ISP Column - November 2003
A monthly column on all things Internet
That Was the The Year That Was
December 2003
Geoff Huston
Pardon me for speaking frankly, but what an insipid year it's been!
Some years are without doubt landmark years, that declare their
achievements in bold style. In the relatively short history of the
Internet each year has seen some form of technology or business
initiative take form.
But for 2003 is quite hard to make that claim of a landmark year.
Lets take a look at what didn't happen in 2003.
2003 was not the year when IPv6 took off. Its not that anything bad
has happened to the positioning of IPv6, nor to its eventual
prospects for deployments.It just that nothing really much happened
at all in the V6 domain. V6 has not exploded into mass-market
deployment, nor has it waned into eventual insignificance. V6 does
have a future, and at some time we will see a definite movement to
realize that - its just that this did not eventuate in 2003.
2003 was evidently not a good year for Internet Governance.
Throughout 2003 there were preparatory meetings for the World Summit
of the Information Society (WSIS). A lot of effort was put into
various texts, espousing the various roles of governments,
international treaty organizations, private enterprise and other
interested parties. All this effort was leading up to the big bash
at Geneva in December, where, it was hoped, Definite Progress would
be made. What was apparent at the Geneva meeting is that there is
not particular common understanding of the nature of the Internet as
a public utility, and perhaps no real common understanding of what a
public utility is these days. The deregulationists argue that a free
market is the most efficient distributor of a public utility, and
the governance is a synonym for the interaction of providers and
consumers in an open market. The regulationists argue that any
market is subject to manipulation and distortion, and the public
interest must be protected through intervention via regulation and
legislation. A public utility must be managed through public
enterprise, they argue, if its value and utility is to be preserved.
So we saw yet another replay of these two world views one week in
Geneva in December, in the context of the question of 'how should
the Internet be governed?'. And the outcome? Another working party
will be spun up, whose task, it would appear, is to fund an
agreeable definition of the term 'Internet Governance'. If doing
nothing is preferable to doing harm, then this is a reasonable
outcome. But I would offer the view that its not enough. It fails to
recognize that the fundamental drive behind the rapid uptake of the
Internet was that of progressive deregulation of the
telecommunications industry, and that the Internet has thrived,
technically and socially in an environment of vibrant private sector
competition. Maybe by the time of WSIS II in 2005 there may be a
better understanding of this role of private enterprise operation of
the Internet as a public utility from the public sector. Or maybe
not. Either way 2003 as not the year for Internet Governance!
What about the evolution of the Internet business environment?
Again, 2003 has not been a landmark year here either. The Internet
Service industry is a highly diverse sector, spanning major carriers
through to small specialized service providers. The larger players
have not squeezed out the smaller players, or even each other. The
smaller players have not been able to innovate with new forms of
service offerings so that the smaller players have not been able to
put a large distance between themselves and their larger
competitors. The result is that in many parts of the world the level
of competition to service the customer remains high. In comparing
the start of 2003 with the picture at the end of the year, not much
has changed at all.
The evolution of the content economy also seemed to take a rain
check for 2003. The 'free to air' content models apparently continue
to languish as a consequence of a weak revenue model from
advertising. Paid content still has yet to fin d a solid market, and
while some forms of pay-per-view or subscription-based content is
found on the net, it appears to remain a niche market. Yes, there
are a few notable successes in the content industry, but on the
whole this remains an industry still looking for a compelling means
of interacting with its potential consumer base, and 2003 really did
not see any major changes in this picture.
And what about the underlying technologies of the Internet? Again it
looks like a year of steady effort without any spectacular
achievement. We saw the introduction of 10 Gigabit Ethernet
technology in to the market in 2002, and it would appear that this
is the first instance where the escalation of demand and the
matching reduction in price for the technology has not followed the
same aggressive timetable for its 1Gigabit of 100Mbit predecessors.
Yes, modem-based access continues to decline as the DSL-based
deployments press on inexorably. But it will still be some time
before the economics of the access industry make widespread use of
fibre to the home a reality in even the more mature markets.
And at the application layer it still seems like the hunt for the
next so-called 'killer application' continues. Considering that the
Web is now over a decade old, you'd have thought that the term
'killer application' would been consigned to the terminology
graveyard, but it seems that in some corners of the Internet the
quest continues. That does not mean that there haven't been some
very neat applications developed in the past year - there certainly
have. But none of them can be classed as powerful generic platforms
in the manner of the Web. Maybe its a case of a mismatch of a
grossly inflated level of expectation as compared with our ability
to sustain fundamental innovation at accelerating rates.
No, it was not the year of Voice over IP. A few more national
regimes started looking at the implications of deploying ENUM within
their national country code during 2003, but it still appears that
ENUM poses more questions than answers when you try and generalize
ENUM technology into a more generic form of call redirection.
Sadly, it was not the year that we managed to get serious about
securing the Internet's infrastructure and application domain. It is
somewhat frustrating to be in a position that we can see the
technologies we need to use, and understand the generic way in which
they need to be used, yet still have not managed to translate this
into useful deployment.
While some things have got a bit better, and some things have not
managed much change in status, other aspects of the Internet had
continued to deteriorate. The level of spam has risen from the
annoying to the downright aggravating, and the associated level of
hostile probes and attacks on Internet-connected systems further
fuels the concern that we really have not yet found good responses
to these threats.
So that was 2003.
Oh well, we've always got next year to do better!
Disclaimer
The above views do not represent the views of the Internet Society,
nor do they represent the views of the author’s employer, the
Telstra Corporation. They were possibly the opinions of the author
at the time of writing this article, but things always change,
including the author's opinions!
About the Author
GEOFF HUSTON holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. from the Australian National
University. He has been closely involved with the development of the
Internet for the past decade, particularly within Australia, where
he was responsible for the initial build of the Internet within the
Australian academic and research sector. Huston is currently the
Chief Scientist in the Internet area for Telstra. He is also the
Executive Director of the Internet Architecture Board, and is a
member of the APNIC Executive Committee. He was an inaugural Trustee
of the Internet Society, and served as Secretary of the Board of
Trustees from 1993 until 2001, with a term of service as chair of
the Board of Trustees in 1999 and 2000. He is author of a number of
Internet-related books.