************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * May 1995 * * * ************************************* Editor's Notes Even though this month's article about the Internet isn't directly connected with using DB/C, I think it will be of interest to many of you. In past DB/C Newsletters, we have talked about different aspects of the Internet. In the last 15 months, Subject, Wills & Company has moved much of the DB/C support to the Internet. Email is becoming a more common way of communicating with the DB/C people. FTP has worked well for uploading and downloading files. The Internet itself has grown very quickly. Many pundits are forecasting the impact that the Internet will have on everything from personal relationships and home shopping to politics and terrorism. With this article, I get to put in my 2 cents worth about it. I hope you enjoy it. don.wills@swc.com The Internet The Internet has gone mainstream - and the hype is thick. It has been on the cover of most of the major news magazines around the world. You can read about WWW home pages in your daily paper. Microsoft and IBM are getting into the business of providing Internet software and access. The U.S. Congress is talking about passing laws to control the Internet and the rest of cyberspace. Being on the Internet is a status symbol, both for companies and individuals. Will the Internet continue to grow? Or will it fizzle like many other fads? What will the impact be to business? What will the impact be to the programming profession? What will the Internet look like in five and ten years? This article addresses these questions. The Internet is a network of networks. Currently, the language of the Internet is a common message protocol called the Internet Protocol or IP. Just above IP are two higher level protocols that are the basis of all Internet software. These two protocols are TCP/IP and UDP/IP. Many networks connected to the Internet don't use IP as their primary protocol. For example, most NetWare networks use a protocol called IPX. These networks are connected to the Internet via a gateway that does use the IP protocol. In some cases, the gateway converts other protocols to IP. In other cases, IP packets share the same wire on the local network with other protocols. In these cases, software that uses IP can be run directly on computers on that network. Current estimates for the number of Internet IP connected computers vary from one to twenty million. Nobody really knows. And many more people have access to some Internet services through Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy, and other private networks. Today, most people have access to the Internet with at least 14.4 Kbps modems. These will soon be replaced by 28.8 Kbps modems. Internet access with ISDN is becoming widely available. The speed of the basic ISDN channel is 64 Kbps. At least one company is already shipping a product that allows two or more ISDN channels to be interleaved for 128 Kbps and higher speeds. Prices for ISDN adapters are dropping below $500. Monthly fees and connect time charges are comparable to regular phone lines. Today, many tens of thousands of computers have access to the Internet through T1 lines that run at 1.5 Mbps (T1 speed is 2.0 Mbps in Europe). Within a few years, millions of computers will be connected at T1 and higher speeds. As costs go down and speeds go up, more companies and people will get connected. And just as with the advent of radio and TV, more people being connected will cause there to be more providers of more varied content. There are several problems with the Internet today. Security is the most pressing of these problems. Because of the current general lack of secure software on the Internet, the current guideline is this: Don't send email or other messages containing information that you wouldn't write on the back of a postcard. The most important example is your VISA/MC/AMEX credit card number. Within the next two years, most major software used on the Internet will contain encryption and authentication so that communications will be secure. When financial transactions are secure, you will see a surge of consumer-oriented commerce on the Internet. Another potential problem is the lack of addresses in the current IP protocol. A new protocol called IPng (next generation) that addresses this problem will probably be phased in starting in 1996. In general, there are no show-stopper problems that will cause the Internet to fail because of technology problems. Bandwidth will expand and become cheaper as more people get connected. Software will be built into new operating systems and consumer devices. Some have said that private networks like Compuserve and the forthcoming Microsoft Network will succeed and the Internet will fail. We don't subscribe to this theory. Just like with radio and television, no single network or content provider can possibly compete with the many thousands of providers that inhabit the Internet. In the last 12 months, we have seen all of the private networks scramble to quickly provide email, FTP and WWW connections to the Internet for their subscribers. In the future, these private providers will become primarily onramps to the Internet. Content will cease to exist on Compuserve computers, but will reside on the computers of the actual authors of the content. Compuserve might actually continue to invoice customers for access to this content, just like local phone companies invoice long distance charges for service provided by long distance companies. The only real danger of the Internet failing is this: Will people stay with existing broadcast TV, radio, telephone, VCR and print media because they are more interesting and useful than the Internet? In the near future, the Internet will not have enough bandwidth to compete with the video media. Broadcast television will continue to provide content that is interesting to millions of people. Cable, satellite and the VCR will continue to provide content for audiences that number in the tens of thousands and larger. These media will be relatively unaffected by the Internet for at least the next five years. Broadcast radio will be affected by the Internet. There is plenty of bandwidth at 28.8 Kbps to transmit AM radio quality sound. The primary advantage of broadcast radio is portability. Your car or headphone radio can't pick up the Internet (at least not for the next few years). For audio transmission, the advantage of the Internet is that there are can be many more channels than with radio. This will provide economic viability for content providers whose audiences number in the thousands or even hundreds of listeners. Any business or individual will be able to start transmitting audio at very low cost. The Internet will be the transmission medium for a fixed-base audio narrowcasting system with millions of channels and coverage of the entire planet. Telephones will also be affected by the Internet. FAX and voice messaging will be the most heavily affected. Email will slowly take over the functions of FAX. Email has several inherent advantages over FAX. For example, with email, multiple addresses are available at a single location, whereas with FAX, on receipt the message must be manipulated manually to direct it to the proper recipient. Email is also cheaper than FAX. And although FAX can be paperless, in reality it usually isn't. One way voice messaging using the Internet is also cheaper than a telephone connection. In addition to supplanting existing forms of communication, the Internet provides new forms of communication. One new form is the World Wide Web (WWW) which provides a new model for information publishing and consumer commerce. Traditional book publishers, CD (record) publishers, magazine publishers, and even direct marketing companies that rely on catalogs mailed to consumers are all recognizing that the Internet will affect their businesses. There are already Internet home pages available that are similar to direct mail catalogs. With some interactivity, the Internet will soon compete with the Home Shopping Channel and other cable TV shopping channels. Copyright law will be heavily affected by the Internet. Most publishers today rely on consumer cooperation to protect intellectual property. But the publishers also rely on the fact that copy machines produce inferior copies usually at a higher price. Likewise, music publishers rely on the fact that copies of CDs are lower in quality than the original. Computer copies of digital material are perfect and the copying cost is essentially zero. The Internet provides the conduit for access to digital information. Consumers will increasingly demand digital access to information published on paper. Those companies that provide it via the Internet will have many advantages. Getting back to the original questions: Will the Internet continue to grow? Or will it fizzle like many other fads? You can probably tell by the tone of this article that we think the Internet will be a tremendous success. What will the impact be to business? For the next one or two years, the impact to existing businesses and markets will be small. Those companies that use the Internet to become more efficient or that find new channels to market products will become more profitable. In the short term, a few companies will make a lot of money selling Internet software and services. In the longer term, the Internet service business will become a commodity business and might even be regulated like phone companies. Those companies that provide content and services via the Internet will be the big winners. What will the impact be to the programming profession? There will continue to be a great need for technically competent programmers. Programmer skills will need to change. Today, many programmers are familiar with serial communications (things like modem escape codes, line control, and baud rate). In the future, programmers will become familiar with Internet communications (things like TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP and HTML). Devices that now have serial interfaces will come with IP interfaces. Programs will become more interconnected. Batch systems will be replaced with real-time systems that will receive input directly from input devices and programs, and will send output directly to output devices and programs. Materials ordering and manufacturing scheduling will be directly connected with order processing software. Order status systems will be directly driven by manufacturing devices and control systems. The only types of business software that won't be affected will be after-the-fact accounting and reporting software. What will the Internet look like in five and ten years? In five years, much of the industrialized world will be interconnected on the Internet. The IP protocol will have been replaced with a more robust protocol. Typical end-user bandwidth will be 128 Kbps. In the U.S., 50% of all homes and 95% of all businesses will actively use Internet connections. Consumers and businesses will order products and services on the Internet. Libraries of information will reside on the Internet. People will use email-like software to move text, images, audio and video in delayed mode (delays of less than a minute will be typical for all but large video messages). Real-time audio narrowcasting will be abundant. In ten years, typical end-user bandwidth will be at least 1.5 Mpbs. Video will be the killer application of the Internet. The long-awaited videophone will finally be realized. DB/C Class Schedule The next DB/C class is scheduled for June 12-15, 1995. The class is held in the Oak Brook, Illinois office of Subject, Wills and Company. For more information, contact Judi Tamkevic via email at dbc@swc.com or via telephone at (708) 572-0240.