Internet, schminternet: Boffins propose private 100Gbps HYPERNET A "hypernet" to be known as the Pacific Research Platform, shuffling data at up to 100Gb/s, will be established between US West Coast laboratories and several supercomputers thanks to a $5m grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will span five years, reports the New York Times, and will connect the NSF's …
Given the nature of the network, I would think one way they can increase security is to mandate some form of identity and authentication for every node in the network that's vetted before it's permitted to even work on it. IOW, unlike on the commercial Internet where anonymity is seen as a boon and therefore protected to some degree, you don't want anonymity on this new network, so if it's built from the ground up with a strong sense of node identity and attribution, then it will have an easier time fending off intruders and isolating problem nodes if one becomes compromised.
Pfft. The Internet includes enough to identify people as file sharers. That should be enough for most people (i.e. I trust no one but x.x.x.x -- rinse, repeat). Instead, what you're suggesting is harder to do, since most servers don't have user-level identities outside of node addresses or services. If you want to enforce this new level of identity on your megaultrasupernet, then just force all services to require TLS with certs for client and server.
There's nothing new about this new NSF setup, outside of the speed. The airgap method has been around a long time and I doubt there will be much in terms of new network architectures, despite the claims from the blowhards involved.
I'm saying they should go one better and use a new protocol that's built from the ground up with better attribution. Sorta like baking TLS into the protocol so that it's there from the beginning so that one couldn't be anonymous even if they tried (unlike with the Internet where a determined person could use proxies and so on to hide their identity). It would also help guard against attachment attacks since it would be an "alien" protocol to the TCP/IP of the Internet.
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