The Internet

Topic : The Internet

Presented By : Anonymous

The Internet

How many times in our respective lives have we mentally challenged a statement of fact thrown to us by various agencies or have acknowledged gurus in related fields! The most honest answer would be NEVER. For example, consider the statement, "The Internet revolution and the ever- exploding family of surfers threatens to surpass the 200 million figure." In fact the average of collective estimates say it will soon cross the 300 million mark by the turn of the century!

The problem is that, since Internet is a free medium, anybody who has ever logged onto the Net maybe for a couple of times to the more serious surfer, is writing enthusiastically about it. But then it is one thing to be a driver and another to be a good mechanic and entirely a different ball game to design a futuristic automobile. Nevertheless, all the three are free to offer their critical views on the issue - which at times could be misleading. Hence, it becomes absolutely necessary to ascertain these figures before re-designing a new business model to meet far greater challenges. The question remains, how true are these figures! The Internet as we all know is a network of computer networks. It is claimed that "every four minutes a new network is being added to this world AND that every four- tenths of a second another user comes on line". This means that, every four minutes, one hundred computers will be added to this world. This can be extrapolated to the extent one wishes to, but actual computation shows that a total of 12.6 million computers will be added to the Internet in the next one year only.

Although, the machines may be Internet- ready, they may not necessarily be deployed for Net connectivity. Therefore, the quoted figure of "60 m more computers will be added to this world, "seems a like shot in the proverbial cyberspace black hole. Needless to say the reach would be much lower than the figure that is being estimated.

The second issue is the link access speed. All the servers in the Internet are connected in a mesh configuration, through varying width of the access pipe. The structure is allied in characteristics to a highway that connects different cities OR the inter-city and intra-city telecommunication network.

The thickest access pipe mostly deployed is the 45 MBPS link. One could also have a highway of multiple 45 MBPS links. If we assume that a lay surfer has 28.8 KBPS connectivity, then a 45 MBPS link can provide 1,500 such connections for 35 seconds for each of them to download a 100 Kb block. The third issue is how many of these machines are connected to the Net at any given point of time! Well, the problem is as complex as one wants to make it or rather create it. However, we have resolved this using the classical topology of telephone exchanges. Technically Erlang's formula can be applied to estimate the users based on how many times one would collide with other surfers and reduce collective access speeds, as there are no engaged or busy circuits in Internet. Let us assume that, on an average one tenth of the users are provided simultaneous access. Ten percent of 60 million surfers across the Net. Assuming each one has 28.8 KBPS connectivity to the Net, it amounts to a bandwidth of 170 GB. The fact is that a network is usually designed for handling peak load. Assuming a peak load of 30% the bandwidth required for the Internet backbone will be of the order of 510 Cbps. Do we have it! No! Even ii one assumes that the server-to-surfer traffic is amount 35%, we are still very far from actuality.

Coming back to the perceived threat to the printed paper, the one argument against the print media is that more and more people are getting hooked onto the Internet and so the printed paper will bite the dust sooner or later. There exists issues like, how many Internet connections can a family have! The mobility of the printed newspaper is beyond the Iridium or Teledisc's reach. Besides, can anyone truly claim to surf the Net and scan its contents in around 20 minutes flat, almost the same way we usually go through a printed newspaper!

Nowadays, we hear a lot about CD quality audio, video and even the Internet phone. In this regard, one really needs to know the ground realities of bandwidth requirements against each of these applications. For e.g., the CD-audio. Assuming a 20KHz per channel bandwidth, a sampling rate of 16 bits per sample, we will need a total bandwidth of 1.280 MBPS! With the latest compression technology available one can't get this data in a 64 KBPS pipe - not to mention the 28.8 KBPS link and other speeds available on the modems. What is generally happening is that, the sampling rates are reduced and the music is brought into manageable bit streams for the end user's connectivity.

One will experience the intermittent distortion as and when the buffer is empty. Whereas, because of its characteristic of intermittent channel occupancy, incase of Tele-conversation one can achieve higher compression ratio, which is not true for music, which is continuous. It is anybody's guess as to what happens to the Video, which requires a bandwidth of 5 to 8, MHz.

Without going into technical details, let me assure you, as of today, we can't get anything more than a few frames per second. These frames on the computer will remind you of still movies (silent movies with jerky motion) of the motion picture era, at the turn of this century!

It is therefore apparent that some of the issues need to be addressed and resolved or fully understood before constituting the Internet as a communications backbone for any enterprise expansion plan. The Internet will have to consolidate its installed base, emerging technologies and standardize on developments - in the immediate future. In the end, some times it pays to mentally quiz the figures thrown at us. It is a good stimulant and food for thought. Next time you hear tall claims from an ISP, think it over!

Internet cloud

Connected Internet Servers, Large number of surfers connecting and splitting the connectivity to very low capacity lines - below their telephone connectivity of 56 KBPS or 28.8 KBPS.

Intermittent music

A three minute song will be played for 30 second, pause for 30 second and finish after 6 minutes! TV with 10 frames per second against the present 50 frames per second.