The Clean Slate Program is an interdisciplinary research program at Stanford University which aims to consider how the internet would be redesigned with a "Clean Slate". Its Program Director is Nick McKeown.
It is based on the belief that the current internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure, and that the internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and backward-compatible style of academic and industrial networking research.
The program aims to focus on unconventional, bold, and long-term research that tries to break the network's ossification. To this end, the research program is characterized by two research questions:
Program members aim to measure success in the long-term: looking back in 15 years time to see significant impact.
Program coordinators identify five key areas for research:
Program team expect these areas will evolve and perhaps change completely as the program progresses.[1]