want to be connected to the net. So says Donald Riley, an information systems specialist at the University of Maryland, who also chairs the Chinese American Network Symposium. “China has a national internet backbone in place that operates under IPv6 as the native network protocol,” says Riley. “We have nothing like that in the US.” China is already running nextgeneration services: internet service provider 3TNet provides television over IPv6, streaming programmes in high definition. It is the basis for a system that monitors and controls traffic flow over the internet and provides remote medical services – even long-distance, real-time violin lessons in high definition. All have the potential to reach more people at higher speeds than any equivalent service on the old internet. “If you are thinking about the future of the internet, anyone that explores that territory and maps it out first has a definite competitive advantage,” Riley says, “especially with the resources available to China.” Hal Hodson n
A FUEL tank inspired by the serpentine tubes of the human gut could make cars running on natural gas more attractive to motorists. Emissions from engines fuelled by compressed natural gas are 10 per cent lower than those from a petrol engine. However, because methane’s energy density is lower, about 30 per cent more fuel is needed to maintain a vehicle’s range. That requires fatter, heavier, high-pressure fuel tanks, which eat up space, dent fuel efficiency and increase the price of the car. The space-saving notion, developed by technology firm Otherlab of San Francisco, with funding from the US government’s energy research arm, ARPA-E, emulates the way the human body maximises storage capacity by folding the intestines back and forth. In place of one large, high-pressure tank there are multiple banks of thin, pressurised metal tubes that can be bent and distributed throughout the car, hugging the inside of the wheel arches, roof supports and front wings. ARPA-E has also commissioned another company, REL of Calumet, Michigan, to develop an alternative natural gas fuel tank with a flexible, honeycomb-like structure that can conform to any shape within the car. Paul Marks n
CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Reuters
Insight Next-generation net
–Better connected–
The internet’s new tigers China is way ahead of the West with a faster and more secure internet THE net is getting creaky and old: connect to your network. SAVA fixes it is rapidly running out of space and this by adding checkpoints across the remains fundamentally insecure. And network. These build up a database of it turns out China is streets ahead of trusted computers matched up with the West in doing anything about it. their IP addresses. Packets of data will A report published in the be blocked if the computer and IP Proceedings of the Royal Society address don’t match. Steve Wolff, one last week details China’s advances in of the internet’s early pioneers, calls it creating a next-generation internet a “model that should be much more that is on a national level and on a widely adopted”. larger scale than anything in the West. Even setting security worries aside, At the root of the problem are the internet is running out of room. “two major gaps in the architecture The current standard for assigning of the internet”, according to a report space to computers – known as from the New England Complex “China’s security backbone Systems Institute, compiled in 2008 authenticates IP addresses for the US Navy and released to the of computers trying to public this week. First up is the connect to your network” internet’s inability to block malicious traffic as a whole. While malware can rapidly replicate and distribute itself Internet Protocol Version Four across the net, organisations can only (IPv4) – uses a numbering system respond to individual instances of which has just under 4.3 billion online aggression. possible spaces. Internet engineers China is already coming up with have been working on the new better defences. One of the most standard for years. It is called IPv6 important aspects of its nextand will boost the number of available generation backbone is a security internet slots by a mind-boggling feature known as Source Address 80,000 trillion trillion times. But Validation Architecture (SAVA). Many progress on IPv6 has been painfully of the existing security problems stem slow, and time is running out. IPv4 from an inability to authenticate IP slots are due to run out in multiple addresses of computers that try to regions around the world this year. 26 | NewScientist | 9 March 2013
But China has been planning for that day for a long time, under pressure from its massive population, all of whom want to be connected to the net. So says Donald Riley, an information systems specialist at the University of Maryland, who also chairs the Chinese American Network Symposium. “China has a national internet backbone in place that operates under IPv6 as the native network protocol,” says Riley. “We have nothing like that in the US.” China is already running nextgeneration services: internet service provider 3TNet provides television over IPv6, streaming programmes in high definition. It is the basis for a system that monitors and controls traffic flow over the internet and provides remote medical services – even long-distance, real-time violin lessons in high definition. All have the potential to reach more people at higher speeds than any equivalent service on the old internet. “If you are thinking about the future of the internet, anyone that explores that territory and maps it out first has a definite competitive advantage,” Riley says, “especially with the resources available to China.” Hal Hodson n
A FUEL tank inspired by the serpentine tubes of the human gut could make cars running on natural gas more attractive to motorists. Emissions from engines fuelled by compressed natural gas are 10 per cent lower than those from a petrol engine. However, because methane’s energy density is lower, about 30 per cent more fuel is needed to maintain a vehicle’s range. That requires fatter, heavier, high-pressure fuel tanks, which eat up space, dent fuel efficiency and increase the price of the car. The space-saving notion, developed by technology firm Otherlab of San Francisco, with funding from the US government’s energy research arm, ARPA-E, emulates the way the human body maximises storage capacity by folding the intestines back and forth. In place of one large, high-pressure tank there are multiple banks of thin, pressurised metal tubes that can be bent and distributed throughout the car, hugging the inside of the wheel arches, roof supports and front wings. ARPA-E has also commissioned another company, REL of Calumet, Michigan, to develop an alternative natural gas fuel tank with a flexible, honeycomb-like structure that can conform to any shape within the car. Paul Marks n
CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Reuters
Insight Next-generation net