10 reasons why the Net will continue to be a high-wire act
Nicholas Baran, Michael Nadeau, Karen Muldrow, and Paul Korzeniowski
Working without a net is the trapeze artist's ultimate display of bravery. The ultimate in bravery -- or carelessness -- for a business today is working without the electronic Net, if you believe the barkers who have created a circus atmosphere around the Internet.
But many Net-aware businesses find the confusion and uncertainty that surrounds the Internet overshadow financial rewards. Customers surf the Net in droves, yet most resist making on-line purchases because of security concerns. The University of Michigan Business School recently found that four to five times more people use the WWW (World Wide Web) to find information about products and services th
an those who actually buy something through the Net.
To make matters worse, service quality and reliability vary among Internet connection providers. And the Internet itself is in a critical transition from being largely government funded to becoming a commercial enterprise funded by the private sector.
All this may already have created a backlash. Net veteran Clifford Stoll, in
Silicon Snake Oil
, raises a cybernetic red flag about what he calls "the gross disparity between the ballyhooed electronic utopia and the mundane reality of today's networked community." He equates the slow speed of accessing data over interconnected networks to hanging "bananalike, in lime-flavored Jell-O."
Only
time will tell
if the Internet successfully evolves as a commercial marketplace. Until then, you'll need to develop an Internet strategy or risk taking a fall without a safety net. Step right up, here are 10 reasons to begin developing that strategy today.
UNCLE SAM LOGS OFF
1. The Internet's traditional benefactor is withdrawing funding.
On April 30, the federal government essentially pulled the funding plug on the Internet when the Net's traditional benefactor, the NSF (National Science Foundation), shifted the bulk of its funding to a new experimental network called the vBNS (Very-High-Speed Backbone Network Service). The vBNS will exist primarily for research rather than commercial operations and may be the venue to "discover some pretty wild notions," says Vinton Cerf, an Internet founder, a designer of TCP/IP, and now an MCI senior vice president of data architecture and head of the company's Internet initiative. "It will lead us to applications not considered possible because of bandwidth [limitations]," he predicts.
Research on vBNS will focus on broadband, internetworked technologies and services. The core of the project will be to improve the speed and
scaling of the Internet and its underlying technologies, according to Jane Caviness, interim director of NSF's Networking Division. The vBNS will initially provide a 155-Mbps-service (OC-3) test-bed for new network applications, and in time, the test-bed will accommodate speeds of 622 Mbps (OC-12). The NSF anticipates that the vBNS will upgrade to 2.5 Gbps (OC-48) in 1998, although the actual dates depend in part on the availability of some commercial products, including routing and switching technology. By contrast, the Internet backbone operates at 45 Mbps using T3 circuits (until 1991, the Internet used a 1.5-Mbps T1 circuit).
MCI owns the $50 million, five-year cooperative agreement to operate the vBNS, which will be physically separate from the Internet. The latter will continue life under the auspices of commercial network-service providers.
The vBNS will have network-access points like those in current backbones (see the figure
"The MCI vBNS Network"
) and will connec
t five supercomputer centers across the country. For day-to-day operations, however, these supercomputer centers will continue to use the Internet, and for the first time, they'll have to purchase Internet access from commercial service providers.
The vBNS will test high-speed router and switching technologies, such as ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) and frame relay (see "All-Terrain Networking," August 1993 BYTE). ATM is the current access method for the carrier-based, high-speed SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) infrastructure and is also the way to gain high-speed data transfers in WANs.
Other technologies expected to be tested include packet flows, a technique that allows packets of data to be sent from one source to multiple destinations. (Traditional packet-switched networks are designed for two connection points, a sender and a receiver.) Packet-flows technology may be critical for so-called "multicasting" of multimedia data across networks. Like a TV station broadcasting a program to
millions of homes, multicasting may broadcast audio/video presentations to multiple networked computers.
The core concept of packet flows is that some services, like telephony and video, have special transmission requirements. One idea that the NSF is considering is to do the work at layer 2 using something like ATM's CBR (constant bit rate) or VBR (variable bit rate) service. Another proposal being discussed is to build new functionality into the Internet work layer. IP version 6, which we'll discuss in a moment, has a special field, the FlowID, that may help implement this function. Internet routers would also need to perform some degree of traffic isolation among services (i.e., ftp and video) so that large ftps would not impact the delivery of video streams.
Prior to the multicast, you'll be able to use packet-flows technology to allocate network resources based on the packet size and packets-per-second speed required by your multimedia content. An early version of this technology operates o
n the government-sponsored MBone, or multicast backbone, which distributes video and audio presentations to some Internet sites (see
"Smile When You Say That"
). Space-shuttle launches are broadcast on the MBone, for example. However, the MBone operates at relatively low bandwidth, ranging from 56 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps. According to Rick Wilder, MCI's senior manager for Internet technology, vBNS video applications will require speeds in "the tens of megabits per second."
The vBNS will also be the test-bed for IPng (next generation), or IP version 6, the updated internetworking protocol. IP 6 will offer expanded addressing and simplified packet routing and message handling (see "Create More IP Addresses," April BYTE). The IP 6 draft won't be implemented until 1996, and it may not have a commercial impact on the Internet until 1997 at the earliest. In the meantime, the vBNS will work out IP 6's design mandates to expand routing and addressing capabilities, offer simple packet headers, and be
deployed incrementally when making the transition from the current IP version.
GET A PIECE OF THE NET
2. Commercial networking companies are jockeying for control.
Now that the federal government has backed off, who will maintain the Internet? The main Internet backbone (NSFNET) had been operated by ANS (Advanced Network & Services), a research-oriented nonprofit company set up by Merit Network, IBM, and MCI in 1990 under a cooperative agreement between the NSF and Merit. That contract ended in April. In February, ANS sold its backbone infrastructure to America Online. Backbone maintenance responsibilities previously borne by the NSF are being taken over by ANS/AOL and other network service providers, like MCI and Sprint.
The cost of operating the Internet was divided among the NSF and public and commercial users. Since 1993, the NSF has been shifting backbone funding to the commercial secto
r. As a result, the April 30th decommissioning was largely a nonevent.
In recent years, the NSF has spent about $11 million annually on backbone funding. It will continue to subsidize NAP connections for the regional networks on a decreasing scale but plans to reduce funding to zero by 1998.
The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) still largely governs the Internet on an ad hoc basis. The traditional IETF membership represented the federal government and academia, but it now may be driven by commercial forces. "The Internet will go where private money sends it, [to] companies like Microsoft," says Howard Mirowitz, vice president and deputy general manager of Mitsubishi Electronics America's North American Multimedia Business Center. He worries that lessened government involvement may have a downside. "How do we agree on what digital money is or on encryption standards? Without a government role, there will be a lot of uncertainty," Mirowitz warns. Optimists say that as usage increases, a more
-commercial Internet may bring down costs for Internet access, transmissions, and for switches and other hardware.
SMILE WHEN YOU SAY THAT
3. Internet videoconferencing struggles between possible and practical.
Videoconferencing over the Internet is not for the fainthearted, but one effort could eventually make it practical for business. The MBone (multicast backbone) establishes a means to send multicast packets over parts of the existing physical Internet. It already carries live meetings of the IETF, and some scientists use it to collaborate in real time. The MBone has even broadcast part of a Rolling Stones concert. Over a dozen regional service providers support the MBone for roughly 1700 subnets, and this number is doubling every six months, according to Steve Deering, a computer scientist at Xerox's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and a key MBone developer. "The Internet is
doubling every year, so [the MBone] is catching up," he says.
Fully implemented, the MBone could provide modestly priced videoconferencing capabilities to any individual or business with Internet access. For now, bandwidth constraints and limited availability keep the MBone out of prime time.
Multicast packets differ from "normal" unicast packets in that they go to many destinations rather than just one. The source data travels to just one "group" address over the MBone, but any MBone-configured system can pick up the signals by using that address, like a radio tuning in to a specific station.
Not everyone on the Internet can receive these broadcasts, however. Your system must support IP multicasting, which is something that most Unix workstations do out of the box or with a software upgrade. FTP Software's PC/TCP OnNet software, Windows for Workgroups, and the upcoming Windows 95 provide IP multicasting to DOS/Windows systems. Apple's Open Transport, in beta at press time, will include
IP Multicast. Your service provider must also use a multicast router to send videoconferencing signals to MBone-capable endpoints by creating "tunnels" (
see the figure
). These tunnels use the "mrouted" multicast-routing daemon to channel through nonmulticast routers to the intended endpoints.
Because conventional network routers can't cope with multicast packets, broadcasters encapsulate the packets using a conventional IP header so that the routers see the packets as normal. Once on the other side of the router, the header is stripped off, and the packets return to multicast form. In the future, some commercial routers will incorporate both conventional and MBone capabilities.
A T1 line is typically used to connect MBone-capable sites, but even at 1.5 Mbps, T1 can effectively carry only two or three videoconferences at a time. For this reason, broadcasters schedule MBone videoconferencing transmissions for specific times to avoid overburdening the system. Due to overhead
of other traffic on the T1 line, the maximum bandwidth available to MBone users at any given time is about 500 Kbps. Video streams require 128 Kbps (at about 4 frames per second), and audio consumes 64 Kbps. That doesn't include header overhead. That lack of bandwidth is the key limiting factor to widespread MBone use. "[Videoconferencing] applications require a lot of bandwidth, and it's just not there," Deering observes. He's optimistic that capacity will become available as Internet service providers upgrade their hardware.
The MBone is not the only means of conducting videoconferencing over the Internet. Future Communications Systems' VideoVu is a $479 package of hardware and software that lets you send and receive audio and video signals over the Internet via a regular modem connection and a standard digital camera. The company claims display rates of up to 15 fps. But VideoVu only sends unicast signals. Martin Fox, Future's president, hopes to make use of the MBone in the future, but "right now,
most people don't have the MBone."
For more information about the MBone, see the MBone FAQ at http://www.eit.com/techinfo/mbone/mbone.html.
CAN YOU SAY LINGUA FRANCA?
4. HTML will undergo major revision.
Since 1990, HTML, the WWW's (World Wide Web's) standard markup system for hypertext documents, has undergone two major revisions: HTML 2.0, an upgrading of the formal standard, and HTML+, an informal set of extensions that became widely used on the WWW. By the end of this summer, many Web browsers are expected to support a new version, HTML 3.0.
The latest iteration will provide features introduced by HTML+ and will be backward-compatible with 2.0. Version 3.0 is also expected to be more accommodating to loosely structured documents than is HTML+. "HTML 3.0 offers expressive capabilities similar to those provided in word processing programs," says Dan Connolly of the World Wide Web Co
nsortium. "With 2.0, if your original document contained a table, there was no way to describe that information. With 3.0, there is. This increased expressiveness in HTML 3.0 means that people will be able to translate documents from commercial word processing programs and retain all the information from the original document."
The WWW drives the enhancements to be included in HTML 3.0. Dave Raggett, a key contributor to the 3.0 draft, calls the specification "a huge exercise in user testing." For example, information providers want to control documentation presentation. To do this while keeping HTML focused on content (not presentation) markup, HTML 3.0 supports stylesheets through a link to a stylesheet URI (Universal Resource Identifier). HTML 3.0 also will handle text flow around figures (
see the screen
), math equations, customized lists, and the ability to include tables in a document.
The table feature is among the most interesting additions to HTML 3.0. The new versi
on will avoid the complexity of the CALS (Continuous Acquisition and Life-Cycle Support) table model and uses a markup style that works on a wide range of output devices, including braille and speech synthesizers. Tables can contain headers, lists, paragraphs, forms, figures, preformatted text, and nested tables. The markup style is simple enough to be typed in by hand, but most of us will find it easiest to use a direct HTML 3.0 editor or a filter from a word processing format. When you format tables flush left or right, subsequent elements automatically flow around the table if there is enough room. You can turn off that behavior by assigning the "noflow" attribute to the table.
To make the transition from HTML 2.0 to 3.0, information providers are advised to use a MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) content type "text/html; version=3.0" to prevent possible problems for HTML 2.0 users. In the future, 3.0 authors expect to see programs that automatically convert 3.0 documents to 2.0 format.
To take a closer look at HTML 3.0, see the specification (http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/CoverPage.html) and DTD (document type definition) (http://www.w3/org/hypertext/WWW/markup/html3-dtd.txt). Also, try out the freeware test-bed browser. For more information, see http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Arena/.
To participate in HTML 3.0 discussion groups, take the links under "Discussion" in http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.
NET ENTREES: FIRST-CLASS, COACH, AND STANDBY
5. Not all Internet service providers are created equally.
Service providers range from those that offer
"industrial-strength" Internet
for large businesses, to services for "roll your own" Internet companies that are climbing aboard the Net on a shoestring.
Industrial-strength users hire a service, such as BBN Planet, internetMCI, or IBM Global Network, to take care of al
l aspects of Internet usage. For example, BBN Planet will set up WWW pages for your business, give you an IP address, provide firewalls, do 24-hour monitoring of the network for slowdowns and other difficulties, and resolve E-mail message problems. BBN Planet claims over 1100 corporate customers, which include publishing houses, law firms, printing companies, and power utilities.
Providers like BBN also offer remote access to its servers, which lowers security risks and makes the providers responsible for maintaining adequate bandwidth. As experienced Internet users know, networks become overloaded or break down, regardless of the bandwidth. Large service providers promise adequate bandwidth to avoid major performance problems. But bandwidth isn't cheap. For example, BBN Planet offers 56-Kbps service ranging from $500 to $1000 per month, and T1 service (1.5 Mbps) ranges from $1800 to $2500 per month. Note that bandwidth is not dynamically allocated but instead is based on usage forecasts. Acquiring add
itional bandwidth is a matter of adding more T1 or T3 lines to the network to react to additional customer demands.
At the other end of the spectrum are the "grassroots" Internet access companies, which are typically local service providers that lease dedicated lines to their T1 lines. Business customers purchase Internet access via these dedicated lines and rent space on the service provider's WWW server to set up a home page (for more details about setting up Web servers and defining content, see "Hello, World" in this issue and "Build Your Own WWW Server," April BYTE).
Renting is economical, especially for fledgling Internet companies. For example, Hooked (San Francisco, CA) rents 2 MB on its WWW server for $35 a month, which includes 20 hours of access, as well as $3 per additional hour. There is also a $100 fee for establishing a domain name. The charge for setting up a Web page is $70 per hour. Dedicated lines are considerably more expensive. A 56-Kbps ISDN line in San Francisco costs $250
per month and requires a router that ranges in price from $800 to $1500 (see "How to Implement IDSN," April BYTE).
For Homer H. Hillis Jr., the president of HHH Enterprises (Abilene, TX), gaining Internet access was simple. After using Prodigy for a year, Hillis decided to advertise his company's jewelry supplies on the Internet. He turned to OnRamp Technologies, a Dallas Internet service provider. The company gave Hillis an account number and outfitted his PC with Chameleon communications software from NetManage (Cupertino, CA). "Access is easy as long as you are willing to get your feet wet and read up on the technology," Hillis says.
The downside to small-scale service providers, however, is that some of them oversell capacity, according to Thom Stark, principal of Stark Realities (El Cerrito, CA). If two dozen businesses rent access to a WWW server on a local network with a limited number of T1 lines, the whole network can slow to a crawl if one of those businesses becomes hot and starts to
get thousands of hits per day. "It's hard to plan for something like the Playboy Web pages getting a quarter million hits per day," points out Stark. Greg Lesko, director of sales of Hooked acknowledges that bandwidth overload can be a problem "especially if there's a lot of graphics on the page."
Dan Adachi, a product manager at Software Professionals in San Mateo, California, is a customer of Hooked and of a competing Internet service provider. He says that Hooked has stayed on top of performance problems, but the other service "can be horrendous on some days when the whole company is using the Web."
Steve Heflin, president of New Age Micro Systems (Milpitas, CA), encountered other problems. "Getting [access] products to conform to underlying network protocols was so frustrating that I had to either start laughing or go crazy," the computer-industry consultant says. "Every time I called the company, a technician would tell me the software was not compatible with my access provider," Heflin ex
plains. "I kept changing providers but nothing helped."
Eventually, Heflin successfully installed SuperHighway Access from Frontier Technologies (Mequon, WI). He began using the Internet to send E-mail and has branched out to multimedia presentations. However, Heflin warns others about potential pratfalls: "There are few standard rules and protocols, [so] the user often has to determine which items work together, and that process can be difficult and time consuming."
As in any new market, there is bound to be a shakeout of smaller companies. There are signs that this shakeout has already begun. For example, CompuServe (Columbus, OH) recently acquired Spry, a Internet service provider and publisher of Internet In A Box. National Internet provider Performance Systems International (PSI, Reston, VA) recently bought Pipeline (New York, NY), a smaller provider and developer of Internet access software.
SECURITY TRUCE?
6. Security standards remain in flux.
Inadequate security is the biggest challenge to making the Internet a commercial marketplace. Because incidents of security breaches on the Internet are legion, many businesses and consumers are understandably uneasy about performing financial or other confidential transactions on-line.
Today, there are two basic approaches to secure electronic commerce. The first one focuses on protecting resources by securing individual servers and network sites. This access security is generally addressed by firewalls or other means of "perimeter security" (see "Barricading the Net," April BYTE and "Cash on the Wirehead," June BYTE).
The second approach focuses on transaction security. Transaction security addresses unauthorized listening in or eavesdropping on buyer/seller communications; authentication, so both parties are confident they know who they're talking to; message integrity, so the message contents can't be changed or tampered with
; and a nonrepudiable record of the transaction in the form of a receipt or signature.
One way to achieve these security properties is
channel-based security
, which secures the channel along which the transaction is taking place. Users assume that any data passing through this channel is secure.
Document-based security
focuses on securing the documents that make up the transaction.
Two emerging standards
address channel-based and document-based security. The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) system from Netscape Communications (formerly Mosaic Communications) is the leading channel-based technology. The key document-based approach is the SHTTP (Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol) system from Enterprise Integration Technologies, which is the lead sponsor of CommerceNet, a nonprofit consortium. Its members include Apple, Bank of America, and Hewlett-Packard. CommerceNet has created many pilot electronic-commerce projects and is a key proponent of SHTTP.
SSL, whic
h includes some features of document security (e.g., digital signatures), is further along than SHTTP, which remains in its pilot stage. Some observers are skeptical that SHTTP will ever come to market. "As of today, SHTTP doesn't exist. It's almost becoming a joke," says Andrew Singleton of Money.com (Cambridge, MA). "Everybody's using Netscape's SSL system." Others disagree about SHTTP's potential. "There is a strong contingent for SHTTP," says MCI's Cerf. "We can't make a determination [about its fate] at this point." Proponents of SHTTP say that its document security model is inherently more reliable than channel security and that some financial institutions will settle for nothing less.
In the meantime, businesses on the Internet are preparing to support both security protocols. "We'll go with what customers want," says Bill Rollinson, cofounder and vice president of marketing of the Internet Shopping Network. "Sixty to 70 percent of our customers are using Netscape browsers [which support SSL], b
ut we will probably have to support various solutions." Despite his skepticism about SHTTP, Money.com's Singleton is pursuing a similar strategy. "We'll support both [SSL and SHTTP] by having two servers; we'll have a header that will direct the transaction to the appropriate server."
At press time, a start-up company announced plans to merge the two standards. Terisa Systems (Menlo Park, CA) is owned jointly by RSA Data Security, one of the leading developers of cryptographic systems, and EIT. Among Terisa's investors are America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy/IBM, and Netscape. What's intriguing is the teaming of Netscape and EIT (SSL and SHTTP proponents, respectively). This may indicate a security-protocol truce, which improves the prospect for a single security standard. "I am confident that we will end up with a common, secure, interoperable environment," says Chini Krishnan, senior marketing engineer with EIT. "The market needs it, and therefore it will happen."
Rosanne Siino, director of co
mmunications at Netscape, confirms Terisa's goal to integrate SSL and SHTTP. "They're not incompatible since they operate on different levels," she notes. Siino says that Netscape will help Terisa develop a toolkit that will make the integration possible.
Commercial products based on Terisa technology aren't expected until fall, although the toolkit that merges SSL and SHTTP may be available this summer.
WINDOW SHOPPING IN CYBERSPACE
7. Surfers far out-number buyers on the WWW.
Secure WWW servers are today's fastest way to jump-start commerce on the Internet. Such servers almost exclusively use Netscape's SSL system and require the customer to have a Netscape browser, which also supports SSL.
Some companies use WWW servers to initiate transactions.
For example, businesses can post more-detailed information about their products and services than is possible in a printed catalog.
Says Money.com's Singleton, "The real value of the World Wide Web is as a database front end. It gives customers access to data."
Garnering attention because of the company's financial resources is marketplaceMCI, an "electronic mall" that is open to anyone with access to the WWW. MCI has signed up a variety of merchants to sell their products and services on marketplaceMCI, including Sara Lee, Amtrak, and Timberland.
However, it's difficult to measure commercial success on the Internet. Some business people, such as Bill Rollinson of the Internet Shopping Network, boast about getting "300,000 hits per day." But hit rates say nothing about how many purchases are made or even how many actual E-mail requests for more information are received. A hit simply means someone looked at your Web page.
The WWW as a commercial marketplace has performance limitations. At typical modem speeds (9.6 to 28.8 Kbps), the WWW's performance is relatively slow. Matt Kursh, CEO of eShop, a company that designs
user interfaces for electronic commerce, complains that even the most sophisticated commercial WWW servers "aren't what I'd call compelling, even at T1 speeds."
For these reasons, many businesses establish a WWW presence more for image-building reasons than for financial reward, according to ActivMedia (Peterborough, NH), a market researcher that specializes in the Internet. In a recent survey of Internet marketers, 72 percent said that the purpose of their on-line presence was to enhance their company's image, and 74 percent use the Internet to distribute pricing and product information. Only 22 percent said the Internet was "financially rewarding," and 40 percent didn't expect financial rewards for another 12 to 24 months. These companies still rely heavily on telephones and fax machines to exchange credit-card information. Encrypted credit-card information, or "E-cash," are insignificant payment means used by less than 6 percent of Internet companies, according to the survey.
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR DATA IS?
8. Data-search tools aren't mature.
Surfing the Internet is becoming a common business term, like "FedExing" packages or "faxing" a letter. Unfortunately, many businesses find that locating strategic business data is almost as difficult and frustrating as putting together a child's swing set.
The problem lies in the Net's complexity and the fact that its
standard data search tools
require knowledge and a touch of luck to quickly find useful information.
Traditional browsers include Gopher, which is character-based. Auxiliary packages like Archie and Veronica sift through various servers. The most popular GUI-based browser is Mosaic, originally shareware developed by the University of Illinois' NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications).
Netscape Communications and Spyglass now sell their own versions of Mosaic browsers. These product
s make it simpler for users to sift through information, but they are not panaceas for wading through oceans of information. "If a user has to go through 10 or more hypertext links, he may not remember how he arrived at a specific server," notes Charles Baugh, the director of knowledge products at Cisco Systems, a communications supplier in Menlo Park, California. "Once he logs off, he may never be able to get back to it."
Several vendors address these problems by tailoring search tools specifically for the Internet. Verity offers Topic, a search tool for users sifting through corporate files. Recently, the company introduced Topic WebSearcher.
InfoSeek provides WWW access and search-and-retrieve capabilities articles from more than 80 computer publications, as well as medical journals, major wire services, Internet news groups, and WWW pages. The service supports Netscape and Mosaic browsers. The standard monthly fee is $9.95, which includes 100 free transactions and 10 cents for each transacti
on past the free limit or 20 cents per transaction with no monthly fee.
Fulcrum Technologies uses its existing text-retrieval engine in Surfboard, a new search-and-retrieval system marketed for Internet users. Once you locate a document of interest, you can instruct the engine to find more documents like the example, according to the company. Surfboard supports HTTP-compatible browers, as well as WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) and Gopher. OS support includes Windows NT, SunOS, and HP/UX. Server pricing starts at $15,000.
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE PERSONAS
9. Private networks are working to make the Net passé.
Pioneering commercial networks, such as AT&T's PersonaLink and EasyLink networks, are not saddled with the technical limitations of the Internet (see "The Network with Smarts," October 1994 BYTE). It's easier for the private networks to try new things. PersonaLink and EasyLink netw
orks support General Magic's Telescript protocol and Magic Cap interface, a graphics-based operating environment that was designed from the ground up for telecommunications. Developers can write applications designed for this commercial on-line system rather than kludging together applications in an arcane Unix environment.
eShop
has designed a user interface for on-line shopping that runs on Magic Cap, as well as on Windows. Users can customize their "storefronts" using popular business presentation or graphics design software.
However, some analysts think the Internet can still compete with private networks. "Private networks are expensive and the spontaneity isn't there," says Cathy Medich, the executive director of the CommerceNet consortium. "You're limited to specific trading partners, while the Internet is a low-cost way for a lot of customers to participate."
"HI, I'M YOUR SERVER, BILL"
10. Microsoft's on-line offerings may debut this year.
Microsoft plans to enter the on-line marketplace with MSN (
The Microsoft Network
), scheduled to roll out later this year in conjunction with Windows 95. Initially, MSN will operate like CompuServe or other commercial on-line services, with Internet connectivity to let users exchange E-mail across the Internet and to access newsgroups. It eventually may offer technical support for Microsoft software, upgrades, and on-line sales of non-Microsoft software.
At a later time (optimistically scheduled for the end of this year), MSN will have full Internet access through a TCP/IP network to be supplied and operated by UUNET under contract to Microsoft. MSN users will then have full access to the Internet, including the WWW. Microsoft has licensed Web browser software and other Internet tools from Spyglass. MSN will basically be a firewalled private network.
Anthony Bay, director of Internet & Business Service
s, says Microsoft will make available APIs for developers to produce applications specifically for MSN and subsequently for Internet access.
With its huge resources and its enormous software developer and user communities, MSN could reshape the Internet. It could also be a flash in the pan, mired in delays and buggy applications. Only time will tell.
WHERE TO FIND
BBN Planet
Cambridge, MA
(617) 873-3000
fax: (617) 873-5620
http://www.bbnplanet.com/
Enterprise Integration Technologies
Menlo Park, CA
(415) 617-8000
http://www.eit.com
FTP Software
Andover, MA
(800) 282-4387
(508) 685-4000
fax: (508) 794-4488
info@ftp.com
http://www.ftp.com
Fulcrum Technologies
Ottawa, Canada
(800) 385-2786
(613) 238-1761
fax: (613) 238-7695
http://www.fultech.com
Future Communications Systems
Syosset, NY
(516) 496-7121
http:/
/totw/videovu.htm
Global Commerce Link
Boulder, CO
(303) 443-9931
fax: (303) 443-5865
http://www.commerce.com
IBM Global Network
Tampa, FL
(800) 455-5056
(813) 878-5272
fax: (813) 878-3308
globalnetwork@info.ibm.com
webmaster@www.ibm.com
InfoSeek
Santa Clara, CA
(408) 982-4450
fax: (408) 986-1889
info@infoseek.com
http://www.infoseek.com
MCI
Atlanta, GA
(800) 955-5210
fax: (800) 984-4624
http://www.internetMCI.com
Microsoft Corp.
Redmond, WA
(800) 426-9400
(206) 882-8080
fax: (206) 936-7329
http://www.microsoft.com
Netscape Communications Corp.
Mountain View, CA
(415) 528-2555
fax: (415) 528-4124
http://www.netscape.com
Spyglass, Inc.
Naperville, IL
(800) 647-2201
(708) 505-1010
fax: (708) 505-4944
info@spyglass.com
http://www.spyglass.com
Terisa Systems, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA
(415) 694-7991
(415) 617-1836
fax: (415) 462-6369
http://w
ww.terisa.com
Verity, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
(415) 960-7640
fax: (415) 960-7698
info@verity.com
http://www.verity.com
Contributors
Nicholas Baran is a BYTE consulting editor and author
of Inside the Information SuperHighway Revolution (Coriolis Group Books, 1995). You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at nickbaran@bix.com.
Paul Korzeniowski is a freelance writer
who specializes in networking issues. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at editors@bix.com.
Karen Muldrow is a writer
based in Austin, Texas, who helped rewrite the HTML 2.0 specification. You can contact her on the Internet or BIX at editors@bix.com.
Michael Nadeau is the author
m.
John R. Vacca is a Houston-based freelance writer
who has published numerous articles and 12 books. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at editors@bix.com.
What Full-Service Internet Access Providers Give You:
-- An IP Address
-- Firewalls
-- Around-the-Clock Network Monitoring
-- E-mail Problem Solving
-- Adequate Bandwidth for Commercial Business
What You'll Pay:
-- 56-Kbps Service: $500 to $1,000 Per Month
-- T1 (1.5 Mbps) Service: $1,800 to $2,500 Per Month
What Regional Access Providers Give You:
-- Leased Access to T1 Lines
-- Home-Page Rental Space on a WWW Server
-- Adequate or Inadequate Bandwidth, Depending on the Provider
What You'll Pay:
-- WWW Server Space: $35 Per Month for a Set Number of Access Hours
-- Establishing a Domain Name: $100
-- Home Page Setup
: $70 Per Hour
First Release Features:
-- Ships within Windows 95
-- Provides Internet Connectivity
-- Access to Internet E-Mail and News Groups
-- Hooks to Microsoft for Technical Support and Upgrades
Future Versions:
-- Internet Access via a TCP/IP Network
-- WWW (World Wide Web) Access
WHO CONTROLS THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Yesterday
Today
-- National Science Foundation -- MCI
-- Sprint
-- ANS/AOL
A single protocol for secure financial transactions will probably
combine elements from today's two leading camps.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
Secures the transaction channel. Proponents include Netscape
Communi
cations. Used currently by commercial businesses on the
Internet.
SHTTP (Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol)
Secures documents that comprise the transaction. Proponents include
Enterprise Integration Technologies and CommerceNet. Not widely
implemented but potentially more secure than SSL.
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The MBone is a virtual multicast network overlaying the existing Internet. It "tunnels" through that infrastructure by making multicast packets appear unicast to conventional routers. The packet's header contains the unicast address of the receiving conventional router and code identifying the packet contents as IP addresses. Once through the receiving router, the head is stripped off and the multicast packets are sent to their intended destinations.
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Birth of an Electronic Nation: 1983 - 1990
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Birth of an Electronic Nation: 1990 - 1993
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Birth of an Electronic Nation: 1993 - 1995
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The ability to wrap text around figures is one of HTML 3.0's enhancements.
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Clockwise from top: Topic WebSearcher, InfoSeek, and Surfboard.
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e-Shop's on-line shopping GUI.
The Greatest Show on Earth
