The Internet's Coming of Age (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Overview and Recommendations
Overview and Recommendations
Pages 1-28
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From page 1... ...
All indications are that the Internet revolution given its impact, "revolution" seems the appropriate label is not nearly over. lust during the course of the authoring committee's work, there were a number of developments that are likely to have long-lasting impact; salient among them are the widening deployment of broadband residential Internet service and the beginnings of commercial deployment of mobile wireless devices that have Internet connectivity.
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From page 2... ...
To shed light on appropriate actions and responses to the Internet revolution, this report, written by a committee with an in-depth understanding of the Internet's technologies and its core businesses, undertakes an assessment of the Internet along several lines: · Reviewing the fundamental technical design principles that have helped shape the Internet's success; · Considering the state of the art as Internet technology continues to
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From page 3... ...
The ISP in turn enters into business arrangements for connectivity with other service providers to ensure that the customer's data can move smoothly among the various parts of the Internet. The networks that make up the Internet are composed of communications links, which carry data from one point to another, and routers, which direct the communications flow between links and thus, ultimately, from senders to receivers.
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From page 4... ...
controls the Internet in its entirety. These design principles mean that the Internet is open from the standpoint of users, service providers, and network providers, and as a result it has been open to change in the associated industry base as well as in the technologies they supply and use.
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From page 5... ...
To meet the expected demands, the Internet will have to continue to scale up into the foreseeable future. While the fundamental design principles have so far proven durable in the face of growth, sustained growth including support for faster communications and the ability for more devices to connect to the network will pose challenges.
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From page 6... ...
Indeed, some believe that the current system that enables routers to decide where to send data packets as they move through the network will require a fundamental rethinking. Scaling up the Address Space The Internet's basic protocol, IP, was designed to provide only roughly 4.3 billion unique identifiers, a limitation that is becoming increasingly problematic as the number of computers attached to the Internet continues to grow.
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From page 7... ...
The balance of the delegated addresses is allocated in smaller blocks by the regional address registrars to ISPs or other organizations. Unlike many Internet scaling problems, where the challenge is to find a new solution, concerns about address scarcity have led to simultaneous moves down two different paths.
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From page 8... ...
If there is no migration to IPv6, address scarcity will be a serious problem for a subset of Internet users in the short term and a more pervasive problem in the long term. The number of computers attached to the Internet can be expected to continue to grow, reflecting both more users and more devices per user.
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From page 9... ...
The debate over whether mechanisms supporting other forms of QOS are needed is a long-standing one within the Internet community. It has shifted from an original focus on mechanisms that would support multimedia applications over the Internet to mechanisms that would support a broader spectrum of potential uses, from enhancing the performance of particular classes of applications over constrained network links to providing ISPs with mechanisms for value-stratifying their customers.
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From page 10... ...
Additional insights into the role of QOS mechanisms in the Internet will come through several avenues: better understanding of the factors that contribute to network performance, including the limits to performance that can be obtained using best-effort service; better understanding of the effectiveness of QOS approaches in particular circumstances; and greater experience with QOS in operational settings. Keeping the Internet Interconnected and Open One of the Internet's hallmarks has been its openness.
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From page 11... ...
. Because the local loop is the point of entry for many Internet users, outcomes here can have significant consequences for the shape of the Internet as a whole.
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From page 12... ...
While concerns have long been expressed about interconnection in the Internet, interconnection arrangements are continuing to evolve in ways that support the growing base of Internet users and their changing needs. There have been several areas of innovation in the nature of interconnection that provide alternatives to the conventional binary choice between attaining peer status or paying as a transit customer.
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From page 13... ...
It is not clear that the current transit agreements, which are designed to assess charges for the delivery of data packets across a boundary, are consistent with the future business needs of these ISPs, suggesting that further evolution of interconnection in the Internet will be necessary. Innovation and Transparency The Internet is built on a set of open standards and on a process that seeks to encourage the development of new open standards as needs for new functionality arise.
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From page 14... ...
. A significant feature of the Internet is that it becomes more valuable to each user as the size of the network grows, making it possible for a small advantage in market share to snowball into a much larger market share and a very large economic benefit.
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From page 15... ...
The terms "IP telephony" and "voice over IP" are both used in this report to describe services that employ the Internet's underlying technology to provide voice telecommunications. IP telephony is a broad label covering a diverse set of architectures, service providers and transport media, end-user equipment, local access technology, and interfaces and gateways between IP and public switched network elements.
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From page 16... ...
Design and regulation are closely coupled; today's regulations reflect the technologies and design choices underlying the PSTN, but at the same time the regulatory environment has itself helped shape the PSTN's architecture. To the extent that Internet telephony becomes a significant force in voice services, de
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From page 17... ...
Nor will life-critical services necessarily be confined to simply summoning assistance. The Internet and Broad Social Policy By providing a network with lower costs and increased functionality, the Internet represents a disruptive force across domains that have separate bodies of well-established law.
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From page 18... ...
The committee's overview of social policy concerns completes the picture by illuminating actions that leverage the Internet and that, directly or through policy responses, may influence future decisions about how the Internet develops. Sound recommendations that respond to the particulars of these social policy concerns unlike the general principles
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From page 19... ...
This outcome argues for using public funds to support such work even in the face of considerable private investment in the Internet, particularly where self-interest or near-term gains are insufficient motivators for industry investment. Research and development that address scaling challenges and enhance reliability and robustness should continue to receive support from both industry and federal research funding agencies.
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From page 20... ...
The need for researchers to have better access to realworld artifacts has been noted in earlier studies.1 The payoff from better access to Internet networks would be an improved understanding of network behavior, particularly behavior related to large scale and high congestion, that could lead to insights that would enable improvements in operational networks. For example, research aimed at better understanding where and how quality-of-service mechanisms would best benefit a particular class of applications needs to be done on a network with realistic congestion and cannot be done through simulation unless one has good models of how a congested network behaves.
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From page 21... ...
Improved understanding of the economics that underlie interconnection in the Internet may be useful for better understanding how the Internet's interconnection arrangements are evolving and may lead to new models that improve the overall interconnection of the Internet or that help address concerns such as barriers to entry. Key topics include how to best approach the value relationships that exist across the Internet; identifying economic alternatives beyond simple peering and transit; and exploring the organizational dimension of interconnection and openness issues, including the implications for industry structure and performance.
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From page 22... ...
For example, while the Internet industry and its customers stand to gain in the long term from a shift to IPv6, the costs for individual organizations will, at least in the short term, probably outweigh the benefits they themselves obtain. Another example is the scalability of applications: applications whose deployment adversely affects the performance experienced by all Internet users may, nonetheless, provide local benefits (because a short time to market can yield more immediate returns)
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From page 23... ...
2Another CSTB committee is expected shortly to begin an examination of issues surrounding the assignment of domain names in the Domain Name System such as conflicts between DNS names and trademarks.
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From page 24... ...
Because of its critical role in the continued dynamism and growth of the Internet, government should include considerations of openness in its inquires relating to the Internet and should favor policy decisions that are consistent with maintaining open IP service. Government also has a role to play in convening dialog and supporting research about openness issues.
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From page 25... ...
Also, those who monitor the industry or rate the quality of ISPs could use such information to inform consumers about the advantages and disadvantages of the various ISP service offerings. Government Policy Responses By lowering the cost of communications and increasing the functionality and utility of the communications infrastructure, the Internet has enabled significant changes.
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From page 26... ...
Federal efforts to collect technical and socioeconomic data on the Internet should be given adequate resources, and options for leveraging complementary private data collection should be explored. The following principles, derived from the committee's examination of the broad social policy issues privacy, anonymity, and identity; authentication; taxation of commerce transacted over the Internet; and universal service should be used to guide the development of policy issues arising from the use of the Internet.
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From page 27... ...
As noted above, it finds too many of the elements of the situation to be too dynamic, and it in any case did not conduct a complete assessment of social policy issues. But if it is determined that voluntary action alone is not sufficient, a legislative or regulatory approach should be adopted that reflects the dynamic, evolving nature of Internet applications and services and the Internet marketplace.
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From page 28... ...
Over the Internet, it can be as easy to interact with a person, organization, or company thousands of miles away as with someone in the next town. Issues surrounding sales tax collection have shown how the Internet weakens geographical boundaries and how local and national social and economic interests and concerns come into play as political institutions attempt to address the geographical challenge.
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