Davis Social Links or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Net

When the Internet was conceived, its fundamental operation was envisioned to be point-to-point communication allowing anybody to talk directly to anybody. With its increasing success, the Internet is under increasing attack, e.g. spams, Denial of Service (DoS), Domain Name Server hijacking, etcetera. This paper introduces a clean-slate approach to redesigning the Internet, entitled Davis Social Links (DSL). Instead of directly connecting the source and sink, DSL routes the message (or request to communicate) through social contacts each of which can decide to drop the message/request based upon the previous hop's prior actions. In this way, trust is an integral part of networking. DSL separates identity from location, and promotes searching to a fundamental operation in the network. DSL also provides end-users control over who can reach them, and who their messages reaches. Finally, DSL provides components in the operating system to aid the user in identifying applications which are misbehaving. These features help make the entire network more resilient to attacks, and provides mechanisms that current and future applications can utilize to stop worrying and love the Net.