A house without fences

Imagine your home without fencing. Traditionally we have been putting fences (compound walls) around our house to deter unwelcome visitors and make it hard for them to get inside and also to demarcate the property we own. What would happen if we take away the wall? There would be no boundary, no restrictions to prevent anyone from entering into our premises. Right? That's what we would think.

Now let's just stop for a moment and imagine an invisible electric field surrounding your house and the property that you own and which electrocutes whoever tries to force their way in without authorisation and permission. Seems pretty hard to imagine right?

That's what might happen to networks moving forward. At least that's what the members of Jericho forum are discussing and proposing to do even as you read this. This is what the forum is calling as de-perimeterisation of the network. (Jericho by the way is an ancient legendary city surrounded by walls which miraculously fell when Joshua sounded the trumpet) The proposal calls for removing firewalls from the network boundary. Emails and E-business form the core of businesses today and firewalls impedes traffic and growth and it too tedious to manage it via a firewall.

The forum has not come up with alternates for firewall, but I guess it will be something what I described above, an invisible electric field which allows unrestricted view by does not allow anyone to come in without proper authorisation. More to come.