Growth of the Internet May Take Nothing Short of a Revolution

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 07:26:19 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>


Portals
From the Wall Street Journal --

Growth of the Internet May Take Nothing Short of a Revolution
by Lee Gomes

A new and crucial chapter in the history of the Internet began last week.
Expect all sorts of evolution vs. revolution battles before the chapter is
finally written.

Starting Tuesday, researchers from four big universities and other
research outfits gathered on the Carnegie-Mellon campus in Pittsburgh for
the initial planning session of the "100 by 100" consortium. With a $7.5
million grant from the National Science Foundation, the group is spending
the coming few years thinking about how to improve the Internet so that
100 million U.S. homes can have everyday speeds of 100 megabytes a second.

That's more than 100 times as fast as most high-speed home connections
today. Files would fly across the Web almost as quickly as if they were
taken off your PC's disk drive. Imagine real-time, HDTV video links
between grandparents and grandkids.

This being the Internet, in all of its free-wheeling, global splendor, the
100 by 100 consortium isn't the only group thinking about the Net's
future. Darpa, the Pentagon agency that created the Internet in the 1970s,
is also sponsoring next-generation research under a group headed by MIT's
David Clark. The two groups' work -- there are others -- is seen as
complementary.

Most people think that improving network speeds is a simple matter of
installing faster pipes. But Prof. Hui Zhang, the Carnegie Mellon
computer-science professor who heads the consortium, says even with
so-called fat pipes everywhere, today's Internet might not "scale up."

The Internet, he explains, can't continue to evolve with the same basic
design set down a generation ago. "The Internet has been a huge success,"
he says. "But the chances are that we are setting ourselves up for a great
failure."

Some of the reasons for this concern are obvious to even the most casual
Web user, such as today's chronic problems with spam, hackers and the
rest.

But Prof. Zhang thinks the vastly bigger obstacle to the Brave New Web
involves something more subtle: the growing complexity of the network.
Much of this is unseen to average users; it's deep in the software
standard used to transmit messages -- known as IP, or Internet protocol.

The professor explains the problem: The routers that serve as the Web's
traffic-control devices are so complex that only a few companies can build
them. What's more, keeping a big network running is getting harder and
more expensive -- "a black art," he calls it.

Dealing with these issues means putting a number of once-solved technical
issues back on the table. That's where the evolution vs. revolution
debates come in. For example, should the Internet be "connectioned" or
"connectionless?" Right now, it's the latter. All communications are
tossed into the same big pipe, with routers making sure things get where
they ought to.

But one school of thought says the future Internet needs to have something
of the "connected" flavor of the old-fashioned telephone network, in which
a direct link is established between you and the person you're talking to.

In the world of data-communications types, things don't get any more
contentious than this.

As far as pipes, Prof. Zhang thinks that because of the 1998-2000 telecom
bubble, there are enough fiber-optic lines buried in the U.S. to handle
all of the backbone, "long haul" traffic of even the fastest Internet.

However, connecting up homes -- the "final mile" problem -- remains tricky
and expensive, though new ways of using wireless communications, including
reallocating some or all of the radio spectrum, could help.

Prof. Zhang acknowledges he stands on contested terrain when he says the
Internet can't continue to simply make incremental progress and expect to
reach the goals of the 100 by 100 program. The computer industry is full
of technologies, such as Intel's microprocessors, that were once written
off as dead ends, but which proved resilient under relentless commercial
pressure.

What's more, in this evolution vs. revolution debate, the revolutionists
have another challenge. Networking companies, which weren't around when
the initial decisions about the Net were made, might oppose any technical
changes, no matter how well-deserved, that threaten their market
positions.

Prof. Zhang said that as revolutions go, his would be fairly staid. Most
of the changes he'd want to make to the Net would be built on much of
today's system. The biggest change would involve new equipment, like
switches and routers -- though Prof. Zhang notes they would probably be
changing under any circumstances.

Prof. Zhang is keenly aware of the PR tricks involved in getting people to
move to a new technology. The current high-speed Ethernet system used by
office-computer networks has little in common with the much slower
Ethernet designed decades ago. It keeps the same name largely for
marketing reasons, to give people a sense of continuity and easy
migration.

Similarly, "whatever kind of gadgets we are going to be making in 10
years," he says, "we will still call them 'routers.' "

Send your comments to lee.gomes () wsj com

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

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