When Will the Internet Monitor and Manage Itself?

The EVERGROW project, and especially the DIMES distributed internet measurement tools, created under EC sponsorship in 2004-2007, give us a wealth of new information about the structure and evolution of the Internet, at its physical layer - the wires (and wireless links) that carry messages and files around the world. Some interesting insights into Internet structure and some real opportunities to improve Internet robustness and capacity by improving its routing preferences are already apparent. But the initial objective of DIMES, a lightweight software measurement client that can run anywhere, was to create a fully distributed measurement capability that would be inherent in a self-managing global network. There are both technical and social/business challenges that must be solved if we are to move from the present centralized SETI-style research measurement activity to a base capability of, e.g., every router in the Internet. None of them has been solved to date, but I will review them, and discuss the most promising directions towards this goal.