The future of IP and the Internet

For the last 35 years routers have not changed and they still support only the "best effort" traffic. However, the bandwidth available to people has been increasing rapidly with the advent of broadband and wideband access. The result is that many new services like voice and video are now desired that requires far better QoS than what the "best effort" IP can support. Two new innovations were discussed in this paper. First, flow routing permits IP to support all the ATM QoS features like guaranteed rate and delay with lower cost and higher reliability. Second, the new additions to IPv6 now in the standards track permits users to signal at line rate their requirement for guaranteed rates, get rate feedback for TCP, and add priorities for delay and preemption. These QoS features along with IPv6's virus, spam protecting security, and full terminal mobility makes the IPv6 a compelling alternative in the near future.