This
story appeared on Network World Fusion at
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2000/1106bradner.html
'Net
Insider:
The middle of a
revolution
By Scott
Bradner
Network World, 11/06/00
The
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council
is in the process of releasing its latest report on the present and future of
data networking. This new volume, the fourth in a series, finally admits that
the Internet is both the present and the future.
The first book in the
series, "Toward a National Research Network," published in 1988,
pushed for government funding of Internet research - although at that time, the
Internet was a limited network connecting educational, research and government
sites. Six years later, the second volume, "Realizing the Information
Future: The Internet and Beyond,"(http://books.nap.edu/ catalog/4755.html)
described an Internet moving beyond its research heritage and explored the
potential impacts.
The next volume came only two years later, in 1996.
It was called "Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure Through
2000," (http://books.nap.edu/ catalog/5130.html), and saw the Internet as
the precursor of a national, and at some point global, information infrastructure.
The
latest volume, "The Internet's Coming of Age," (http://books.nap.edu/
catalog/9823.html), has figured out that, at least for now, what comes after
the Internet is the Internet. This is a somewhat lightweight book, tending a
bit toward paranoia rather than Pollyanna. It provides a good overview of the
Internet of today, and issues some well thought out warnings of where the
government could help too much.
CSTB reports, such as the ones in
this series, are the products of committees whose members are carefully chosen
to represent the various interested constituencies and thus tend not to be all
that bold in their recommendations. This latest volume is no exception. But it
does go further than the previous book in the series and actually has some
specific recommendations.
The committee says it focused on a number of
specific areas: the Internet's design; scalability and reliability; connections
between its parts; its conflict with the traditional telecommunications world;
and its social policy issues. The committee warns against the potential of
network-based devices such as firewalls and network address translators to
inhibit the creation of new Internet applications, and paints the picture of
the current inter-ISP connections with a worried mind.
The committee
worries quite a bit that governments will try to apply telecom regulations to
the Internet rather than "reconsidering old rationales for
regulation."
The group says the principal conclusion of its study
is that "the Internet is fundamentally healthy" and any problems the
group found are best addressed by evolutionary changes in the Internet. The
group did not find a reason to start over.
The report says we are in
the middle of the Internet revolution. I'm not sure we are that far along, but
I do agree with the committee that the view from here is, at best, foggy and
that too much government help will more likely run us aground than steer a true
course.
Disclaimer: Parts of Harvard seem to be fog generators, but
the above navigation is mine alone.
All contents copyright 1995-2002
Network World, Inc. http://www.nwfusion.com