It is unproven that the current technology will survive in a competitive but unregulated environment, with uncoordinated routing policies and global network management being just two of the major issues here. Furthermore, while frequently comments are being made where the publicly available monthly increases in traffic figures would not justify moving to T3 or even gigabit-per-second networks, it should be pointed out that monthly figures are very macroscopic views. Much of the Internet traffic is very bursty and we have frequently seen an onslaught of traffic towards backbone nodes if one looks at it over fairly short intervals of time. I am not sure whether the amount of research and development efforts on the Internet has increased over time, less even kept pace with the general Internet growth (by whatever definition). I do not believe that the Internet is a finished product at this point of time and there is a lot of room for further evolution.
Predictor: Braun, Hans-Werner
Prediction, in context:This August 1991 Request For Comment – No. 1251 from the Network Working Group – includes biographies of Internet leaders. The RFC includes information from Hans-Werner Braun, IAB Member. Braun joined the San Diego Supercomputer Center as a principal scientist in January 1991 and was a co-principal investigator of, and executive committee member on the CASA gigabit network research project, working on networking efforts beyond the problems of todayÕs computer networking infrastructure. He writes: ”It is unproven that the current technology will survive in a competitive but unregulated environment, with uncoordinated routing policies and global network management being just two of the major issues here. Furthermore, while frequently comments are being made where the publicly available monthly increases in traffic figures would not justify moving to T3 or even gigabit-per-second networks, it should be pointed out that monthly figures are very macroscopic views. Much of the Internet traffic is very bursty and we have frequently seen an onslaught of traffic towards backbone nodes if one looks at it over fairly short intervals of time. I am not sure whether the amount of research and development efforts on the Internet has increased over time, less even kept pace with the general Internet growth (by whatever definition). I do not believe that the Internet is a finished product at this point of time and there is a lot of room for further evolution.Ó
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Requests For Comments
Title, headline, chapter name: RFC1251
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1251.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne