7. What Does the Future Hold?

Finally, a question I can answer. It's not that I have a crystal ball (if I did I'd spend my time on Wall Street instead of writing a book). Rather, these are the things that the IAB and the IETF discuss at their meetings. Most people don't care about the long discussions; they only want to know how they'll be affected. So, here are highlights of the networking future.

7.1. New Standard Protocols

When I was talking about how the Internet started, I mentioned the International Standards Organization (ISO) and their set of protocol standards. Well, they finally finished designing it. Now it is an international standard, typically referred to as the ISO/OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) protocol suite. Many of the Internet's component networks allow use of OSI today. There isn't much demand, yet. The U.S. government has taken a position that government computers should be able to speak these protocols. Many have the software, but few are using it now.

It's really unclear how much demand there will be for OSI, notwithstanding the government backing. Many people feel that the current approach isn't broke, so why fix it? They are just becoming comfortable with what they have, why should they have to learn a new set of commands and terminology just because it is the standard?

Currently there are no real advantages to moving to OSI. It is more complex and less mature than IP, and hence doesn't work as efficiently. OSI does offer hope of some additional features, but it also suffers from some of the same problems which will plague IP as the network gets much bigger and faster. It's clear that some sites will convert to the OSI protocols over the next few years. The question is: how many?

7.2. International Connections

The Internet has been an international network for a long time, but it only extended to the United States' allies and overseas military bases. Now, with the less paranoid world environment, the Internet is spreading everywhere. It's currently in over 50 countries, and the number is rapidly increasing. Eastern European countries longing for western scientific ties have wanted to participate for a long time, but were excluded by government regulation. This ban has been relaxed. Third world countries that formerly didn't have the means to participate now view the Internet as a way to raise their education and technology levels.

In Europe, the development of the Internet used to be hampered by national policies mandating OSI protocols, regarding IP as a cultural threat akin to EuroDisney. These policies prevented development of large scale Internet infrastructures except for the Scandinavian countries which embraced the Internet protocols long ago and are already well-connected. In 1989, RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) began coordinating the operation of the Internet in Europe and presently about 25% of all hosts connected to the Internet are located in Europe.

At present, the Internet's international expansion is hampered by the lack of a good supporting infrastructure, namely a decent telephone system. In both Eastern Europe and the third world, a state-of-the-art phone system is nonexistent. Even in major cities, connections are limited to the speeds available to the average home anywhere in the U.S., 9600 bits/second. Typically, even if one of these countries is "on the Internet," only a few sites are accessible. Usually, this is the major technical university for that country. However, as phone systems improve, you can expect this to change too; more and more, you'll see smaller sites (even individual home systems) connecting to the Internet.

7.3. Commercialization

Many big corporations have been on the Internet for years. For the most part, their participation has been limited to their research and engineering departments. The same corporations used some other network (usually a private network) for their business communications. After all, this IP stuff was only an academic toy. The IBM mainframes that handled their commercial data processing did the "real" networking using a protocol suite called System Network Architecture (SNA).

Businesses are now discovering that running multiple networks is expensive. Some are beginning to look to the Internet for "one-stop" network shopping. They were scared away in the past by policies which excluded or restricted commercial use. Many of these policies are under review and will change. As these restrictions drop, commercial use of the Internet will become progressively more common.

This should be especially good for small businesses. Motorola or Standard Oil can afford to run nationwide networks connecting their sites, but Ace Custom Software couldn't. If Ace has a San Jose office and a Washington office, all it needs is an Internet connection on each end. For all practical purposes, they have a nationwide corporate network, just like the big boys.

7.4. Privatization

Right behind commercialization comes privatization. For years, the networking community has wanted the telephone companies and other for-profit ventures to provide "off the shelf" IP connections. That is, just like you can place an order for a telephone jack in your house for your telephone, you could do this for an Internet connection. You order, the telephone installer leaves, and you plug your computer into the Internet. Except for Bolt, Beranek and Newman, the company that ran the ARPAnet, there weren't any takers. The telephone companies have historically said, "We'll sell you phone lines, and you can do whatever you like with them." By default, the Federal government stayed in the networking business.

Now that large corporations have become interested in the Internet, the phone companies have started to change their attitude. Now they and other profit-oriented network purveyors complain that the government ought to get out of the network business. After all, who best can provide network services but the "phone companies"? They've got the ear of a lot of political people, to whom it appears to be a reasonable thing. If you talk to phone company personnel, many of them still don't really understand what the Internet is about. They ain't got religion, but they are studying the Bible furiously. (Apologies to those telephone company employees who saw the light years ago and have been trying to drag their employers into church.)

Although most people in the networking community think that privatization is a good idea, there are some obstacles in the way. Most revolve around the funding for the connections that are already in place. Many schools are connected because the government pays part of the bill. If they had to pay their own way, some schools would probably decide to spend their money elsewhere. Major research institutions would certainly stay on the net; but some smaller colleges might not, and the costs would probably be prohibitive for most secondary schools (let alone grade schools). What if the school could afford either an Internet connection or a science lab? It's unclear which one would get funded. The Internet has not yet become a "necessity" in many people's minds. When it does, expect privatization to come quickly. Well, enough questions about the history of the information highway system. It's time to walk to the edge of the road, try and hitch a ride, and be on your way.