The conventional wisdom is that networking lags behind because it's inherently more complex than compute or storage. But this explanation misses a more fundamental truth: we're building private networks on top of an infrastructure that was never designed for privacy.
The internet was built to be the world's bulletin board, not its private messaging system. Its core protocols—DNS and BGP—were designed with the same philosophy as newspapers and public libraries: information should be easily discoverable and accessible to all. We've spent decades trying to retrofit privacy onto this fundamentally public system, like trying to host private conversations in a town square.
Consider DNS, the internet's phone book. For any service to be reachable, its name and address must be public knowledge. This fundamental requirement has spawned entire industries dedicated to building privacy walls around public information—a contradiction that grows more expensive and complex by the day.
The industry's attempts to solve the public/private mismatch have followed a predictable pattern. First came VPNs and encryption - digital equivalents of whispering in the town square. Then came Software-Defined Networking (SDN), promising to unify these solutions under one roof. But SDN became networking's Tower of Babel, with each vendor building their own "unified" solution, creating more fragmentation, not less. These solutions don't address the core problem - they just add layers of complexity on top of it.
The networking industry's response to every challenge follows a predictable pattern: add another layer of configuration. Need to isolate traffic? Add VLANs. VLANs not secure enough? Add overlay networks. Each solution breeds new problems, like a hydra growing two heads for each one cut off.
This endless accumulation of complexity creates what we might call "configuration debt"—each new feature or security measure adds more possibilities for human error. We're caught in a vicious cycle where our attempts to make networks more secure actually make them more vulnerable through sheer complexity.
The path forward isn't about building better tools to manage complexity—it's about eliminating that complexity entirely. Imagine networks that require zero configuration, where secure connections form automatically based on identity like a service name rather than IP addresses. Instead of retrofitting privacy onto public protocols, we need communication channels that are private by design.
The future of networking will be self-healing, where AI-driven systems adapt to changes without human intervention. Rather than waiting for failures to occur, these networks will predict and prevent issues before they impact users. This isn't just automation—it's a fundamental reimagining of how networks should work.
Today's networking stack resembles a precarious house of cards—each new security or isolation requirement adds another layer of complexity on top of an already fragile foundation. Let's examine how this complexity manifests in the real world:
Each of these tools represents another attempt to patch privacy and security onto the internet's public infrastructure. It's like trying to create private rooms in a public park by building increasingly complex mazes of temporary walls—eventually, the complexity of maintaining those walls becomes more dangerous than the privacy they provide.
The networking industry stands at a crossroads. We can continue adding layers of complexity to patch the fundamental problems of public infrastructure, or we can embrace a radical reimagining of how private networks should work.
The question isn't "How do we make networking more programmable?"—it's "How do we build networking that doesn't need to be programmed at all?" Just as serverless computing eliminated the need to manage servers, we need networking that eliminates the need to manage networks.
A New Network Architecture
• Zero Configuration: Instead of better tools to manage complexity, eliminate the need for configuration entirely.
• Privacy by Design: Rather than retrofitting privacy onto public protocols, build private communication channels from the ground up.
• Identity-First Networking: Replace IP addresses and DNS with identity-based routing that's private by default.
• Self-Healing Networks: Networks that adapt to changes without human intervention, using AI to predict and prevent issues before they occur.
The first networking revolution gave us the internet—a way to share information globally. The next networking revolution must give us true private networking—not by adding more layers of complexity to the public internet, but by fundamentally rethinking how private networks should work. Just as cloud computing freed us from managing physical servers, the future of networking must free us from managing networks altogether.
The networking revolution isn't just possible—it's already beginning. Forward-thinking organizations are already embracing solutions that treat networking as code, eliminating manual checklists and configuration drift. They're discovering that when networks become programmable infrastructure, teams can focus on innovation instead of maintenance.
If you're ready to explore this new paradigm, we invite you to learn more about how noBGP is helping organizations simplify their network operations. The future of networking is programmatic, and it's closer than you might think.
