Will the Internet be here in 20 years? That was the provocative topic a panel of industry heavyweights tackled at the AlwaysOn conference here. A follow-on panel discussed where news is headed on the Web.
In short, the panel agreed that something called the Internet will be around in 20 years, but it's likely to be very different than how we think of it today.
"From a technology and plumbing point of view it will change," said Nick McKeown, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford. "Evolution tends to lead to structural change."
Among those changes, McKeown expects security to vastly improve. He noted the popularity of virtual private networks and intranets among corporations because the public Internet is too insecure.
"Imagine air traffic controllers on the public Internet," he said. "None of that would fly." He expects more private and specialized intranets in the near and long-term future.
Sun's (Quote
) chief architect Andy Bechtolsheim said traditional telecom and phone companies have been too closed in their thinking, trying to protect their markets. As a result, he notes Apple (Quote
) was able to swoop in and disrupt the industry with its iPhone and perhaps force the phone providers to respond with overdue innovation.
Video will certainly be a mainstay of the next incarnation of the Internet and improvements can't come too soon for Bechtolsheim. He bemoaned having to wait two minutes for a one-minute movie preview to load.
"People understand real time," he said. "In YouTube you get a postage stamp image, but at least you click and something happens." He predicted radical changes with the onset in years to come of ten-gigabit connections that will let you copy a full DVD movie in five minutes.
"That's very scary to Hollywood; consumers would never go to a store to rent or buy a movie," he said.
Bechtolsheim believes part of what's holding back progress is an overpricing of telecommunications equipment. "It's obvious to me that the biggest expense was putting fiber in the ground," he said. Other panelists agreed there is plenty of excess fiber capacity ready to be "lit."
"Video is all about who is going to make money," said Bechtolsheim.
By David Needle
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