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How important is open source to the future of the Internet? The Internet evolved as it did because of open source software and open standards. The spirit of open source is best expressed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, which operates on the basis of "rough consensus and running code." However, today's Internet is not the playground it was a decade ago. While some applications, like Napster and AIM, use the open Internet effectively, the sacrifice of the end-to-end model makes deployment of innovative applications challenging. The introduction of so-called "middle boxes" - firewalls, translators, caches, and application layer gateways - means that the new applications must actively circumvent these, or must gain their cooperation.

In a highly competitive market, with a lot at stake, developing consensus as well as running code can be difficult. Industry consortia and business models may determine how the future of the Internet gets decided - and who makes those decisions. Cisco Fellow Fred Baker will talk about the challenges that will shape the Internet, and whether Open Source will play as big a role as it has in the past.