STANFORD, Calif., March 15 (UPI) -- A group of U.S. scientists is developing technology designed to better meet human communications needs by updating the Internet.
Stanford University researchers, taking a "nothing is sacred" approach, launched a program called the Clean Slate Design for the Internet.
''How should the Internet look in 15 years?'' asked Nick McKeown, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who is leading the effort. ''We should be able to answer that question by saying we created exactly what we need, not just that we patched some more holes, made some new tweaks or came up with some more work-arounds.
"Let's invent the car instead of giving the same horse better hay," he added.
McKeown and colleagues have identified and begun working on four projects that constitute their initial research.
''We will measure our success in the long term,'' McKeown said. ''We intend to look back in 15 years' time and see significant impact from our program.''
They will present their initial ideas Wednesday during a workshop at the annual meeting of the Stanford Computer Forum.
