Abundant bandwidth
How this affects the new Internet Architecture and protocols?

In the recent few years, several disruptive technologies generated a
new direction of a world of abundant bandwidth.  How does this change
the Internet architecture? What is the current architecture, and what
is needed for the new architecture? Where are the current Internet
bottlenecks and where are the new bottlenecks? What changes are needed
for the Internet protocols (if they^Òre needed)? What are the new
applications and what architectural support do they need? How do these
affect us as a society? How are the economy forces working here?

Tomorrow's Internet core is mainly optical rather than electronic.
Through advances in optical components and fast-developing photonic
technologies, the transmission system capabilities are growing in
order of magnitude every two years (1992- 100fx or OC3, 2001  160 DWDM
of OC192 = 1.6Tb/s). The unlimited (almost) bandwidth is growing at an
unbelievable pace (end of this year 6.4Tb Tb/s, next year 24Tb/s). As
a result, the Internet bandwidth becomes abundant.  Recent
developments in Metro networks generated new access in affordable
prices (100FX in San Francisco is cheaper than T1 from 4 years ago)

The cost to move a bit went down by 99% in the last 5 years. (This is
part of the current Telecom crises). When the price is going down so
much it is much easier to buy the bandwidth. What are the changes in
the economy, technology and on the applications? What will be the
affect 5 years from now,( if it would continue at the same pace. Big
if)?

Until now the assumption has been that the WAN bandwidth is limited
(T1, STS1, OC3) and the LAN bandwidth is not limited. Based on these
assumptions some of the recent research starts to be less
relevant. Why do we need congestion control if we have unlimited WAN
bandwidth? Why do we need cash? Where is the new storage if we have
big pipes? Many other questions raised from recent research need some
new answers.  Until recently the bottlenecks were the WAN and the
last-mile or the access. In many cases this is not the problem
anymore.   

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tal Lavian                      Advanced Technology Investments
 http://www.openetlab.org       Nortel Networks, Inc.
 http://www.nortelnetworks.com  4401 Great America Parkway, MS SC2-03
                                Santa Clara, CA 95052-8185
TLavian@NortelNetworks.com   Phone: (408) 495-3062