THE INTERNET had a transplant in April, but the operation didn鈥檛 seem to bother it one bit. In a process that was completed on 1 May, the US National Science Foundation handed over its responsibility for the Internet鈥檚 鈥渂ackbone鈥 to private companies.
For many, the fact that the Internet has a backbone at all will come as a surprise. And the role of the NSF, an agency of the US government charged with serving the needs of researchers, is also often forgotten. Most users of the Internet merely think of the network as a relatively reliable, cheap and bureaucracy-free means of moving information around the world.
So far, so good. Times are changing fast, however. From its relative obscurity as a tool for everyday researchers, the Internet has become a global superstar with the bright but unpredictable future that goes with that status. Now the latest sport from Beijing to Baltimore is to ask some everyday questions. For example, who owns the Internet? Who runs it? Who picks up the tab for transferring and storing all that information? How will fame change it?
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Looking for the owner of the Net is a fruitless task 鈥 there is no simple answer. Even when its backbone was owned and run by the NSF, the Internet could never be said to have a single owner. The reason for this becomes clear if you look at the network鈥檚 origins.
It incubated within the so-called military-industrial complex. Together, the employees of military-industrial research laboratories created a network that was like a piece of lace with nodes and connections woven in all over the place. This had various advantages over more traditional network designs, where a central computer was connected to other computers rather like spokes connecting to the centre of a wheel. The lack of a hub meant that there was nothing to be 鈥渢aken out鈥 in the event of a nuclear strike. It also allowed all sorts of different computers to talk to each other.
Back in the early 1970s, this net was called ARPANET, because it was run by the US Department of Defense鈥檚 Advanced Projects Research Administration. It linked four supercomputers at key universities and research sites linked by dedicated telephone cables and powerful computer switches to form a high-speed network. This backbone was administered by the NSF from 1988.
Other networks, both in the US and other countries, could link into this network. As the Internet backbone accepted noncommercial traffic from anywhere, so many of the networks that sprung up in university communities and research centres around the world found it quicker to route their traffic through the superfast backbone in the US than to talk directly to each other.
At first, it was mainly American networks that linked into the Internet. But in the past few years the popularity of the Internet outside the US has increased rapidly. By February this year, over 90 nations had a direct connection to the 鈥渃ore鈥 Internet, the web of machines connected by the TCP/IP protocol 鈥 the ground rules of the Internet. This core had links to other worldwide networks 鈥 both commercial and educational, such as BITNET, FidoNet, AppleLink, Minitel and UUCP, and reached into 168 countries.
The manner in which the Internet has grown has left no one organisation in charge of the network. This network is informally 鈥渒ludged together鈥. But according to Hal Varian, a professor at the University of Michigan who specialises in the economics of the Internet, 鈥渢hey still have to work the bugs out鈥.
So even at the hardware level 鈥 the wires, fibres and routeing equipment 鈥 the Internet has no single owner. The routers that do the system鈥檚 heavy lifting, gathering the 鈥渄ata packets鈥 from thousands of smaller networks, reading their address headers, and sending them at high speed to the network鈥檚 next node, are owned by several major data transfer companies and consortia. These include ANS (owned by the commercial service America OnLine, PSInet, SprintLink, MCI, Pacific Bell and, in Europe, by Eunet and Dante. Some 80 per cent of the Internet鈥檚 traffic is carried by the three largest Internet service providers: MCI, ANS and Sprint.
Who runs the Internet?
It follows from the lack of a single owner that there is no czar of the Internet who could turn it off tomorrow on a whim, no Internet Senate that could send it careening off in a new direction simply by taking a vote.
The nearest the Internet gets to a manager is the Internet Society. But even this is a series of committees, working groups, and task forces, comprising technical people from government agencies, academic institutions and major service providers. These groups design and accept the technical standards that allow the computers to talk to one another. However, 鈥渢he society has no coercive power鈥, according to Vinton Cerf, founder and president of the Internet Society, and a senior vice-president at MCI. 鈥淣othing they do is enforceable. It鈥檚 all enlightened self-interest. The real secret behind the Internet is that it鈥檚 a grass-roots, bottom-up system.鈥
This becomes evident if you look at how the Internet Society works. The central standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), works online, only meeting face to face three times a year. According to Anthony Rutkowski, executive director of the Internet Society, these meetings 鈥渂ring together more than 500 people at the meeting, with multicasting to more than 600 additional sites around the world鈥.
The IETF also writes software. Members write code, criticise and test new information tools and services, free from stifling formalities. With the growth of the Internet, the scaling of software to cope with the extra volume has become increasingly important. Internet addresses, for example, for local networks (such as 鈥渇eat.newsci.ipc.co.uk鈥) actually represent 32-bit numerical addresses, much like telephone numbers. But there is a difference. Dialling 鈥011鈥 on any telephone in the US signals that you are making an international call. If the next two digits are 鈥44,鈥 you鈥檙e heading for Britain. If 鈥171鈥 follows, you鈥檝e got inner London.
Internet addresses, however, are not hierarchical, they are random. Every major Internet router has to carry an enormous 鈥渓ook-up鈥 table with the whereabouts of all 50 000 Internet-addressable networks, and each of these tables must be updated constantly. The society wants to change to a hierarchical scheme, which means changing everyone鈥檚 address without interrupting service. No small task.
Nor is one of the society鈥檚 other projects: working on a standardised 128-bit address to accommodate the expected growth in networks connecting to the Internet. Cerf estimates the number of Internet connections could reach 1.5 million by 2000 and 1.5 billion by 2010.
Who pays for the Internet?
Right now, popular commercial systems such as CompuServe, with their chat rooms, databases and conversation forums, charge by the minute. But on the Net itself, you pay for your connection, not for how much you use it. A simple modem service, capable of carrying 14 400 bits per second, might typically cost $200 per year, while the cost of a 鈥淭-1鈥 connection for a major university, capable of carrying 1.5 million bits per second, might range from $20 000 to $50 000 per year. The various providers have a 鈥渮ero settlements鈥 policy 鈥 they assume that the service they provide is roughly equal to the service that they receive from other providers. These factors mean that it costs no more to send a note to Auckland or to Osaka than it does to send it across town.
But obviously some uses burden the system more than others. Video conferencing, downloading Jurassic Park or a major piece of software, two people working interactively on the same graphics a thousand kilometres apart, or exploring a three-dimensional 鈥渧irtual world鈥 all use a lot more of the system鈥檚 resources than sending a note to a friend or logging on to a chat service.
Most of the new ways of using the Internet are hogs for bandwidth and memory. The World Wide Web, for example, has grown like an arachnophobe鈥檚 nightmare. This protocol allows people with web browser software to receive information in graphic form (text, tables, charts, pictures, and even audio and video clips) from tens of thousands of sites around the world. Virtually unheard of two years ago, by the beginning of 1995 it had grown to 14 per cent of the total traffic on the Internet. And this is only the start.
鈥淚 believe the Web will represent a half of all Internet traffic by the beginning of 1996 because it is the easiest and preferred way of presenting information, either for free or for sale,鈥 says Tim Krauskopf, vice-president of research and development at Spyglass, the company that developed the Enhanced Mosaic web browser.
With Web browsing software and new interactive uses, the potential for using graphics and video conferencing becomes real. As Cerf says: 鈥淲e are worried about interactive video and voice requirements.鈥 This means that every part of the system will have to keep upgrading its capacity to provide for these new uses. The switches, for instance, will have to grow from the T-1 (at 1.5 Mbps) to T-3s (which at 45 Mbps carry most of today鈥檚 backbone traffic) or even OC-3s (155 Mbps) within six months to a year.
Who will pay for these upgrades? If the Net keeps to its 鈥渇lat-fee鈥 tradition, everyone will. It is possible that the price of these upgrades will fall so rapidly, and the number of new users willing to pay a monthly fee will rise so fast, that the money will be there. But it is also possible that those monthly fees will have to increase to pay for the new capacity.
Another way of raising the cash is to send people bills based on the strain their choice of applications puts on the network. The latest version of the Internet鈥檚 鈥渙perating system鈥, TCP/IP IP6, carries a 鈥渇low ID鈥, a special line in the header to identify which interactive uses need to go where. This could also be used to charge heavy users more, or even to allow people who want special treatment 鈥 to jump to the head of the queue during peak hours, for example 鈥 to get it and pay for it without burdening the ordinary user who only sends e-mail and the occasional message on Usenet.
But the problem is incredibly complex. In today鈥檚 free-wheeling Internet, for instance, I might ask a question of a computer just a few kilometres away. The answer will come back in packets that are 鈥渇rom鈥 that computer and 鈥渢o鈥 me. How would the software know that it should bill the answer to me, and not to the computer that I interrogated? And the computer that I queried might assemble the answers from computers in Switzerland or Spain, or cause a cascade of actions on other computers that I don鈥檛 even know about.
It鈥檚 in the nature of the Internet that distance is no object, and that resources are dispersed worldwide in hundreds or thousands of computers rather than held on massive central databases. Wonderfully cheap, efficient and interactive to use, a nightmare to cost.
One way out could lie in novel ways of charging for services. Imagine, for example, a free e-mail service. Dial a toll-free number from anywhere, log on, and send and receive all the messages you want. It won鈥檛 cost you anything. The only catch is that the e-mail shows up on your screens in envelopes stamped with a corporate logo. Click on the envelope, and you get your message. Click on the logo to find out more about the advertiser, enter contests, or get coupons you can print out and use. This is no fantasy 鈥 ProductView Interactive of Cambridge, Massachusetts has already announced such a service, and advertisers are said to be lining up.
Other services, such as HotWired, the pioneering online magazine, and the Internet publisher, Global Network Navigator, already offer Web pages full of fascinating information, with each page sponsored by a company. The advertisement, at the bottom of the screen, is small but if you click on it, the sponsor鈥檚 whole catalogue may appear on the screen.
Then there is the Internet Shopping Network, an online, interactive shopping channel, which has been signing up 400 people a day since it opened its doors on 1 April this year. And over 60 organisations have joined forces under the CommerceNet banner to encourage the growth of an Internet marketplace that will be open, easy-to-use and ready to expand rapidly.
And there are numerous schemes afoot for encryption protocols that will make it possible to transfer money 鈥 safely and securely 鈥 across the Internet. Some network providers and advertisers have developed software that can log the record of where users wander, 鈥渃lick-streams鈥 which show the pattern of their online interests so advertisers can target them with offers that they won鈥檛 want to refuse. At a recent conference, Scott McNealy, the chairman of Sun Microsystems, predicted: 鈥淲ithin the next few years, business-to-consumer electronic commerce could begin to replace much of the world鈥檚 existing business infrastructure.鈥
Future directions for the Net
One fear voiced in some American newspapers is that these competing pressures will lead to the 鈥渂alkanisation鈥 of the Net. But Varian disagrees: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it will come to that, since so many people have come to depend on it. There is such an economic advantage to being able to talk to each other, it鈥檚 hard to see how the competitors could leave that money on the table.鈥 This view is backed up by the Internet Society鈥檚 Rutkowski. 鈥淭he greatest value of the public Internet is its connectivity. Virtually everyone understands that.鈥
Another scenario is what people are calling the 鈥渉acker鈥檚 dream鈥. The price of everything falls so rapidly and the efficiencies of the architecture are so great that the technology needed to use the Internet becomes nearly free. Large commercial enterprises keep to their own cybermalls, leaving the rest of cyberspace unpaved. A free-floating cybercash economy develops which has no connection with the Earth-bound banking system. The Internet evolves as a self-organising, smoothly functioning anarchy. Rutkowski calls this 鈥渁n extreme that has elements of the plausible鈥.
The flip side is the Internet as cyber-space version of a gargantuan shopping mall, dominated by big companies. In this vision, the Net is thoroughly commercialised, produced by professionals, and carries a charge, or advertising or both. Publishing information on the Internet becomes so expensive that free or nearly free access to it by individuals almost ceases to exist.
David Wetherell, chief executive officer of Booklink Technologies in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a company that develops software for navigating the Internet, finds this scenario worrying. 鈥淭he great thing about the Internet today is that no one owns it. If you have a good product or service, you can put it up on the network and let the public decide if it鈥檚 good.鈥
Wetherell is not alone in his concern. Business and marketing experts such as Donna Hoffman, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and specialist on the new media, fear that Microsoft and other major companies will attempt to dominate the Internet, building toll booths up and down the information highway and turning it into yet another broadcast medium.
On the other hand, science writer Barry Shell, though a critic of corporate intrusion on the net, is not too worried: 鈥淭he Internet, with its open, distributed structure, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. If it can do that, it can withstand corporate America.鈥
Another joker in the futures pack is unlimited bandwidth. There are no limitations, unlike the open land around a city. In cyberspace you can always make more space, provided the technology continues on the course it has taken over the past two decades. The cybermall may be able to coexist with the dreams of hackers. As Rutkowski describes this scenario, 鈥渄iversity 鈥 much like the real world, only much more accessible鈥.
Varian agrees. 鈥淚f you build a system robust enough to handle interactive video, everything else is free, essentially. All the more traditional applications, such as e-mail and file transfer, can just go along for the ride because their demands for bandwidth are so much smaller.鈥 How realistic this is depends on the freedom given to the software developers designing for the Internet.
There are many bottlenecks on the future of the Internet. The US National Security Agency, for instance, has for years been battling to suppress the use of 鈥渦nbreakable鈥 public-key cryptography online, and a grand jury in California鈥檚 Silicon Valley is expected to bring criminal charges against cryptography pioneer Phil Zimmerman for allowing his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) cryptography program to escape onto the Internet.
The goal of the NSA and some other elements of the US government (and indeed a number of other governments) is to force all net cryptography programs to have 鈥渢rapdoors鈥 that are accessible by law enforcement agents. Yet such trapdoors mean that hackers will be able to break into the software and will greatly reduce the willingness of business and commercial users to trust it with commercial secrets, credit-card numbers, and financial transfers.
Other governments fear the freedom that the Internet gives its users. The Net鈥檚 highly distributed nature makes restrictions and regulations fundamentally difficult to enforce. Yet its role as a potentially powerful engine of economic development means that these governments cannot afford to simply ban it.
The Chinese government, for instance, realises that it must allow the Internet into China because it represents the technological future. Yet the country鈥檚 rulers fear the free flow of information and debate it will bring. As a compromise, the government has set an artificially high price on Internet access in a bid to restrict the number of people who can use the Internet.
And other totalitarian governments from around the world such as that of Singapore (鈥淐ulture clash in cyberspace鈥, New 杏吧原创, 25 March 1995), have set various restrictions on its use.
Ironically, what could limit the growth and usefulness of the Internet is its very power. A technology that can bring all the information from everywhere to your own computer is useless unless it can also help you find what you really want, the people that you want to talk to, and the conversation that you want to join. So a crucial test of the viability of the Internet will be the development of filters for all that information: software agents, mail handlers and human intermediaries such as net searchers, conference moderators and digest editors.
A powerful point of view is fast becoming a valuable commodity: what does the world of the Internet look like through Newt Gingrich鈥檚 eyes? Or Nelson Mandela鈥檚? It will be possible to make a living as a 鈥渉ost鈥 or 鈥渓ens鈥 on the Internet, not by selling your own writings, but by selling your own point of view about what is interesting, important and imperative to know.
If the Internet struggles past the bottlenecks of excess regulation and excess information, many believe it will be one of the most powerful shapers of the 21st century.
Rutkowski speaks of it as 鈥渁 fundamental transformation鈥, an entire information infrastructure built from the bottom up, a 鈥渞obust global mesh鈥 of computers that allows 鈥渙pen collaboration in the hyperdevelopment and evolution of new technologies鈥 and one that will 鈥渢ransform the structure, methods and individual skills within enterprises, institutions, and professions of all kinds 鈥 A hundred years from now, history may well record the emergence and implementation of the Internet protocol as a profound turning point in the evolution of human communication 鈥 of much greater significance than the creation of the printing press.鈥