Aplus.net Blog

Unbelievable as it may seem, the Internet was born almost 40 years ago — in 1969.

Okay, so that date applies to ARPAnet, the network of computer interconnectivity that eventually became the Internet, rather than the Internet that we know today. Still, the basic fact is that this modern tool of information and commerce known as the Internet, so important to the daily lives of people all around the world, grew from an idea that was born in the 1960s.

And according to the man who oversaw that first Internet project back in ‘69, it’s time for an upgrade.

“We can no longer rely on last-generation technology, which has essentially remained unchanged for 40 years, to power Internet performance,” said Larry Roberts, as quoted earlier this month by Bobby White in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts was the man in charge of that original ARPAnet project. He’s now on a mission to upgrade the technology that underlies the Internet, which according to the article he believes to be “far behind the times”.

Why is an upgrade necessary? The case is pretty compelling:

The actions of Messrs. Bosack and Roberts fuel the growing debate over whether the Internet’s current infrastructure is sufficient to handle the explosion of bandwidth-hungry services such as Internet telephony and video. In a recent report, Cisco calculated that monthly Internet traffic in North America will increase 264% by 2011 to more than 7.8 million terabytes, or the equivalent of 40 trillion email messages. If such Internet traffic continues increasing, many believe networks could crash or at least slow to a crawl.

Among the proposed solutions:

To tackle the problem, a slew of start-ups are producing gear and software to accelerate Internet traffic or to increase the network’s capacity. These include companies run by Messrs. Roberts and Bosack, as well as Riverbed Technology Inc. and Big Band Networks Inc. Other companies, such as BitGravity Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc., are creating “parallel networks” — essentially scaled-down versions of the Internet — to escape the glut of traffic on current networks.

Whether or not these plans succeed, the very notion that the Internet itself needs updating is an interesting one, especially when one considers the central role it has taken not only in many people’s lives, but also in the very functioning of society.

Check out the original Wall Street Journal article here, and let us know what you think in the comments section, below.