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Re[2]: greatings pampered elite -- the Column
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 04:06:58 -0500
Posted-Date: Wed, 08 Sep 93 22:31:54 PST Date: Wed, 08 Sep 93 22:31:54 PST From: "Bob Metcalfe" <Bob_Metcalfe () ccgate infoworld com> To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber) Subject: Re[2]: greatings pampered elite Dear Dave, Here below is an EARLY DRAFT of my latest Internet column. The actual column was edited some and is more accurate and better written. For your list with that disclaimer. The actual column is burried in our production system somewhere out of my reach right now. Stay tuned, and thanks for asking, /Bob Metcalfe ------------------- DRAFT TWO InfoWorld / From the Ether / Bob Metcalfe Modernizing the Internet for commercial use Perhaps you've stayed away from the TCP/IP Internet because it's mostly for academic Unix. Perhaps TCP/IP sounds to you like an admission of damning drug test results. But now the Internet reportedly connects 20 million computers and is doubling every year. So your DOS and Macintosh PCs are probably already on the Internet, and if not, then soon. The Internet has since 1969 been a research project, funded through DoD's Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa) and the National Science Foundation. The Internet's first generation was called Arpanet, and it connected mainframes and minicomputers cross-country at 50 kilobits per second. In 1983, a new generation of network protocols, TCP/IP, were installed on the Arpanet mainly to interconnect proliferating megabit-per-second LANs of Unix workstations. In this second generation, Arpanet became Internet and since then has proven a very good model for how workstations and PCs (if there's a difference anymore) should be networked. The newly formed Internet Society projects, with tongue in cheek I assume, that the Internet will connect every human on earth by 2001. Well before then, however, the Internet will outgrow TCP/IP. So the Society is working toward a major protocol upgrade -- a third generation? -- so the Internet might become what the Clinton administration calls National Information Infrastructure (NII). But wait a minute. Since cutting over to this third generation Internet is going to be a big deal, let's take more time to get it right. And I don't mean to get the Internet right to be "infrastructure" -- a code word that many Internauts (but few Clintonistas) take to mean "funded by the government." I mean get the Internet right for commercial use, so it can help make the world go around. Networks joining the Internet need blocks of addresses for their attached computers. These addresses are free and sell like hotcakes, so the Internet is running out of addresses. Several schemes for enlarging the addresses used in the Internet are being considered by the Society. By the time a scheme is chosen and a migration plan worked out, software in tens of millions of computers and the switching systems between them will need upgrading in one of the biggest cutovers since Great Britain decided to drive on the right side of the road. My point is that addresses are not all that needs upgrading if the Internet is to be developed for commercial use. I think the next generation should be capable of, among other things, fully exploiting ATM, serving individual users via ISDN, and billing for measured use. The Internet Society is working on ATM, and carrying Internet packets in ATM cells is a mandatory migration tool, sure. But, the theory of ATM is that short fixed-length cells are needed for voice and video applications. Carrying long variable-length packets through an ATM cell-switching fabric is, well, the worst of both worlds. I think the third generation Internet must do better than that -- it must exploit ATM with cell-based protocols, operating systems, and applications. Otherwise, the Internet stays stuck in its current 20-year- old ASCII-bound applications -- TELNET, FTP, and E-mail. Another requirement for the third generation Internet is that individuals, not just institutions, be allowed to subscribe. TV and telephone systems are driven by personal use, but not yet the Internet. The Society should be sure it's new protocols support personal use, and they should exploit ISDN. ISDN won't replace high-speed Internet trunks, but will greatly improve personal Internet use from small offices and home offices -- SOHO networking. And ISDN does something else that the Internet needs, namely measured usage billing. The Internet, intended for free use by the scientific community, has no billing capabilities. In fact, a rich set of arguments have been developed in the Internet community about why usage billing is really not needed. For example, everyone should be entitled to use the Internet free. Or, for another example, the costs of counting packets are comparable to the costs of carrying them and should therefore be avoided. I'm sorry, but no. To go commercial, measured usage billing is essential. Price is the time- tested coordinator of supply and demand. Internet carriers must be able, as are telephone companies, to settle with one another for traffic carried on behalf of each other's customers. And end-user billing, as offered by ISDN, is needed. A commercial Internet must be able to bill for usage by kilopackets and kilometers -- say in mega-packet-meters (a unit that I yearn to have named after me when I pass on). And if we still want our government to pay the bills for certain classes of Internet users, then it can. Speaking of money, if you want to join the Internet Society, as I just did, to keep in touch with how the third generation is coming along, it costs $70 per year and gets you the quarterly /Internet Society News/. Call 703-620-8990. END -----------------
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