The fact of the matter is that it is an unstoppable explosion. Yet that explosion is now threatening to consume the Internet itself … the Internet Society … predicted last year that the routing table system could break down as early as 1997 … IPv6 – which distributes the routing responsibility more widely, easing the burden on central computers, all the while aiming to enhance message security – may be the most fundamental change in Internet for more than a decade.
Predictor: Cerf, Vinton G.
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Science, Charles Mann quotes Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI, an a story about regulating the Internet. Mann writes: ”Vinton Cerf … helped design the initial architecture of a system that in 1983 had only 200 host computers, but today has more than 5 million hosts in 94 countries; it is growing at an estimated rate of 9 percent to 12 percent a month. ‘The fact of the matter is that it is an unstoppable explosion.’ Yet that explosion is now threatening to consume the Internet itself. Its central computers are groaning beneath the task of tracking the routes between its millions of hosts. The rampant growth of the ‘routing tables,’ as the database of interconnections is known, is taxing both the memory capacity of the hardware that stores them and the human capacity of the people who maintain them. A study backed by the Internet Society – the closest thing the global network has to an administration – predicted last year that the routing table system could break down as early as 1997. If that occurred, millions of users, including an appreciable fraction of the world’s scientists and engineers, would be stuck in electronic traffic jams, unable to contact each other reliably … a possible solution: a suite of innovations known as Internet Protocol version 6 [IPv6]. Although the changes will be mostly invisible to users, IPv6 – which distributes the routing responsibility more widely, easing the burden on central computers, all the while aiming to enhance message security – may be the most fundamental change in Internet for more than a decade.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Protocols
Name of publication: Science
Title, headline, chapter name: Regulating Cyberspace
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web1.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/74/774/35487673w1/purl=rc2_ITOF_1_regulating+cyberspace_xx__1995_______Science_______________________________________________&dyn=sig!1?sw_aep=ncliveec
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty