General

Internet2—Window on the Future — continued

Preparing for the future
ISPs take note. If you expect to survive over the next decade, you better get with the program and start looking at, and learning, the technologies that will drive the future of the net.

"ISPs, and everyone else in the Internet community, have to be ready to meet the new challenges," said Rod Wilson, director of advanced technology research at Brampton, Ontario, Canada-based Nortel Networks. "This means being aware of what is being developed now. Internet2 is the place where the future is being written."

Nortel Networks, which supplies the optical networking for the net, has been an Internet2 corporate partner since 1997. According to Wilson, the basic building blocks of Internet2 are optical technology in the backbone for speed to run multimedia applications and mobility to make it accessible to the widest audience.

He points out that mobile access now exceeds fixed access in more than 100 countries with more than 700 million wireless handsets being added every year. The true explosion of wireless access can be seen in China where the infrastructure is being built out at a rate of 30 million users—or the equivalent of all the wireless services in California—every three months.

"ISPs should pay attention—wireless technologies will have a profound affect on their future," noted Wilson.

Bill Jepson, director of the UCLA Urban Simulation Laboratory, an Internet2 partner, adds that wireless may be the only practical way to overcome the "last mile" bottleneck.

"For the ISP the big problem is the last mile. This is the weakest link in the chain. Even in a full fiber network, it all breaks down if the link to the house or the office is copper," said Jepson.

Technologies that matter
Right now, WiMAX or Wireless MAN (fixed broadband wireless Metropolitan Access Networks) is being touted as the possible solution to the last mile bottleneck. WiMAX operates on the Air Interface Standard, IEEE 802.16 and supports broadband speeds from a base station at distances of up to 30 miles.

"With high bandwidth wireless technologies, ISPs could put up an antenna and get the speed and coverage needed for the new applications and services," commented Jepson.

So what should you be looking at in order to prepare for all the new things coming from internet2? According to Wilson, there are currently eight prime technologies that are "affecting the ability to economically adopt" the applications and needs of the future. Here is his list of the "technologies that matter."

1. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)—SIP is an application-layer control and signaling protocol for Internet telephony. With it you can establish sessions for things such as audio/videoconferencing, interactive gaming, and call forwarding for deployment over IP networks. It also allows ISPs to integrate basic IP telephony services with Web, e-mail, and chat services.
   
   In addition to user authentication, redirect and registration services, SIP supports traditional telephony features such as personal mobility, time-of-day routing, and call forwarding based on the geographical location of the person being called.
   
   "SIP is the replacement of circuit switched environments," remarks Wilson. "People should start about sessions instead of calls. This is the arrival of Internet thinking to telephony."
   
   
2. End-to-end Network Security—Gone are the days when a simple password would secure your network. The new breed of sophisticated applications need real protection from hackers, worms, and viruses.
   
   "ISPs not only have to provide the tools for people in remote locations to work as if they are in the same room, but they also must provide an environment that is secure," said Wilson.
   
   One of Nortel's solutions is the Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5200. This SIP-based system provides ISPs with hosted multimedia communications services and integrates voice with video, collaboration, and presence services.
   
   Other security products from Nortel Networks include Contivity VPN (sets up a trusted environment with encrypted login and tunnels) and the Shasta 5000 (sits at the edge of an ISPs network and provides security capabilities for broadband technologies such as DSL, cable and wireless).
   
   
3. Presence and Identity Management—This will allow the network to keep track of a user as he/she moves from place to place, city to city, or country to country. The network would know the user without tying them to a particular device. It means providing the same capabilities (e-mail, mapping services, data tracking, etc.) and security to the user as he/she moves from the office computer to the car.
   
   
4. Radio Frequency Performance and Efficiency (RFPE)—Basically, this is the ability to maintain quality, performance, efficiency, and capabilities, in the RF or wireless environment.
   
   
5. Linux Operating System—"Linux is important because it is powerful, portable and ubiquitous," said Wilson. "But, it will not become a true enabler in the new world until it is 'carrier grade'—that is, super reliable and bomb-proof. This same criteria is needed for other open source software so we can build on other successes across the industry."
   
   
6. IPv6—Besides a number of performance enhancements, IPv6 offers the one big thing that is missing in the currently used IPv4: a nearly unlimited quantity of IP addresses. With a maximum of only 4.2 billion IP addresses available under IPv4, experts believe that we are rapidly approaching the end of the IP address rope.
   
   IPv6 solves the problem by multiplying potential Internet addresses by a factor of 80 octillion or 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. With IPv6, which expands Internet addresses from 32 to 128 bits, the number of available addresses will jump to 340 trillion trillion trillion. Not 'unlimited' but certainly enough for the foreseeable future no matter how many smart refrigerators or intelligent cars are added to the net.
   
   
7. Ethernet Transport and Switching—Ethernet has become the common denominator in network connectivity mainly because it's reliable but still provides good performance with relatively low latency. Most importantly, it's on the motherboard of almost every computer manufactured. "It's the ideal transport path," comments Wilson, "but, the key to maintaining that performance for ISPs, and to operating in much larger environments, is the ability to switch it efficiently."

—End

< Back to page one