Date: Fri 15-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

iinfo-internet-100-days

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: Every 100 Days

On April 15, 1998, the US Department of Commerce posted "The Emerging Digital

Economy" (TEDE) on its website. Direct quotations from the report quickly

ricocheted through mass media and across the Net." TEDE contains quotes from

some of the most acclaimed luminaries in Information Technology (IT) today

including Gordon Moore, Nicholas Negroponte and of course the "Father of the

Internet," Vint Cerf. This one-liner stuck: "Traffic on the Internet has been

doubling every 100 days.

Here are a few more quotes that make the entire report worth reading:

"The Internet's pace of adoption eclipses all other technologies that preceded

it. Radio was in existence 38 years before 50 million people tuned in; TV took

13 years to reach that benchmark. Sixteen years after the first PC kit came

out, 50 million people were using one. Once it was opened to the general

public, the Internet crossed that line in four years."

"In 1994, three million people, most of them in the United States, used the

Internet. In 1998, 100 million people around the world use the Internet. Some

experts believe that one billion people may be connected to the Internet by

2005. This expansion is driving dramatic increases in computer, software,

services and communications investments."

"Computing power has been doubling every 18 months for the past 30 years. At

the same time, the average price of a transistor has fallen by six orders of

magnitude, due to microprocessor development. In just six years' time, the

cost of microprocessor computing power has decreased from $230 to $3.42 per

MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). No other manufactured item has

decreased in cost so far, so fast."

"In 1996 and 1997, declining prices in IT industries lowered overall inflation

by one full percentage point. Without the contribution of the IT sector,

overall inflation, at 2.0 percent, would have been 3.1 percent in 1997."

"The impact of IT is also reflected in the capital IT firms currently

represent. The collective market capitalizations of five major companies --

Microsoft, Intel, Compaq, Dell and Cisco -- has grown to over $588 billion in

1997 from under $12 billion in 1987, close to a 50-fold increase in the space

of a decade."

A Dark Cloud

While the future looks rosy indeed, when Vint Cerf offers a warning, I listen

carefully. At a keynote address at Red Herring's Herring on the Enterprise

(broadcast live on the Internet from San Francisco in early April), Dr Cerf

said, "Every morning, I worry that the Net's routers will be unable to handle

increasing data loads." He stated further, "What is needed is a `BFR' (where

"B" stands for "big" and "R" stands for router). This requires at least one

miracle from the routermakers." He added, "I need that BFR so I can build a

BFN" (where "B" stands for "big" and "N" stands for "network")."

What This Means

The router is special server hardware that holds a "telephone book" of

Internet addresses that allow all Internet message packets to find their

destinations. If big routers are not available to hold addresses of all the

locations on the Net, whole sections will become unreachable. This is not a

pretty GIF.

In mid 1995, Bob Metcalfe predicted the Internet would "go spectacularly

supernova and in 1996, catastrophically collapse." It never happened and

Metcalfe has had to literally "eat his words" at the Sixth International World

Wide Web Conference schmooze-fest. Nevertheless, the kudzu growth of the

Internet (especially in the commercial sector) reminds us of Metcalf's dire

prediction.

The next time you see the message "waiting to connect" on the bottom of your

browser screen, it could mean some packets are hung up somewhere. They could

be stuck in a router that Vint Cerf would like to retire.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.ecommerce.gov/

http://www.redherring.com/insider/1998/0407/cerf.html

http://www.dern.com/metcfall.html

This is the 103rd of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, "The Case Against Microsoft" is the subject on tap. Stay

tuned. Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace.

Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People (including links to sites

mentioned in this article) can be found at http://www.thebee.com. Please

e-mail comments and suggestions to rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.