The next-generation Internet

  • Authors:
  • B. Metcalfe

  • Affiliations:
  • Int. Data Group, USA

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Internet Computing
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

The author predicts the future of the Internet. The Internet was first used for remote terminal login, then file transfer, e-mail, and newsgroups. A long time later, we got Web publishing. Now there's Web commerce. Where next? Well, as broadband is deployed and the Internet heads toward all-optical, there will be a lot more e-mail, a lot more Web commerce, and so on. But what new applications will develop? For one thing, the Internet will subsume the telephone network. Telephone traffic is increasing less than 10 percent per year, while Internet traffic is doubling every four months. If Internet traffic did not surpass telephony by the end of the millennium, it will soon. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will be a trivia sidelight of the Internet right after that. After telephone, television. Internet protocols and bandwidth will need upgrading before television can be carried well, but it inevitably will move to the Internet. Why? The Internet can make television interactive: give it a million channels. The author does not mean turning your TV into a PC monitor, and he doesn't mean carrying the Internet on television networks (CTMs). He means carrying television on the Internet, in packets, using Internet packets: TVoIP. After that: Internet telepresence. There will be major substitutions of communication for travel. Less commuting. Less tedious business travel to press the flesh. We'll wire up our homes and (mostly) stay there