August 15, 2006
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Network World (05/15/06) Vol. 23, No. 19, P. 19; Brown, Bob
In a recent interview, Sun Labs distinguished engineer Radia Perlman discussed her thoughts on network security and her latest projects at Sun. Perlman says she spends a lot of time moving from group to group looking for an intriguing problem to solve and introducing different researchers to each other. Perlman is critical of the amount of research funding spent on digital rights management solutions, which she believes will not stop the few malicious users determined to pirate music. She also calls for more standards and accountability on the part of software vendors, citing the tendency to blame users for the unexpected malfunctioning of needlessly complicated software. Perlman acknowledges that most users are not interested in products based on standards, gravitating instead toward the least expensive application that works. Perlman is currently developing a security project that would allow for the seamless recovery of data and the reinstallation of the file system from scratch in the event of a meltdown at a data center. The product, known as the ephemerizer, asks for decryption from an outside agent to unlock a file after a system crashes. Perlman acknowledges that IP is entrenched as the method for creating networks, though she believes that DECnet would have been a better protocol, and that bridged networks are inherently weak and unstable. She is now looking for zero-configuration solutions within IP that do more than simply transmit data along her spanning tree. Perlman is frustrated with the way that schools teach networking today, arguing that TCP/IP should not be accepted unquestioningly as the only network solution. "The attitude seems to be that everything about it is perfect, so you just need to get your students to learn how to use it and write applications to it," she said.
For the complete article, see http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/050506-sun-radia-perlman-interview.html
Posted by rab5 at 09:20 PM
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