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Once again we’re seeing stories, like this one from Anick Jesdanun at AP, saying that the Internet is broken and needs to be redesigned.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a “clean slate” approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969. The Internet “works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions,” said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. “It’s sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today.”

It’s absolutely worthwhile to ask what kind of Net we would design if we were starting over, knowing what we know now. But it’s folly to think we can or should actually scrap the Net and build a new one.

For one thing, the Net is working very nicely already. Sure, there are problems, but they mostly stem from the fact that the Net is full of human beings – which is exactly what makes the Net so great. The Net has succeeded brilliantly at lowering the cost of communication and opening the tools of mass communication to many more people. That’s why most members of the redesign-the-Net brigade spend hours everyday online.

Let’s stop to think about what would happen if we really were going to redesign the Net. Law enforcement would show up with their requests. Copyright owners would want consideration. ISPs would want some concessions, and broadcasters. The FCC would show up with an anti-indecency strategy. We’d see an endless parade of lawyers and lobbyists. Would the engineers even be allowed in the room?

The original design of the Internet escaped this fate because nobody thought it mattered. The engineers were left alone while everyone else argued about things that seemed more important. That’s a lucky break that won’t be repeated.

The good news is that despite the rhetoric, hardly anybody believes the Internet will be rebuilt, so these research efforts have a chance of avoiding political entanglements. The redesign will be a useful intellectual exercise, and maybe we’ll learn some tricks useful for the future. But for better or worse, we’re stuck with the Internet we have.