IP: The Internet May Be the Biggest Question Mark of Them All

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Paris, Tuesday, August 17, 1999

The Internet May Be the Biggest Question Mark of Them All


By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune

As companies and governments rush to make sure their computers will not suffer meltdowns when the year 2000 arrives, 
experts say there is a large unanswered question in the battle against the so-called millennium bug: the effects on the 
world's largest and most complex computer network, the Internet.

Partly because the global network is so diffuse - no one is in charge of it - Internet specialists say it is 
practically impossible to know or to test whether certain parts of the system will crash, whether electronic mail that 
crosses the globe will be lost or suffer long delays or whether users will be able to reach World Wide Web sites that 
offer on-line trading and shopping in the first days of the New Year.

One thing is clear: Many of the basic elements of the Internet - components that go by names such as routers and 
switches - have been identified as ''noncompliant '' and thus could malfunction if they are not fixed or replaced 
before the new year arrives.

Cisco Systems Inc., the world's leading Internet component supplier, lists 25 products on its Web site www.cisco.com 
that are not compliant and a further 31 that the company does not plan on testing because it regards them as too old to 
be serviced. Some of these products were sold as recently as three years ago. Many are still in use.

Experts who met in Washington last month to discuss the problem say the network's key ''backbone'' components have been 
tested and will function but that large parts of the Internet are beyond the purview of U.S. regulators.

The state of preparedness in the United States is crucial for Internet users around the globe because an overwhelming 
majority of Internet traffic passes through the United States. Even e-mail sent from two neighboring countries in Asia, 
for instance, is often routed through the United States.

But the bottom line for Internet users outside the United States is that even if the U.S. portion of the network is 
running, if the machinery that links them to the network - their local ''service provider'' - goes down, they lose 
their access.

White House officials, who were the hosts of the Internet conference last month, are scheduled to announce their 
findings and recommendations Tuesday. Those who attended the meetings in Washington say the most vulnerable points of 
the global network are:

-

The large ''servers'' managed by each country that assign Internet addresses such as ''my'' for Malaysia and ''it'' for 
Italy. There are 252 such servers in the world, including ones that manage addresses that end in ''edu'' or ''com.''

Bill Manning, a researcher at the University of Southern California who was charged at the White House conference with 
tracking the readiness of these servers, said ''a good chunk'' of them were Y2K compliant but ''a good chunk of them 
are not.'' He declined to be more specific.

-

International telephone links. A recent survey by the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council, a group made up 
of top executives from U.S. telephone companies, found that 62 percent of countries with large volumes of telephone 
traffic were perceived as ''high risk'' in terms of Y2K problems. Only 18 percent were considered low risk. These are 
just perceptions of people in the industry - and thus not based on hard data. Nonetheless, any failure between 
international phone links could impair Internet service as well as the reliability of an old-fashioned telephone call.

-

Accounting software used by Internet service providers to monitor the usage of their customers. Noncompliant software 
might not affect access to the Internet but could foul up billing.

-

Software used to distribute passwords. Accounts could automatically expire if the computer reads the date incorrectly.

-

The threat of ''millennium'' computer viruses spread through the network.

-

Strain on the system posed by increased usage: New Year's greetings sent by e-mail and multimedia events related to the 
New Year on the World Wide Web could clog the network.

Vinton Cerf, senior vice president at MCI WorldCom Inc., who is known as the father of the Internet for his pioneering 
work on the network, said he did not anticipate ''major problems'' in the United States related to the millennium bug 
but that outside North America ''the risk seems higher.'' There is ''anecdotal evidence,'' he said, that some countries 
''have been somewhat less attentive and concerned about Y2K preparedness.''

Y2K is a commonly used abbreviation for the Year 2000 bug. The glitch arises when computers fail to process dates 
beyond Dec. 31, 1999, because of the way they were programmed.

Experts say Internet-related Y2K issues have until now been overshadowed by more pressing concerns such as potential 
blackouts and failures of computers aboard aircraft.

''If the power grid goes out, you're going to be worried about other things than, 'Can I get my Internet connection?''' 
Mr. Manning said. ''People generally don't depend on the Internet for life-and-death situations. It'll be like the 
television going out for a while.''

Although not life-threatening, any large-scale failure of the Internet could affect the lives of millions of people, 
especially those doing business on the Net and those living away from their home countries.

In the event of Y2K-related failures, people who use the network to communicate with families or colleagues might not 
be able to do so for several days.

The same applies to overseas company offices that use the Internet to send messages and data to their headquarters.

Experts say the degree of risk for an Internet user depends in large part on the individual's Internet ''service 
provider,'' the company that offers access to the network, known as an ISP.

The worry is that some smaller service providers - especially those in developing countries - might not have the 
financial resources or technical knowledge to properly check their systems for millennium bugs.

''To my own knowledge and expectations, the packets will make it,'' said Geoff Huston, the technical manager at 
Australia's Telstra Internet service, referring to the bundles of data that circulate around the world delivering 
things such as e-mail. ''But whether the machine on the other end is doing the right thing is something I can't answer 
with as much surety.''

The worst-case scenario for Internet users around the world? ''We just don't know,'' said Izumi Aizu, head of Asia 
Network Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who represented Asia at the Washington meeting. ''There are too many 
elements that make up the Internet.''

''What will the impact be? I have no idea in the world,'' said Dave Farber, a professor at the University of 
Pennsylvania and one of the world's leading experts on the Internet. ''There are going to be some really strange 
events. There will be some places that will be cut off. They may disconnect certain countries until those countries get 
their act together. How long that will last I don't know. I don't think anyone does.''

Internet users may get a foretaste of Y2K confusion on Aug. 24, when, for reasons not directly related to the 
millennium bug, the clocks in some satellites that carry Internet traffic will reset themselves to zero. That could 
affect the way computers linked to the Internet register such things as financial transactions.