Communication via the InternetThis report reviews communication of simple and complex files via the Internet within and between small to medium businesses. It builds on the previous WIDEBEAM report on technologies and standards. The review discusses the general problems of incompatible application software, mail programs, coding methods, compression, etc., together with specific Eastern European problems.
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Author Peter Burton gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Integration in Manufacturing Group within DGIII of the European Commission. Without that support, this work would never have been undertaken. The author also acknowledges contributions from Alan Griffiths and Mike Bryan (IIC Consulting), Philip Purslow (Cimmedia), Angel Melcon (APIF) and Dimitar Kojarov (Isomatic Lab.).
Copyright for the contents of this web page is owned by the WIDEBEAM consortium. Reproduction is permitted without charge on condition that the WIDEBEAM project and the support received from the Integration in Manufacturing Group within DGIII of the European Commission are acknowledged.
Efficient communication is the life-blood of business, particularly for international trading or collaboration. The telephone is useful for personal contact and urgent reminders but relies on both parties being available at the same time. Also a permanent reproducible record is essential for management control and in case of later recriminations. The post remains useful for legal documents and for reaching the general public but is slow and expensive for international business.
Prior to 1980 the only serious alternative outside the computer room was TELEX, keying plain text messages on-line or else using punched paper tape. The BAUDOT character set was limited and there were no facilities for diagrams or tables. Crude electro-mechanical telecopiers were available to send facsimiles of pictures but the quality was poor and they were little used outside the news industry. In this section the present alternatives are considered.
This section discusses the chronological progression from Fax, through proprietary networks and X.400 to the rise of the Internet for general use.
During the 1980s business communications were revolutionised by the greatest success of the decade, the electronic FAX machine. This was followed in the 1990s by its direct descendant the FAX MODEM. With fax, printed or hand written pages up to ISO A4 size can be transmitted to even the smallest businesses and in the most remote and undeveloped regions of the world.
The initial impetus for this was the need to transmit Japanese characters but this delight is equally applicable for tables, diagrams, hand drawings and hand writing, including signatures. Although there are many reports of faxed signatures being unacceptable it is interesting to note that the distribution of funds from the WIDEBEAM trust account is authorised by fax with a ‘mouse drawn’ signature, confirmed originally by post.
Fax is slow to transmit, usually 9.6 kbit/s but can be 14.4 kbit/s if the recipient has the facility to accept it. It is often slower to Eastern Europe and prone to failure. There seem to be speed or reliability problems which vary with the service provider used at the Western European end. However, the time to delivery is the same as the time for transmission, making it the fastest option available from sender’s machine to recipient’s machine. The ability of people other than the recipient to see the incoming fax is bad for information security but can be vital when the recipient is absent. These advantages render fax unlikely to be entirely superseded. The ‘G5’ developments, discussed at the end of this report, may well extend the utility of fax.
There are two limitations which seriously affect the efficiency for many businesses. Firstly, transmitting to N recipients requires N times the time required to send to one, very serious if N > 100. Secondly, received information is not easily machine readable, hence requiring manual re-entry if it is to be re-used. DIP (Document Image Processing) is the solution but is likely to be forever limited to character recognition plus possibly bit maps of diagrams. The monochrome limitation of fax can also be a problem.
In the 1970s E-mail was limited to corporate computer networks. Computer room staff and sometimes system users could communicate with their counterparts elsewhere on the same network, local or wide area, using EBCDIC or ASCII characters only. This was the original electronic mail (E-mail).
The 1980s saw the emergence of public E-mail networks such as MCI Mail from the USA, BT’s Telecom Gold and EuroKom from the EC ESPRIT programme. The great international success for business users was CompuServe, which claimed to have peaked at 4 million subscribers. America On Line became the world number one by first concentrating on the USA home users, then expanding into Europe as AOL, still concentrating on the home user market. CompuServe has been bought by AOL to be its business oriented service.
Subscribers to these services can communicate with others on the same service or to those on other networks via the Internet or by using the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) X.400 protocol. To distinguish itself from an ISP (Internet Service Provider), a proprietary network will usually claim it is a VAN (Value Added Network) with news, forums etc. The value of these to a business was never great and has been surpassed by the World Wide Web.
The most recent proprietary offering is MSN (Microsoft Network). Unusually for Microsoft, this has not been a world beater, suffering from excessive down time together with file transfer incompatibility with other networks. Among the 320 entries in the WIDEBEAM co-ordinator’s E-mail address book, only 3 are for MSN. Compare this with 3 addresses for the non-business oriented AOL, 40 for CompuServe and 27 for X.400. However, one WIDEBEAM partner uses MSN.
X.400 is a protocol for secure, acknowledged, transfer of text messages and 8-bit binary files, so that word processing, spreadsheets, drawing packages and project management software can be transmitted with no additional encoding required from the user. More details are provided in the document ‘Technologies and Standards’. Delivery may take from a few minutes up to one hour, so is not as fast as Fax for a single recipient, but is likely to be as fast, and is usually faster, than the Internet.
For SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) the higher quality of service obtainable with X.400 is unlikely to justify the cost of the system required. Also the quality can only be maintained for communication with other X.400 users. Traversing the Internet will degrade the service. The situation changes when a key customer, e.g. a government department, uses X.400 and compatibility provides the justification to also adopt it.
The 1990s have been the decade of the Internet, which provides a communication path to the majority of the world’s E-mail users. Use of the Internet as a network is unavoidable, if only because so many users have no X.400 or proprietary network connection.
It should be noted that the Internet is the network of computers which is used for E-mail, accessing files from FTP servers and, most recently, browsing for information on the WWW (World Wide Web). The Internet and WWW are not synonymous. It should also be noted that internet, as distinct from ‘the Internet’, has a distinct meaning in protocol standards jargon, related to internetworking. The obvious example is in TCP/IP, Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol.
The first major drawback of the Internet is its limitation to 7 bit ASCII characters. This is fine for simple text messages but files (formatted text, tables, drawings etc.) require encoding into a 7-bit format and prior knowledge that all recipients have the equivalent decoder. A large recipient group reduces the chances of meeting this latter requirement. Also some encoder/decoders may corrupt the file, particularly if it is long. These problems are dwindling as MIME compliance heads towards becoming universal. All these topics are discussed later in this report.
The second problem with the Internet is overload due to sheer weight of traffic, particularly when sending during USA working hours and evenings. Delays of hours or even days are not due to the Internet but to the end systems, either at the ISP or the recipient’s server or network. Reporting of delay is possible, but not always implemented, and if there is delay it will extend the time for the report to be returned. This renders the Internet unsuitable for urgent communications, particularly tender documents with a hard closing date.
It seems unlikely that delays will be reduced in the short term, because traffic volume is growing too fast for the improvements to make more than a marginal difference. Multimedia, i.e. streaming audio/video, and Internet TV are still to make their mark on traffic patterns. It is unclear how the network can cope.
This section discusses the chronological progression in approaches to retrieving information electronically via a wide area network.
A BBS (Bulletin Board Service) is a traditional client-server arrangement, usually hosted by a large corporation or a ‘membership’ organisation. BBS access tends to be private, i.e. limited to invitees and password protected. The host holds the information on a server and anyone adding files (up-loading) or copying existing files (down-loading) needs to obtain the client software.
A BBS can be accessed by direct dial but this can be expensive in call charges if client and server are in different countries. Access via the Internet has become more popular as it allows access at local call charges but this does make the operation more complex and possibly slower.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is used to provide Internet access from a client to a server with directories for both public and private information. Passwords are used to protect the private directories, whereas the public directory requires no password. Otherwise it is similar to a BBS. FTP servers are best known for free issuing information and software but they are very useful for group working where all members must lodge their output in one place. The useful features for such activity are the ability to :
This approach also helps to ensure that the latest version of a file is used, provided group members always use the FTP site to obtain files rather than use old local copies. During the last four months of the WIDEBEAM project an FTP server was used for storing issued files for two reasons :
It should be noted that FTP access is essential for any organisation with its own remotely located web site. FTP is the method by which the HTML and image files are loaded on to the web server and then modified in future.
The WWW (World Wide Web) has rendered the BBS and FTP server obsolescent except for situations where uploading is required. WWW is currently used primarily for reading information and downloading it, although response to questions is common, as in search facilities. Development of ‘two way’ WWW transfers goes against the trend towards communication infrastructure with much greater capacity ‘downstream’ than ‘up stream’. This is discussed further in the section on Internet TV. However, the use of WWW protocols for private two way communication between businesses has many advantages, including cross platform capability.
It is clear that at present the Internet is the first communication choice for an SME. Its volume of use has produced low cost and universal compatibility for plain text messages and information retrieval. File transfer compatibility still has problems as shown below but the situation is improving. This very popularity brings the danger of use outstripping capacity, resulting in E-mail delays and slow downloading of information.
The Internet has survived end-to-end congestion avoidance and flat fees for access (pro rata for access line speed) since 1988. The business case has been strong enough to persuade a number of venture capitalists to provide substantial investment capital for Internet Service Providers. However, the model of one-price, one-service fits all cases is now of doubtful viability. Business users require guarantees of throughput or delay bounds which may well require a different pricing strategy. In the UK, University College London, Cambridge University and BT are studying a simple implementation of pricing feedback and elastic congestion control as embodied in a new version of TCP and HTTP. The key points are :
The obvious conclusion from the above discussion is that it would be unwise for a business to rely entirely on the Internet for its data communications. Fax from computer via modem is the universal back-up which should always be retained. For specific important customer-supplier point to point data links it would be as well to negotiate either a direct dial up connection, which requires considerable trial and practise time, or use of an X.400 or proprietary network connection for both parties.
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This is covered thoroughly in Technologies and Standards. The minimum requirement is a public switched telephone network connection with a 56 kbit/s modem or the slightly faster ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). For faster communications, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) or ‘Cable Modem’ are the preferred options. For those located with no access to these higher speed connections a wireless connection could be considered.
This section compares in-house service provision with use of an outside organisation.
It is possible to set up an in-house Internet service, subject to obtaining the required IP address(es) and domain name. The investment should not be underestimated, especially the ongoing support which requires a staff member to be available at ALL times. An internal network requires support to be available during working hours so it can be argued that the difference is not that great. However, business flows in from the outside world via the Internet any time any day. The risk of losing business messages or files due to the server going down out of hours is not to be contemplated lightly. Most SMEs prefer to put the support burden on to an external ISP (Internet Service Provider).
In 1998 there were at least 86 ISPs in the UK, 600 in Spain and 10 in Bulgaria. This excludes those from other countries unless they have facilities available at local call charges. There should be no trouble at present finding an ISP which meets most business needs.
If poor service is received then a change of service contract is possible, although it is wise to invest in a company domain name that can be transferred to the new service. Otherwise every person in the E-mail address book must be asked to update the address when it changes.
The present competitive situation in Europe is not expected to last, as the business case for running a commercial Internet Service at current charge rates is unsustainable. It is widely predicted that the majority of ISPs will go out of business, leaving a small number of large organisations with other business revenue (e.g. telecommunications), who will then increase charges. If an SME is selecting an ISP without registering a transferable domain name then it would be advisable to choose a large company which can absorb some losses in the short term.
Spain is the extreme example of the above situation, with far more ISPs than the total for the rest of Europe. The main one is Infovia, the Internet service from Telefonica. There is strong pressure from the rest of Europe, other operators and the EC to restrict Infovia or at least change the way it provides the service. Infovia is much cheaper than other operators so it is hard to compete.
In 1998 Telefonica was invoicing by hours of connection and did not limit the connection time to the users. Charges were around 0.8 euro per hour and it was even cheaper at night, on Sundays and public holidays. There were plans to modify the situation of Infovia, substituting it with VIA IP that would change the invoicing methods. The maximum bit rate provided was 64 kbit/s whereas VIA IP’s intention was to raise it to 128 kbit/s.
In Bulgaria there were about 10 major Internet providers in the area of Sofia. Some of them also had access points in other major cities. They operated satellite channels to the USA and were reselling the capacity to smaller ISPs (see below) and to end users (not too much, because of the higher prices). From these 10 ISPs there were many offspring probably 50-100 in Sofia, considerably less in other parts of Bulgaria.
These offspring companies were buying capacity from the 10 major ISPs and then reselling this capacity to end-users, usually dial-up plus a few leased lines. Their prices were lower than that of the major ISP, but this was achieved by sacrificing the quality.
The latest development is ‘free’ E-mail from organisations who charge no direct fees to users, earning revenue from telephone charges and/or advertising. This is proving very popular with private users, adding to the problems of existing ISPs. For business users these services are less attractive as the ISP fees are negligible compared with advantages such as domain name registration, technical support, large storage facilities for web pages and FTP, etc.
This section discusses the hardware required for connection to the Internet.
The speed demands on a computer for access to the Internet are not very onerous. UNIX workstations are the traditional machines of the Internet fraternity but Microsoft Windows 95 and NT provide all the facilities required and, arguably, better integrated. The main complaint, slow loading of web pages and incoming files is likely to be caused by ISP and user server bottlenecks rather than desktop computer speed. However, browsers are becoming very memory intensive. To use Netscape 3 or 4 successfully it was desirable to provide around 16 Mbytes for it alone. If other applications are running at the same time, e.g. E-mail software and a word processor, then 32 Mbytes is barely adequate.
The faster the modem the better, although small differences, e.g. from 28.8 kbit/s to 33.6 kbit/s will not provide a noticeable reduction in loading time. Leased line or cable modems provide the highest bit rates, 2 Mbit/s being possible. ISDN-2 modems provide 128 kbit/s using both channels. PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) modems, currently up to 33.6 kbit/s with full compatibility to all ISPs, 56 kbit/s for most, will be a bottleneck when the Internet is lightly loaded, i.e. when the USA is asleep. During busy times the modem speed makes little difference as the data rate is very slow anyway.
Modems which plug into a data bus in the computer have a theoretical speed advantage over ‘stand-alone’ versions. However, as modems become obsolete faster than computers, it is important that they can easily be changed for later models. They should certainly not be permanently ‘built-in’ and even ‘plug-in’ cards are not as easy to change as ‘external’ modems.
Much more detail on modems is provided in Technologies and Standards.
This section discusses the software requirements to use the Internet for E-mail, web browsing, FTP and BBS. It also discusses list servers, coder-decoders and compression-decompression.
E-mail software is a major cause of problems, as will be seen in the section on compatibility particularly Emailing_Files. The first to be tried by a new user has traditionally been that provided by the ISP, which in many cases is that which is built into a WWW browser. Now there is a trend towards software provided with the computer operating system, as with Microsoft Windows. This has made the market a harder place a supplier of specialist E-mail software, such as Eudora, even if its product is superior.
For sending and receiving plain text messages any mail client should work, although end of line characters could appear in messages received by incompatible software. For communicating 8-bit binary files with pure Internet recipients alone, any Internet compliant mailer should work, including those in WWW browsers.
Another variation is the ability (or lack of it) to browse the WWW within the same telecommunications session. Mail clients which cut the connection as soon as the mail is sent and/or retrieved have the advantage of shorter connection time and hence lower charges. However, the need to reconnect for immediate web browsing adds to both time and cost. This does not apply to ISDN, DSL or Cable Modem, all of which are "always on".
There have been many articles published comparing Netscape Navigator with Microsoft Internet Explorer. For a Microsoft Windows user there is little to choose between them. However, at the time of writing, Explorer did not support uploads to FTP sites using ftp://....... in place of http://...... It also lacked support for other platforms, except for Macintosh, for which there are some limitations. Netscape Navigator even supports Linux. It is Netscape’s cross-platform capability that has made HTML a good choice for neutral text format.
Similarly the WWW graphics standards such as GIF and JPEG are the ones to choose for assurance of readability by any recipient. HTML, GIF, JPEG, etc. are described in Technologies and Standards. For information on compatibility problems in this document see Browser_Compatibility.
To offer FTP as a service to users, internal and external, requires the purchase of special software on a server, usually running UNIX although Windows NT has been gaining ground. Client software, for users to upload and download files, is incorporated in Windows 95/NT, CompuServe and Netscape Navigator. Specialist FTP client software tends to offer superior performance, still with little or no charge. This can be downloaded from the relevant WWW site.
An example of BBS (Bulletin Board Service) software is FirstClass from SoftArc Inc. which charges for the server part but free issues the client. This provides a competent E-mail facility for the users, in addition to structured information windows, folders and files. It can be configured for BBS access via the Internet or by direct dialling, although the configuration process is far too difficult for the first-time user and requires expert telephone assistance.
It is common practice to set up group addresses in a mail client so that a message and/or file can be sent to everyone in the group by entering a single address. The work involved in keeping large groups updated as they continually change should not be underestimated. One address change affects every group address which contains it. A list server, usually using Majordomo or ListServ software, takes the process one step further by holding the list of addresses on a central server so that changes are only made in one place. Users ‘subscribe’ to the list and automatically receive all mail addressed to it. This means that all messages are received, whether wanted or not. This ensures that nothing is missed because a sender forgot to include one of the recipients.
Mail clients provide automatic coding and decoding for E-mailing files via the Internet, usually MIME-base64 although UUencode is still lingering in UNIX circles. This is an aid to simplicity because files can be sent from, and received by, the mailer in their original 8-bit binary form, the encoding process being hidden from the user. However, there might well be a need for software to handle whichever coding method is not provided by the mail client (all if the client does not provide any). If the client uses MIME then UUencode is required to transmit to recipients tied to UU, and UUdecode is needed to receive their files.
Such software, e.g. the less than intuitive WINcode, could be incorporated in the E-mail software or the operating system or could be obtained as ‘free standing’ shareware. A choice of software is desirable to cope with different incompatibilities. None seem to cope with every correspondent, neither do they seem to be very intuitive to use. The common problem with UUencode is the default 500 line setting, which causes longer files to be segmented into smaller ones. For information on compatibility problems see Encoding.
The E-mail software or operating system might provide optional compression and decompression, almost certainly PKzip. The obvious example is WINzip, with an interface which is even less intuitive to use than WINcode. If there is no software provided, e.g. on a UNIX workstation, then ‘free standing’ shareware can be obtained. A choice of software is desirable to cope with different incompatibilities, although this is less of a problem than for encoding-decoding because PKzip is so universal. However, versions do have variations. For information on compatibility problems see Compression
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Sending plain 7-bit ASCII text requires no coding and such messages are usually short enough for no compression to be used. Only when message length exceeds the limit at the sending or receiving end is there any incompatibility. Some ISPs reject long messages. There are two approaches to the problem for a sender :
Neither is an ideal solution, particularly for an organisation with a large network of internal users and thousands of external recipients. When receiving messages the situation is worse because of the lack of control over the sender. An ISP which adopts the file conversion option rather than rejection is to be preferred. Typical length limits for ISPs are between 1 and 2 Mbytes.
This section discusses one of the most important uses of the Internet for business. Sending 8-bit binary files via E-mail suffers more from incompatibility than any other function.
The modern, and most efficient, method for E-mailing files is to add them to a message as attachments. The older method of ‘separate’ file transfer from the accompanying message requires more work from the sender. Sending encoded files as part of a text message can cause great difficulties for the recipient. However, this approach can sometimes be useful to defeat file transfer prohibition as is usually the case with ‘list servers’.
In Eastern Europe, the Bulgarian Academy of Science has advised against sending more than one file as an attachment. Some recipients, e.g. the Romanian Academy, seem unable to handle attachments but can receive ‘separate’ files.
The biggest compatibility problem arises from the need to encode 8-bit binary files in a 7-bit form for transmission via the Internet. Ignoring the less used formats such as BinHex, there are still two which must be accommodated, UUencode and MIME-base64. The latter is the more modern approach and is now almost universal, so should be adopted for transmission. UUdecode facilities need to be available for received files from obsolescent mail clients and networks, e.g. MSN as at December 1998.
In addition, there is a problem with software which does not fully comply with the specifications. This will work if the other end of the communication link has ‘tolerant’ software but in certain cases produces incompatibility. The only solution is to undertake file exchange trials with every individual in the address book, adopting special procedures for those with incompatibilities.
Clearly there must be some upper limit on size and number of files, which will vary with ISP and possibly with current server loading. Some users have reported success with 25 Mbyte files, whereas some recipients declare a 1 Mbyte limit. Proprietary networks seem to have higher limits for their subscribers. It has been reported from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences that in Eastern Europe file storage allocated by ISPs to their subscribers tends to be limited. Therefore the problem is increased if mailboxes are not cleared quickly.
The use of PKzip as a ‘de facto’ standard has minimised the incompatibility problems for simple compressed files. However, some software does seem to suffer problems with particular recipients, presumably due to lack of full compliance with the specification. A cross-platform example is the incompatibility experienced between ‘Zipit’ on the Macintosh and WINzip under Windows. The older MacZip 1.0 does not suffer from this problem. Some recipients seem unable to unzip anything but that may not be a problem with the software.
Even if compatible file transfer is achieved, decoding and decompressing to the desired result, there remains the problem of reading the file with the available software applications. Both ends of the communication link must possess the same application or applications which can accept a common neutral format. Examples of neutral formats are RTF (Rich Text Format) for Word Processed files and IGES for CAD files (see Technologies and Standards). Even with the same applications there can be problems with versions if they are not ‘backward compatible’. An example is Microsoft PowerPoint, where version 4 cannot even recognise a version 7 file as PowerPoint, let alone read it.
A prevalent attitude from those with all the latest software (e.g. academics) is "every one else should upgrade". Unfortunately, it is uneconomic to upgrade a large corporate network more frequently than 3-4 years. Such networks are used by the most important customers, i.e. the big ones. It should be noted that corporate networks tend to impose restrictions on users to avoid problems such as viruses. It is normal (and good) practice to prohibit the opening of executable files (.exe) in a Windows environment. Therefore it is pointless to transmit such files to anyone with whom one does not have a prior arrangement to do so.
The World Wide Web started as a fine example of how to avoid incompatibility. Any browser worked with any web site and there was no need to know how this was being achieved. This state of affairs remains generally true if the latest version of the browser is used and all the latest ‘plug-ins’ are installed. An exception is interpretation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) by Internet Explorer, particularly the box model. There is also concern that Microsoft interprets the WWW program language JAVA differently from the SUN original specification. This leads to incompatibility and it can only be hoped that Microsoft can be dissuaded, by lawsuits if necessary.
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There has been a series of moves by Microsoft to incorporate all the necessary software for Internet connection, E-mail and web browsing into Windows. This has resulted in litigation by software vendors whose products would no longer be needed, now supported by the US federal government and some states, particularly Utah. The advantage of this approach to new users is simplicity and reduced cost. There is no advantage to existing Windows users who have already purchased the required software and learned how to use it. For users of other operating systems, such as UNIX and MacOS the approach has great dangers:
The second problem is already apparent with Microsoft Internet Explorer not providing full FTP facilities, presumably on the assumption that the user has them with MS Windows. More seriously, an engineering business with UNIX CAD workstations could be faced with additional cost to provide Internet facilities to its users.
Point-to-point video conferencing via the Internet works well with an ISDN connection at both ends, provided there is relatively light network loading world-wide. In Europe it is advisable to undertake such conferences when the USA population is mostly asleep. The WIDEBEAM project demonstrated that at such times it is possible to hold a video conference with Bulgaria even though ISDN is unavailable there. Microsoft NetMeeting (video conferencing software) was used to provide, at zero cost, enough compression for use with 28.8 kbit/s modems, although it does not use the latest techniques which produce higher compression ratios and better quality). The low (or zero) cost general purpose conferencing software used was ICQ (I seek you) from Miriabilis in Israel (see www.icq.com). This can be used from the keyboard without the voice or video active, very useful when they are not working properly. Trials were very successful in the mornings but not in the afternoons when the Internet became busy.
Effective Multi-point (= multi-drop) conferencing requires higher bit rates and Internet capacity than is currently available. However, there is a service called MCU (Multipoint Control Unit) available from VTEL. MCU-II is a multipoint video bridge which can link as many as 20 VTEL sites in a single digital visual conference. Smaller increments of calls can be routed through the MCU-II at one time; up to ten simultaneous two-way conferences (one to one) or any combination of conferences within the 20-port capability. By adding additional MCU-II units this capacity can be multiplied many times.
A massive expansion in Internet loading will arise with the introduction by the digital TV industry of Internet TV. This will combine a ‘set-top box’ with lap-top keyboard using infra-red communication to provide computer-less Internet access. Most of the data will be downloading via the incoming channel with capacity adequate for broadcast audio-video. The outgoing channel needs only sufficient data capacity to transmit key strokes. No additional radio frequency spectrum is required, as it can use that provided for teletext.
The alternative approach is the so-called ‘Web TV’. This uses television only for receiving, a normal telephone line providing the return path. A disadvantage is the need for some home re-wiring because a telephone point located for voice traffic is unlikely to be close to the television ! This is of limited use to business, although it will facilitate occasional home working, e.g. in an emergency situation. However, there could be a significant disadvantage to business if the Internet grinds to a halt when up to 20 % of the USA (present on-line penetration) could be using Internet TV. It is fortunate that the time difference will offer some damage limitation in this respect.
The proposed ‘G5 Messaging’ service for inter-company communications is designed to integrate seamlessly with Group 3 Fax, Internet E-mail, Intranet or LAN E-mail. Key features are :
If G5 messaging were to become the de facto standard for business then its advantages could well be irresistible. However, there are no signs of this happening as yet.
In February 1998 the US Government published a revised implementation plan for the NGI (Next Generation Internet) initiative. The web site www.ngi.gov is updated with the latest information. The goals remain to support networking research, high speed test beds and experimentation with new multimedia applications to improve Internet operating speed by 100 to 1000. The NGI will work through supporting partnerships between government, universities and the private sector. $85M was appropriated to launch the NGI in 1998, most going to DARPA (Defence Advanced Research projects Agency) and NSF (National Science Foundation). Many awards have already been granted.
For 1999, the announcements of DOE Office of Science (formerly Office of Energy Research) funding opportunities including solicitations for Next Generation Internet were ‘Initiative grant applications’ for :
Pre-applications were due by February 12, 1999, formal applications due by March 31, 1999.
President Clinton called for a budget of $110M for 1999 following the call made in his State of the Union Address for Congress to "step up support for building the next generation Internet." It seems probable that all this effort will result in some great improvements to the Internet. Whether it will come to fruition before world communications gridlock occurs is a key question.
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