Understanding and Thinking About the Innovation on Internet Architecture

Internet is a crucial information infrastructure that promotes economic development and technology inno⁃ vation. However, TCP/IP (Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) architecture, i.e., the core technology that supports and regulates the operation of Internet, has remained almost unchanged for decades. This paper introduces the necessity of innovating Internet architecture from four aspects: the drawbacks of technology itself, the development of social economy, the transformation cycle of technology, and the revolution law of science and technology. From the perspective of the sys⁃ tems thinking, this paper elaborates the underlying causes of the disadvantages in TCP/IP architecture. Moreover, this paper leverages the systems thinking and reveals the nature of network functionality and the nature of network interconnectivity, and then clarifies the four properties of delivering information (i.e., object property, identity property, location property, and means property). Then this paper briefly introduces how CoLoR (Coupling service Location and inter-domain Routing) le⁃ verages the two natures and four properties to innovate the Internet architecture. Finally, this paper takes CoLoR as the ex⁃ ample, and presents the basic idea of deploying novel Internet architectures. © 2024 Chinese Institute of Electronics. All rights reserved.