Overcoming the Internet impasse through virtualization

The prospects for significant change in the Internet's existing architecture appear slim. In addition to requiring changes in routers and host software, the Internet's multiprovider nature requires that ISPs jointly agree on any architectural change. The canonical story about architectural research's potential impact has long maintained that if testbed experiments show an architecture to be promising, ISPs and router vendors might adopt it. This story might have been realistic in the Internet's early days, but not now: Not only is reaching agreement among the many providers difficult to achieve, attempting to do so also removes any competitive advantage from architectural innovation. By providing easy access to virtual testbeds, the authors hope to foster a renaissance in applied architectural research that extends beyond incrementally deployable designs. Moreover, by replacing a discredited deployment story with a plausible one closely linked to the experimental methodology, they hope to raise the research community's sights.