"The return on investment is low," Bradner says. "There's no business model."

Bradner argues that because of the extraordinary importance of the router problem, and because private industry has done little to address it, the government should intervene to fund university research in routing design.

"Universities can do something which multiple vendors can adopt easily," he said.

But others argue that private enterprise can solve the problem by developing new router hardware and new routing protocols.

"Private industry has put a lot of money into research for next generation equipment," says Pepe Garcia, from the Routing Systems division of industry leader Cisco Inc. "With next generation routers, routing protocols, and more and more memory, I do not believe the Internet will be in crisis."

Bradner responds that if new routing protocols are developed, the Internet can be saved. He just doesn't think that private industry can create them.

"He thinks that Cisco can do it and I don't think they can," Bradner says of Garcia. "I question that Cisco and Nortel and the rest of them can produce the next generation routing protocols. I think there needs to be government assistance....I would love to be proved wrong."