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RE: e2e

2007-08-21 02:12:39

From: Fred Baker [mailto:fred(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com] 

I read in the paper this morning that the "Web" is running 
out of bandwidth. The article quoted Metcalf and others and 
their predictions of the death of the Internet, and noted 
that Bob finally blenderized his columns in front of an 
audience. My company figured in the article. So did the 
advent of video content, which requires significantly more 
bandwidth and significantly lower loss rates than more 
traditional voice services or TCP-based applications. Had the 
author had a clue, s/he would have said something about the 
Internet once again changing its fundamental service, from 
enabling terminal service, to moving files using FTP and 
Network News, to moving smaller files using SMTP and HTTP, to 
basic audio services, to peer- to-peer file sharing, and now 
to video. Not that the old goes away right away, but we add 
on and the old becomes less important.

I think the author has it 180 degrees wrong.

The Internet is not running out of bandwidth, it is the improvement in 
bandwidth that is the driver here, the Internet is now within reach of 
supporting full definition video. The market demand for high definition is 
growing. So demand outstrips supply for a short while. The same thing happened 
in the early days of the Web, when embedded images were first plonked into 
Mosaic the Internet bandwidth was not sufficient to support them. The whole of 
CERN was sitting off a pipe thinner than some non-IETFers have running into 
their house (yes I know some folk have an OC 192 into their house, I remember 
when having a personal T1 was considered having won the bandwidth wars).

At the end of the day we can probably be confident that a saturation point for 
Internet bandwidth as far as user applications goes will come when we have 
enough bandwidth to saturate each of the five human senses. There might well be 
other uses beyond that of course but there will definitely be some breakpoint 
there.

The bigger challenge is how we put this bandwidth in the hands of a billion 
plus users without having collosal abuse issues. If the Internet pipe into your 
home has enough bandwidth to support live high definition video you have the 
ability to send one heck of a lot of spam.


The changes I see are not fundamental, Fred is entirely correct in pointing out 
that we have always had certain types of complexity in the core. The 
differences are subtler, of degree, of balance. The scales that tipped one way 
in 1980 tip in a different direction today.

Clark expected this of course, that is why the core message of the E2E paper 
might be summed up by J.J.Watson's mantra: Think!

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