The complexity of networks today is the result of the industry's tendency to solve problems by reinvention rather than focusing and building on fundamental mechanisms. Vendors tend to seek and solve the same problems over and over again via slightly different and incompatible methods. This leads to enormous costs in terms of added complexity and lost opportunity. Vendors, network providers and end users must all understand, support and work with a myriad of software and hardware that provide similar functions but in various ways.

Juniper Networks' vision for the future of networking is a universal, public, packet-switched network based on the Internet Protocol and multiprotocol label switching. It is powerful enough to securely and reliably support all communications applications — whether initiated by humans or machines — from anywhere to anywhere and at any time. We call this network the "Infranet." The Infranet, in its true form, maximizes the potential value of the communications network while minimizing waste and replicated effort across the industry.

Building such a universal, public network is the only economically viable alternative for the industry long-term and the best way to reinvigorate the industry short-term. The current practice of building roughly one network per application type is simply too complex, too wasteful and too costly. The Infranet is also designed to deliver significantly higher levels of quality, security and reliability than are possible with the Internet. For end users this means a far more satisfying set of communications applications such as online gaming, video and utility computing.

The Infranet makes it possible to support these rich applications across the networks of multiple providers, creating an incentive for service providers to carry traffic that originates on other networks as opposed to avoiding it. Without this industrywide effort to define a common vocabulary and a set of interrelated standards, our vision of the Infranet remains a long way away.

In the absence of a clear vision and explicit recognition of key industry issues, networking will continue to drag forth by solving the same set of problems repetitiously and building roughly one network per application.

Pradeep Sindhu, Chief Technology Officer and Founder, Juniper Networks Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.