David Stonehouse Technology

Net, the next-generation

Give the Internet a decade or two, and you won't even recognize it

By David Stonehouse

Internet founding father Leonard Kleinrock possesses a distinctly Star Trekian-view of the network's future: lurking silently everywhere, ready to respond instantly to spoken orders and even taking olographic form.

"Right now, cyberspace lives behind a screen in your computer. I want it to come out in the physical world," he says from his office at the University of California Los Angeles.

And what a world it would be: always connected, instantly available and ever-present. Its tentacles would reach out to sensors monitoring everything from the room we are in to the conditions in the atmosphere to the state of gridlock on the highways.

Much like the Starship Enterprise, the omnipresent Internet would trigger actuators to open doors for you, fire on the lights and switch on displays embedded in the walls. It would speak and understand when spoken to, able to identify who you are and retrieve all your files in an instant, even if your office is halfway around the world.

Furthermore, the Internet would not just be the lifeblood of these" smart spaces" -- it will be crowded inconspicuously into our own personal space.

"It will be on my belt, in my fingernails, on my desk, in my shoes, in my eyeglasses, in the world that I enter," says Kleinrock, who laid the groundwork for the Internet in the 1960s by outlining the principles of packet switching that underpin today's network.

He expects the first aspects of this futuristic vision to unfold within the next decade. And if all of this sounds a little too sci- fi, consider that virtually all of the technology to make it happen either exists or is under refinement in research labs today.

The Internet of the future will bear little resemblance to the one we now use. It will no longer just be something we use to send e- mail, chat, look up information or buy a book. It will be faster -- much faster. Video will be a standard feature, not a drain on bandwidth. The Net will empower once-ordinary devices with intelligence and be able to make some intelligent choices of its own. It will always be on, and we'll be able to use it just about anywhere, using just about anything. Smart sensors connected to the Internet will allow us to keep tabs on everything from our homes to the larger world around us.

As more and more of the world becomes interconnected, a future form of the Internet will stitch everything together.

Internet Overhaul
The Internet we know today was designed as a communication tool for scientists and academics, not for global reach and certainly not for connecting virtually every device around us.

Accordingly, Princeton University scientist and Intel researcher Larry Peterson complained in June: "It has become impossible to go to the core of the Internet and make radical changes to introduce the kind of new services we see people wanting to deploy." He was speaking at the public launch of PlanetLab, a project which seeks to overhaul the Internet and which involves a consortium of more than 60 institutions around the world.

The PlanetLab network is designed to allow researchers to develop and test powerful new types of software running on many computers at once, treating the network as one large, widely distributed computer.

The ambitious effort aims to essentially create another layer to the existing Internet. They are experimenting with "smart nodes" -- computers linked to traditional data routers on the network which can divide tasks and communicate with one another. They hope to install 1,000 such nodes by 2006 in countries around the world. The intelligent network would be able to divvy up demands to avoid bottlenecks, throw up defences in the event of attack and speed up the Internet.

Once PlanetLab is fully developed, it could yield such benefits as faster downloads and more powerful search engines. Someone watching an online video, for example, might receive it from many computers that work together to avoid congested parts of the Internet. Software scanning the Internet for malicious behaviour could catch problems before they could be detected by a single computer.

As well, in just a few years, PlanetLab plans to introduce an Internet that is resistant to viruses and worms, features vast amounts of archival space to securely store digital files and allows you to call up your own personal stuff on whatever computer you want to use wherever in the world you are.

The Ottawa-based Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education (CANARIE) has agreed to host 12 to 15 server boxes which will be distributed across its cutting-edge CA*net 4 network.

Placed at various network nodes, the boxes will extend the reach of the PlanetLab network so that Canadian researchers can access the experimental network services, says Martin Sampson, CANARIE's communications manager.

"We see PlanetLab as one of many examples of different, but parallel, approaches to the future of the Internet," says Bill St. Arnaud, CANARIE's senior director for advanced networks. However, he quickly adds: "Of course, we think our architectural approach is superior to that of Planetlab's."

You might brag too if you, like St. Arnaud, were involved with the creation of CA*net 4, which blazes along fibre optic line at 10 gigabytes per second, linking research institutions, hospitals, universities and schools straight across Canada. CA*net 4 also has dedicated "lightpaths" that bypass the public Internet altogether.

Blazing Speed
Imagine jumping online and trying to send 150 DVDs worth of data to someone halfway across the world. Even with high-speed broadband, it would be an impossible wait. But with lightpath technology, it takes just three hours.

CA*net 4 -- created with $110 million in cash from government -- is today proving to be a boon to scientists generating mind- boggling amounts of data in experiments with few practical ways to share that data with colleagues elsewhere, beyond shipping reels of old-fashioned tape.

"Gone are the days of the single, lone researcher sitting in his or her lab seven days a week, working alone on a problem," says CANARIE president and chief executive officer Andrew Bjerring.

"The data that is collected through a single experiment in one of these multi-national collaborative projects is mind-blowing. So how do you share access to that data?"

Very high bandwidth, that's how. CA*net 4 has that, and it links with other next-generation high-speed networks in the world -- Internet2 in the United States and Europe's GEANT. It allows those on the network to send data directly to others without bouncing around from this server and that -- much like peer-to-peer software has allowed music trading from one personal computer to another. And it can link the data muscle and processing power of research computers together -- creating, in essence, one big super computer.

"Canada was a laggard with respect to the first two generations of the web," St. Arnaud confesses. "But we believe Canada has an opportunity to be a world leader in the next generation."

And he says it could prove to be fundamental to the way home networks of the future unfold -- opening new opportunities for online services and mining the explosion of data these faster, better networks will bring to your doorstep.

His mind casts to the science of astronomy.

"Most supernovas," St. Arnaud says, "are discovered by amateurs using these distributed, peer-to-peer databases. This is an example of the revolution: Now, all of the information or services restricted to big computers or large research centres will be accessible for the general public if they have an interest in it."

Home, Connected Home
Increased computing power and networking capabilities as envisioned by projects such as PlanetLab and CANARIE, some say, will ultimately trickle down to the consumer level, supporting the proliferation of Internet-abled appliances and gadgets in our homes.

Already, the future-gazers at companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sears Sunbeam, Westinghouse and Bell Canada have joined forces in an outfit called the Internet Home Alliance, which is dedicated to networking your refrigerator, stove and other appliances so that the Internet can become a backbone of domestic life.

So far, early efforts at Net-connected appliances have been a hard sell -- too cutting-edge, the stuff of luxury for deep- pocketed tech aficionados. Especially when considered in isolation, some of today's items leave observers underwhelmed. Yes, Internet- ready refrigerators are on the market, which allow you to surf, send e-mails, take photos or shoot small video -- even manage grocery lists. Theoretically, it will some day be capable of sending messages to the corner store when you run out of milk. A skeptical response comes from Sean Carton, who doesn't think much of that idea. Carton, author of seven books on the Internet including The Dot.Bomb Survival Guide, says he'd never want his refrigerator to shop for his food.

"The one thing that is seems really apparent to me is technology changes really quickly but people change very slowly. We have all been going to the market to buy our food for thousands of years now and I think it is going to be a long time before people are ready to trust technology to take care of all that stuff for them," he says.

"What is much more likely is it will dial up the manufacturer and say 'I have a problem -- send a service technician over to fix me.' I think that seems to be a little bit more useful."

Still, proponents such as Derek Kuhn envision the Internet coursing through our homes just as hydro power does today. "It'll just become a utility, like electricity that flows into your house," he says.

Kuhn, the director of broadband entertainment for Alcatel Canada, says the potential for Internet everywhere in the home, suggests, is limitless -- if a little hazy at the moment.

"Everybody has different kind of niche interests and ideas. I don't think anybody knows how this is going to go yet. We always hear 'What is the killer application?' I don't think there is one," says Kuhn, who also chairs the tech industry group called Broadband Content Delivery (BCD) Forum.

In this capacity, Kuhn is to host a meeting of the broadband forum at Ottawa's Brookstreet Hotel next week. Presentations at the two-day event, co-sponsored by Alcatel, will touch upon many topics dependent on a more evolved Internet. One panel will consider next- generation DVD players equipped with Ethernet ports so that they could access content via the Internet. Another presentation is dedicated to video telephony and the potential of "telepresence," a situation in which a user "feels" a remote environment so realistically that he or she feels present in the remote site.

Kuhn talks about a microwave he spotted at the Consumer Electronics Show last January in Las Vegas -- wave the bar code of your favourite frozen dinner in front of it and it sends the information over your home Internet connection to seek out the perfect cooking times.

"Three minutes later, your Pizza Pockets are done -- and not overdone or underdone," says Kuhn. "Now, you don't have to worry about whether you have a 700- or a 1,000-watt microwave -- it knew all that stuff for you."

Kuhn, speaking from Los Angeles where he was an invited speaker at the recent Digital Hollywood conference on delivering broadband entertainment, is an avid reality TV fan. He envisions being able to watch Survivor or Canadian Idol while voting in real time for who is next to get the boot -- thanks to a television connected to the Internet.

Already, he says the big telecommunications companies are looking "very closely" at the possibilities of bringing fibre-optic cable right into the home.

"Once you have glass into your house, there is absolutely no limit as to what the speed can be to your home. None," he says. "The technology exists today to have absolutely mind-blowing amounts of data on a single fibre-optic connection."

Sensors at Work
If consumer appliances with Net connectivity still seem like a frill, then what could be really handy -- and perhaps more of a public good -- is the notion of a connected car, one that sends wireless messages off to your local garage when its sensors detect the first signs of trouble. At the garage, technicians can take a peek at the data and send a message back if you need to bring it in for service. Connected cars in motion would form a network that could inform users about traffic flow, weather conditions and other matters.

In the always-connected future, there will be services like that and much more. Small sensors will be everywhere, feeding the Internet with information. Already, intelligent wireless sensors are at work in California monitoring conditions at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino -- communicating with each other to ensure the moisture levels are just right for its collection of rare plants. Others have been pressed into service to monitor the effects seismic waves have had on buildings in the Los Angeles area.

David Tennenhouse, director of research at Intel Research, imagines a day when high-tech "fingers" like this are everywhere around the globe, feeling for data.

Picture calling up an Internet search engine and asking for the current weather conditions at the cottage and the network responding by fetching real-time conditions from sensors right at your land by the lake.

"We need new sensors and actuators, new ways of connecting our computers to the physical world," Tennenhouse told a recent conference on emerging technologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Information technology has barely scratched the surface of where it can be used."

Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg would agree -- he believes the Internet will be so pervasive within the next two decades that it will strain the limits of imagination. But Gartenberg, director of research for the emerging technologies market research firm, isn't so sure that people will want rooms talking to them as they enter.

Instead, he envisions people wearing wristwatches encoded with their personal data and preferences "so when they go into a room the device signals that you are here and it then adjusts the lighting, the temperature and displays relevant information that is important to you.

"But," he says, "that won't just be limited to your home. That will follow you when you get into your car. That will follow you when you go to the airport."

At the airport, the displays showing arrivals and departures will show only the information that you want.

Just about any device around could connect you to the resources of the Internet, he says. If you need to display them, just dig into your pocket.

"We'll see screens that can do things like fold up in your pocket. When you need a 12-inch screen, you will be able to unwrap it," he says.

"Likewise, we will see digital books that look and feel like real paper but will be consistently connected and the concepts will change on that paper. Because it will be digitally encoded, it will carry around a library worth of books -- but in one book."

The world around us will seem familiar, he says. But at the same time, it will be radically different.

There could even be sensors inside your body to help monitor your health. Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and a champion of the wireless sensor-concept for keeping tabs on the world around us, doesn't see why not.

"A new car has probably 30 or 40 microprocessors and sensors inside it," Smarr told a journalist two years ago. "Why is it that you think it's more appropriate to take better care of your own car than your own body?"

Talk like that sets off alarm bells among people concerned about privacy. But in a world where the Internet is all around us, would there be any such thing as privacy?

Kleinrock, the Internet founding father, says we may as well forget about it.

"We've given up a considerable amount of privacy already, and yes a lotmore is coming down the line," he says. "If you ask me, the privacy issue is over. We have lost it. It is almost impossible to retrieve, unless you want to retreat from the technology world that we live in today. Give up your credit cards, your cell phones, have no GPS device on you."

But given the choice between privacy and the conveniences of technology, he suspects most people would opt for convenience.