INET ‘92 MEETS IN JAPAN
This could be the start of something big

Larry Press is contributing editor for Communications of the ACM, the journal for the Association of Computing Machinery.

I have had an Internet account since 1974, and during most of that time it was fun, but of somewhat limited value. However, in the last two or three years the Internet has become an indispensable part of my professional life; it is increasingly where I work, and meet with, and meet new, colleagues. This change is due to the explosive growth of the Internet from the four-node Arpanet in 1969 to an estimated 727,000 hosts in January 1992 (see Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19).

I am not alone in moving my office to the Internet cyberspace, and in recognition of this growing phenomenon, the newly formed Internet Society held its first open conference, INET ‘92, in Kobe, Japan, June 15–18, 1992. I attended that meeting and will summarize it here.

A NEW SOCIETY FORMED IN THE ETHER

Vint Cerf, Internet Society president (and one of the designers of the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is based), called the meeting “historic,” and I am inclined to agree. This was the first open meeting of what I believe will become an important global organization.

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which has overseen the development and standardization of Internet technology, was merged into the Internet Society. The society is in the process of establishing a cooperative relationship with the International Telecommunications Union, which effects a link between the IAB and the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT). The goal is to put Internet standards on a par with other international standards.

Cerf predicts rapid growth for both the Society and the Internet. His predictions for the Internet in the year 2000 are shown below:

The first column of predictions for 2000 is for conventional desktop and portable systems. The second column (2000*) includes ubiquitous embedded computers such as those described by Mark Weiser in “The Computer for the 21st Century,” published in the September 1991 Scientific American.

Society membership is open to users, networking professionals and organizations. If users join in large numbers, it might evolve into something like the Internet’s answer to the Automobile Association of America, a giant organization that provides various types of support services — from free maps to road service — to its membership.

TRACKING REGIONAL, GLOBAL ISSUES

The conference was headed by Hideo Aiso of Keio University and Larry Landweber of the University of Wisconsin. Program chairman was Haruhuisa Ishida of the University of Tokyo. Professor Ishida fielded a four-track program.

The first track consisted of status reports on regional networks, covering Africa and the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe, Europe, North America, and Japan. These sessions gave one a sense of the global reach of the Internet, and of its heterogeneity.

The difficult issues. The second track was on network policy. This included discussion about difficult issues such as the technical and administrative feasibility of sustaining explosive growth, privacy and security (is privacy guaranteed, or can someone, perhaps in the government, see your mail?), and appropriate use. (The Internet was established for research and education. How should commercial traffic be treated?)

The problems in these areas are exacerbated by the global nature of the Internet, which means coexisting with many national governments. As many speakers mentioned, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which guarantees freedom of speech — is a local ordinance.

Some technical proposals with policy implications were also presented. One was a description of Privacy Enhanced Mail, which provides optional encryption along with assurance that mail came from the indicated originator and was not altered in transit.

Network applications. The third track deals with applications. There were sessions on the role of libraries, networks and social change, about entry-level systems appropriate for lesser-developed nations, network management, computer-supported cooperative work, and distance education. While today’s impacts and applications are far reaching, they are only a taste of what we will see on tomorrow’s high-penetration, high-speed, commercialized Internet.

The fourth track was technical, with discussions of high-speed ATM (asynchronous transfer mode, the latest buzzword in high-bandwidth networking) switching, next-generation technology, network operations and measurement, addressing and flow control, and multimedia.

Notable presentations included a Virtual Internet Protocol for portable nodes (significantly, it was made by an engineer from Sony), and talk (no paper) by Dave Farber of the University of Pennsylvania. Farber pointed out that the latency of a gigabit network is comparable to secondary storage, and we might wish to foster a programmer’s view of the network as a directly addressable object store rather than an input/output “device.”

In other words, Farber is calling upon us to look at the Internet as though it’s one big disk drive. Because the network is so vast and powerful, we can store information anywhere, though it’s as accessible as if it were on our local hard disks. This radically changes our idea of what a computer is.

From a computer designer’s point of view, it allows for powerful, massively parallel computers, since computing elements can be accessed quickly from anywhere in the world. But it also should start us thinking about digital libraries of information that are truly global — the information is stored on computers all around the globe — but are easily and quickly available to users on their desktops. (See Vol. 1, No. 9, p. 7, on the WAIS Project, which subscribes to this point of view.)

UNEVEN GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION

While the Internet is growing rapidly, it is highly concentrated in developed nations. One source states that 129 of the 236 world political entities lack even E-mail connectivity.

Of course Internet access is unevenly distributed. For example, some Cuban and Malaysian school children enjoy better connectivity than those in Los Angeles inner-city schools. Since the communication infrastructure in developing nations is typically very poor, Internet connectivity for E-mail and data access is of great marginal value. As such, a major portion of the meeting was devoted to low-cost, appropriate technology networks for developing nations.

The conference was preceded by a two-day workshop and tutorial for developing nations. These were organized by Enzo Pullati of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Steve Ruth of George Mason University and Stefano Trumpy of The National Research Council of Italy. Approximately 60 networkers attended, with financial support of the UNDP and the conference sponsors.

THE PRESENTATIONS

There were presentations on the following topics, and those who are interested (and who have access to Internet or E-mail gateways to the Internet) can send mail directly to the presenters for more information:

• Connectivity and telephone company options, Joe Choy: choy@ncar.ucar.edu
• The necessity for the networking community to be responsive to the needs of government agencies in developing nations, George Sadowsky: sadowsky@nyu.edu
• Communication infrastructure, hardware, software, people and applications for appropriate technology networks, Larry Press: lpress@venera.isi.edu
• The evolution of the Southern African regional network from FidoNet to uucp to Internet Protocol connectivity, Mike Lawrie: ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za
• The evolution of the Western European network from beginning 300 bps, dial-up uucp connections to its present state, Daniel Karrenberg: karrenberg@ripe.net
• PC-based routers with a live demonstration, Ted Hope: hope@huracan.cr
• Satelife, a low-orbit satellite-based system for delivery of medical data and E-mail, Jonathan Metzger: pnsatellife@igc.org
• Internet services, Art St. George, stgeorge@unmb.bitnet.

SHARED ENTHUSIASM AND MISSION

In addition to the workshop and tutorial, networks in developing nations were featured in conference sessions on regional networks. The workshop attendees also established a mailing list and an archive for documents on low-cost networking, and an anthology of papers is under preparation. (The archive is in the Internet directory global_nets, available via anonymous ftp at dhvx20.csudh.edu.)

INET ‘92 was an outstanding conference. The papers and presentations were of high quality; we had terrific food and a room full of Internet-connected workstations (what more could an Internaut ask for?); and there was strong sense of shared enthusiasm and mission. As the song says, it could be the start of something big.

For further information, contact The Internet Society at 1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100; Reston, VA 22091; phone (703) 620-8990, fax (703) 620-0913, Internet: isoc@nri.reston.va.us.

Larry Press