Resent-Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 08:45:12 -0500 (CDT)
Resent-From: inet-access@earth.com
Interesting 1 page article in US News & WR May 6 issue page 59.
Here is a summary of the article.
--begin summary
Quotes Bob Metcalfe inventor of Ethernet and founder of
3Com Corp. "The Internet is about to collapse and it's
going to shake some of the naivete' right out of the
industry."
The most likely time will be July with the Olympic
Committee and IBM planning to put the Summer Olympic
video and sound on the Internet according to him.
The problems stem from private companies. ANS, MCI,
Netcom, UUNET and Sprint and others taking over the
backbone in the last year from NSF. These companies now
claim ownership of portions of the backbone. But where
NSF gave out Internet traffic data the new players do
not. As a result no single company has a decent gauge
of what's going on. Also, the shared parts of the
backbone has no single company incentive to improve them
(i.e. no incentive to back each other up.)
Rob Hagens, MCI director of Internet engineering views
Metcalf's scenario as being extreme with others inspite
of 1 1/2 hour brownout on its West Coast backbone early
in April. He says "I believe we're going to be able to
keep the Internet running."
They are all racing to invest in high speed networks to
keep ahead of demand which is growing 100% per year.
--end summary