2007: Towards an Active Network Architecture

The recipient of the 2007 Test-of-Time award is Toward an Active Network Architecture by David L. Tennenhouse and David J. Wetherall published in the April 1996 issue of ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review. Rather than designing and evaluating a solution to a specific technical problem, the paper articulates a sweeping vision of a future Internet that allows users to "program" the network elements – an "active" network. The paper argues that we need a systematic way to interpose computation inside the network, rather than burying our heads in the sand about the proliferation of "middleboxes" like firewalls and Web proxies. Active networks could be built, the paper argues, by capitalizing on the advances from the early to mid 1990s in mobile code and component-based software engineering.