CIDR, Sprint and the Big guys.

Sat Apr 6 20:01:41 UTC 1996

On Saturday, April 06, 1996 4:20 AM, Wolfgang Henke[SMTP:wolfgang at whnet.com] wrote:
@
@> Solutions that move the overall architecture toward the need for "bigger,
@> faster, etc." will drive the Internet down the same path as the supercomputer
@> industry...
@> 
@> In my opinion, we need to sit back, look at the big picture, and come up with
@> incremental architectural changes. We need to RE-apply the Internet Philosophy
@> to the Internet itself and investigate the result.
@
@
@I prefer incremental changes as well. The only problem is that they
@might not be sufficient to solve the current bottlenecks. It might
@work if we restrict new users just to V.34 modem speeds. But if we
@have *potential* new user growth with ATT Worldnet with up to 80 million,
@@home with up to 50 million and the fast growing traditional ISPs,
@(which show no signs of consolidation as far as I can tell) as well as 
@widespread access speed increases to ISDN BRI, ADSL and cable, it may 
@not be enough.
@
@As Robert Moskovitz pointed out, even the growth in common used backbones
@speeds is not keeping up:
@
@1.       56 kbps    
@2.    1.544 Mbps  increase by 24
@3.   44.736 Mbps  increase by 28
@4.  155.520 Mbps  increase by merely 3 
@
@Just keeping in step with past growth patterns would require a step
@to OC-24c at 1244.15 Mbps now, but there are no routers which come
@even close to those speeds.
@
@
@Wolfgang
@
@
@PS. www.whnet.com/wolfgang/giga.html has an overview of routers.
@
@

Raw bandwidth and router capacity are only two dimensions of the problem.

You have not mentioned that the current "architectures" may inject a certain
amount of "overhead" which is being carried on the same network with subscriber
traffic. The "service perception" of the user has not necessarily been taken into
account in developing these architectures. This is partly because there was not
a large enough subscriber base to obtain valid usage patterns and statistics.

A simple example can be easily demonstrated when a consumer is shown that
a broken DNS system can be circumvented by using an IP address in the URL
for their web browser. This is like telling a telephone user, "if  (411) Directorty
Assistance is out to lunch, just dial the number directly". Their eyes light up when
they see that the "site" is not busy, the DNS system is choking them. It is
unfortunate that the consumer has not yet been educated that they should test
the site directly, before declaring that the entire system is broken.

Now that various usage patterns are developing, it is time to look at the entire
architecture and characterize what each component is trying to do. This should
not be restricted to Web Browsing. Internet voice and audio is an important area.
Raw file transfers are also important. The maintenance infrastructure also has
to be addressed.

In my case, I am primarily interested in distributed, object-oriented, architecture-
neutral software development, distribution and billing. I am interested in seeing the
network support a "sea of objects". These smart pieces of data and information
need a clean addressing scheme to be able to flow around the world. The Legacy
Internet is a reasonably good vehicle to provide raw bit transportation for these
objects, but very little else. (except maybe some Java demo programs to keep
everyone happy until 1/1/98)

Because of the growing problems of Cats and Dogs fighting, us Dolphins need
to make sure that we do not come ashore. We just need to transport "objects"
via sonar from one coast to the other...even the U.S. Navy has not figured out
what Dolphins are saying...:-)

--
Jim Fleming
UNETY Systems, Inc.
Naperville, IL 60563

e-mail: JimFleming at unety.net