[banner] [toolbar] [Image] June 29-30, 1996 ----------------- Gridlock on the Internet Explosive Growth Clogs The Internet's Backbone Explosive Growth Clogs Internet By JAMIE MURPHY and CHARLIE HOFACKER Backbone [B]andwidth has become the Holy Grail of the Internet, No Shortage of the unspoken contingency clause upon which virtually Bottlenecks for all software developers and most content developers are Internet Traffic mortgaging their future. Will Olympics Video conferencing? Videophones? Net phones? Movies on Traffic Bring demand? Voice e-mail? Virtual Reality? Each of these Down the Net? gizmos and many others already exist in some form, ready to run on both the server to which you're connected and the PC on your desk or lap. ----------------- But the pipes between your computer and whatever data Related Articles you're trying to get from the Internet are invariably clogged. So while investors line up to wager millions of Earlier dollars into the next exotic Internet technology, you CyberTimes sit waiting on line like some high-tech peasant in a 10 Coverage of the kilometer bread queue. Backbone and Internet How, you wonder, are we going to add all the wonders you Resources keep hearing about -- the Java applets, the real-time video and audio, the Shockwave animation and sundry ----------------- other fancy technologies -- if we're already stalled in bumper-to- bumper traffic on the Information Graphics Superhighway? Traffic on the Internet: When will they widen the highway and raise the speed A Graphic limit? Glossary There Is No "They" Comparing the Size of the Pipe [T]he answer is that there is no answer because with the Internet there is no "they" -- at least not in the sense that humans are accustomed to organizing societies, governments and cultural institutions. Which is why more and more industry observers are voicing suspicions that the anarchy of the Internet may be its undoing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the development of ----------------- the Internet's so-called backbones, the super-high-speed Backbone:[Image] pipelines in which all the packets of bits and bytes The traveling between you and some remote server merge with high-speed packets being exchanged by millions of other users, some fiber-optic human, some robotic, all vying for a bigger, faster ride cables which through the pipe. shuttle information -------------------------- through the [Image] There is no internet at 45 economic model to support million to 155 the continued growth of million bits per high-bandwidth use on the second--more global computer network.[Image] than 10,000 times faster than a 14.4 Robert Raisch modem. -------------------------- ----------------- But whereas you can petition government agencies or government-regulated utilities for a bigger sewer or water line or an expanded roadway, the owners and operators of the public portion of the Internet backbone are private businesses. And they are frankly perplexed about how they're going to make a return on the enormous investment it will take to widen the highway and unclog the pipes. In a recent interview, Robert Raisch, chief scientist of the Internet Company, a server host and developer, stated flatly, "There is no economic model to support the continued growth of high-bandwidth use on the global computer network." And that, says Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, is the problem with the Internet: The lack of an economic rationale for raising the Internet's speed limit is a major cause of its latency -- at times outright gridlock -- and a gaping pothole smack in the middle of the road to the network's future. Much of the Internet's backbone system consists of common information conduits, and the companies that manage them hesitate to spend money upgrading them, because the investment could benefit competitors who also make use of those conduits. One result of that reluctance is that the Internet is becoming, in Raisch's words, "a thirsty garden." "Huge portions of the garden will wither, blacken and die for want of moisture," Raisch predicted. "The weather is turning, and there is a major drought on the horizon. But is not for want of water itself. We simply can't afford the hoses." From NSFNET to Commercial Control [T]he backbones of today's Internet trace their history to the mid-1980s, when the National Science Foundation created the NSFNET. The idea was to make the foundation's five supercomputers available to scholars via the NSFNET information pipeline at the then-unbelievable speed of 56,000 bits per second. Yet increasing network traffic soon overwhelmed the servers and telephone lines of the NSFNET. So in 1987, International Business Machines Corporation and MCI, in partnership with Merit Network Inc., the State of Michigan's educational network, upgraded the network's backbone to a T1 speed -- 1.5 million bits per second. And in 1991, the foundation lifted the restrictions on the commercial use of the network and upgraded its backbone to a T3 speed, or 45 million bits per second. Other networks, including Advanced Network & Services Inc. and the very-high-speed Backbone Network Service, or vBNS, evolved to handle the increased demand on the Internet and to test new technologies. Advanced Network Services, originally a not-for-profit consortium of IBM, MCI, Northern Telecom and Merit, began in 1990 and was acquired by America Online in February 1995. vBNS, which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, returns the NSFNET to the old days of a closed-access research system linking the same five supercomputers: the Pittsburgh and San Diego Supercomputing Centers, the Cornell Theory Center, the National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Urbana, Ill., and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Now the vBNS speed is OC-3, or 155 million bits per second, and it's projected to reach OC-12, 622 million bits per second, by early next year at the latest. MCI is the vBNS provider and one of the major Internet backbone providers, along with Advanced Network & Services, Sprint, and MFS Data Services/UUNET. In addition to the lines themselves, the backbone system ----------------- consists of huge hubs where all the intersecting Hubs: high-speed lines merge to reroute billions of packets of Metropoli[Image] data and send them on their way to their next stop -- Area either the Internet service provider from which they've Exchanges been requested or, along a different line, to another (MAEs) are hub for further routing. maintained for a profit by There are two kinds of hubs -- Naps (for Network Access companies like Points) and Maes (for Metropolitan Area Exchanges). The MFS only significant difference between them is their Communications. origins: Naps were officially chartered by the National They sell Science Foundation when it turned the Internet over to bandwidth to the public sector in 1995. service providers. The Naps were assigned to Pacific Bell, Sprint, Ameritech and MFS Data Services/UUNET. Network [Image] Access Maes, though not officially chartered, do the same work Points as Naps. MFS Data Services/UUNET operates about a dozen (NAPs) act as Maes and has announced plans to add more in the United intersections, States, Germany and France. like MAEs, but are chartered by the National Science Foundation. ----------------- MCI is also investing heavily in public- and commercial- ----------------- access portions of the Internet backbone. It recently Related Article: announced a joint venture with British Telecom that will 2 Phone Giants boost total Internet capacity by 30 percent. The to Merge venture, dubbed Concert InternetPlus, will initially High-Speed Data combine the two companies' existing backbone systems Networks (June into eight new regional Internet superhubs, similar to 11) Naps or Maes, to avoid having to route most traffic ----------------- through the United States, said Allen Clark, a spokesman for MCI. "These will expand within the year to a total of 20 hubs in key locations around the world," Clark said. The free-market rules in the Telecommunications Act of ----------------- 1996 will be the ultimate arbiter of the future shape of Related Article: the Internet's backbones. For example, MFS Data MFS Services/UUNET is now an Internet service provider, as Communications well as the owner of both a Nap and is now an Internet to Acquire Maes. Microsoft has a seat on its board. Internet Service Provider (May 1) Catch 22: Growing Bandwidth, ----------------- Explosive Demand [B]ut as fast as the backbone might appear to be expanding, it faces almost insatiable demand, as telephone companies, cable companies and Internet service providers all rush to offer higher bandwidth to their customers. And here lies the Catch-22 of bandwidth. The more users ----------------- venture beyond 28.8 Kbps modems into high-speed Graphic: connections, the more crowded the backbone becomes. So Comparing the increasing your access speed at home or at the office Size of the Pipe contributes to the slowing down of the Internet as a ----------------- whole. -------------------------- It all boils down to how much improvement is profitable. -------------------------- For example, BellSouth, which has no investment in the Internet's backbone, is active in developing and implementing high-speed access schemes like Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Lines (or ADSL, capable of receiving data at up to 7 megabits per second over existing copper phone lines), cable modems (capable of receiving 10 megabits per second) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (which guarantees needed bandwidth for streaming applications like real-time audio and video). "We are preparing to soon move our development work in ADSL from the lab stage to trial stage," said BellSouth's spokesman, Ted Creech. "We have also just introduced our cable modem-based trial of interactive and video services to some 8,000 customers in Chamblee, Ga., and our ISDN service has never been more popular." Some observers are skeptical of such claims on the part of the telephone companies because, they note, emerging Internet phone technologies could grab a big chunk of the phone companies' existing business. "All of the telcos have fiber optic lines they have no idea how to sell -- without cannibalizing their existing business," said Raisch. Even so, all the telephone companies are talking the talk. Morgan Littlewood, director of Internet services marketing for Cisco, a leading supplier of networking technologies, said of the phone companies, "If the applications are there, such as electronic commerce, they will be interested" in high bandwidth service. It all boils down to how much improvement is profitable. BellSouth's Creech said that providing high technology just for the sake of doing it wouldn't serve the company's customers or its stockholders in the long run. And Betty Jo Chang, director of technology programs for the Global Network Services Company of MFS Data Services/UUNET, observed, "A lot of telco folks got burned with video-on-demand games a couple years ago -- just like some are going to get burned by the Internet toaster game now." UC-Berkeley's Varian agrees, adding that the Baby Bells are holding back on ISDN lines, for example, out of fear that they'll see their investment washed away by cable modems or some other developing technology. "They don't want to invest in an obsolete technology," Varian said. "And who can blame them?" Toward a New Billing Model? [H]owever things shake out on the client end of the Internet, MCI's Clark argues that free-market forces will ensure enough bandwidth at the backbone end to make the Internet viable. "With more companies investing in Internet technology," he said, "market forces will drive the Internet industry to respond." But the market also requires profits throughout the system. While competition among Internet service providers has whittled the price point for unlimited consumer access to about $20 a month, many observers argue that if bandwidth is ever to increase, the billing model itself must change. There are now three basic billing models: ----------------- Related Link * Flat rate, in which a user pays a certain fee for The Berkeley unlimited access. School of Information * Metered usage, in which the user pays by the amount Management & of data sent or received. Systems web site includes a * Timed charges, in which the user pays by the minute discussion of or other fraction of an hour. Usage-Based Pricing Schemes. There is a growing consensus that only metered billing ----------------- can provide enough profits for service providers and backbone administrators to expand their bandwidth. In other words, you're probably going to be paying a lot more in the future for fancy real-time audio and video on the Net than you'll be paying to send and receive your e-mail. Without metered pricing, the Internet service provider will suffer most, Raisch predicts. "They will need to raise prices to both consumer and server to support the required load," he said. "This is why I believe the mom-and-pop local ISP is doomed." The industry may already be realizing Raisch's prediction. Mae east, operated by MFS Data Services/UUNET, is seeing an increase in high speed, giga-switch, connections and a decrease in slower, ethernet connections, says Chang. That, she says, is "indicative of the slow but sure shakedown into large national ISPs and smaller regional ISPs." But some observers also see a silver lining in a metered plan set at a price point designed to guarantee plenty of bandwidth for multimedia applications. "If the Net is engineered to support real-time video, then everything else is essentially free," said Varian. "Just because you can reserve high-priority bandwidth doesn't mean that low-priority bandwidth can't remain very cheap. "My guess is that we'll see a mixture of flat rate and metered pricing. The flat rate network will work fine for e- mail and other slow traffic. Real-time communication will require metering." And when will this happen? That, Varian suggests, depends on how crowded the backbone gets in the near term. "We can probably live with a flat-rate network that looks like L.A. at rush hour," Varian said, "but not one that looks like Bangkok at rush hour." ----------------------- Jamie Murphy is a doctoral student in communication at Florida State University. Charlie Hofacker is a professor in FSU's Marketing Department. Brian Massey, a doctoral candidate in communication, contributed to this article. Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company ----------------------------------------------------------