UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
INET '93 August 17-20, 1993 San Francisco, California
By Steve Cisler, copyright 1993. Non-profit newsletters, BBSes, gophers,
and ftp servers may reproduce this report in full, including this
notice. It may not be posted on GEnie, CompuServe, Prodigy, Dialog,
America Online, or other commercial services without express permission
of the author.
Just over two years ago, at INET '91, the formation of The Internet
Society was announced. In 1992 INET was held in Kobe, Japan, where new
networkers were given training in a pre-conference workshop. This year
Novell and other groups helped bring about 125 people from developing
countries to a weeklong training session at Stanford University prior to
the INET '93 conference.
The Internet Society
Apple Computer is supporting ISOC, as are firms such as U S West,
Microsoft, BBN, MCI, Novell, 3COM and non-profits such as the Coalition
for Networked Information, and a variety of government agencies plus
regional and national networks. A small group met as an advisory
council and then with the trustees (elected) of ISOC to discuss a
variety of issues including membership, mission statements, finances,
and the need to have a permanent director.
VINTON CERF
At any rate, on a serious note,Vint said that ISOC needs to decide what
it is and who it should serve. The common denominator is that the
organization should keep its technical focus and that its relationship
with the Internet Engineering Task Force will continue to be primary,
that ISOC should not abrogate the principal that we build before we
standardize. One challenge will be to explain to potential members that
ISOC is useful, is worth supporting. Some of us recommended assembling a
starter kit for new users, but there is so much information available at
low or no cost in print and electronic form that ISOC will be hard
pressed to have really unique reasons for joining. It already runs a
gopher (free), and publishes a newsletter _Internet_Society_News_ in
print for members with the electronic one available to non-members as
well.
The conference is not inexpensive, but the feedback I heard was that it
met expectations, especially when it came to mixing with many different
people from all over the world. I would put that as the most
outstanding feature. The San Francisco Chronicle was indeed impressed
when it claimed that representatives from 725 countries were present!
Though the world is certainly fragmenting (as it gets connected
electronically), there were a paltry 91 nations present. I was amazed to
see the addresses that were now connected: Birzeit Univ., West Bank,
Israel; Baku, Azerbaijan; Zagreb, Croatia; Quito, Ecuador; Managua,
Nicaragua; Luxembourg; Conakry, Guinea; Maputo, Mozambique; and Estonia.
A system manager from Papua New Guinea told me his country was facing
many challenges: more than 400 languages and a population "that came out
of the stone age ten years ago." Others, such as Chile, have two
separate networks that communicate with each other only the American
NSFNet.
The conference took place in the Hyatt Regency on Market Street. Rooms
outside this hotel were much less costly, but the facility worked fairly
well for many of the meetings. A couple of the rooms had the AV
equipment quite far apart, and the audience had a hard time seeing. Bill
Yundt of Stanford, working with Russ Hobby of Univ. of California Davis
did a great job on installing a network with about 50 Suns, Macs, and
DOS machines. It was amusing to go in the first day and see many more
people tapping away at the machines than were talking with each other.
However, that changed, and soon the face-to-face conversations were the
norm, even as the machines were being used. There were a few showcase
machines to show off World Wide Web, Mosaic, Internet Talk Radio, MBONE
video, Cornell's Digital Library and CU-SeeMe, the low bandwidth video
conferencing tool, and a rather interesting but semi-stable hypertext
interface to Ed Krol's book and other titles from O'Reilly. The only
real vendor, besides individuals pushing their own product or agenda,
was a bookstore called Computer Literacy. They did a good business the
whole time, showing how much we still depend on traditional methods of
information delivery.
The sessions were punctuated by long lunches and 30 minutes breaks. This
allowed more time for schmoozing. Unfortunately, some people just read
their papers which were in the massive proceedings. If you have a
PostScript printer you can ftp the program, abstracts of complete papers
from mordor.stanford.edu or the ISOC gopher which is found in the
'general' category of U.S. gophers. Some of the main sessions and panels
were broadcast via MBONE, but I was unable to read the overhead slides
because the camera was usually focused on the whole stage and not jut
the presenter or the graphics on the screen. I'm sure the sound track
was useful to those who could listen to some of the sessions. Once the
techniques are fine tuned, this really could cut down on some
conference travel. The next step will be the presence of a video
connection in the hotel bar, so others can join in the socializing--
where the real deals are hashed out in many conferences.
There were numerous tracks as you can tell from the program. I'll just
cover a few of the talks I attended.
KEYNOTE: JOHN YOUNG
John Young, Chairman of Smart Valley, Inc. talked about the NII and that
it was about values to real people, not about networks. He wants to move
services to people, not vice-versa. The government can articulate the
need, serve as catalyst and coordinator, support critical advanced R/D
programs, but the private sector should understand the markets. He
briefly mentioned the issue of the haves/have-nots, and then moved on
the 'impediments to the market-based model': monopoly local phone and
one way cable (though this has changed in the past week or so, and a
complaint about the 50 Public Utilities Commissions, all making their
own policy
I participated in a session on support of virtual communities. There
were four presentations scheduled for a 90 minute slot, and the
moderator didn't crack his whip and yank people off the stage. Dewayne
Hendricks of Tetherless Access Ltd (dewayne@netcom.com) talked about
wireless networks in the context of community networks (which I
covered). Astrid Jenssen, U. of Oslo, discussed the uses of computer
networks for distance education. Terry Morrow, U. of Bath, supports
users of the ISI and Exerpta Medica databases all over the U.K. and some
Commonwealth countries. Given its popularity there are surprisingly few
email queries for help. Jill Foster, U. of Newcastle upon Tyne, outlined
the difficulties in building electronic communities with the
NISP/Mailbase project.
ON THE INTERNET NOBODY KNOWS YOU AREN'T AN EXPERT
Global Networks and K12 Education was a stimulating track. It was
chaired by Bruce Nelson, an education marketing manager for Novell.
Ken Klingenstein
Klingenstein noted that the kids find that the network information is
more 'electric'. Many of us have noted this: people have undue respect
for digital information, and they tend to question it much less. When it
is delivered "fresh", i.e. weather maps, news items, an answer from
someone on the Net, many people do not question the content. Every
person and source can appear as expert. I think the information literacy
skills should be included in this project, but Klingenstein has not made
an attempt to involve school librarians who are just "into their card
catalogs", and going to the library and using print resources was a very
low priority for him. To him "Books are the same everyday." His attitude
as a leader is unfortunate because school librarians have been some of
the most enthusiastic participants in other K12 networking projects such
as the Texas TENET system. At any rate, it was another sad example of
the gulf between computer people, teachers, and librarians.
His paper discusses a new project, a community network using the
infrastructure set up by the school district and run partly by the Univ.
of Colorado School of Journalism. Libraries and other civic institutions
will be supporting this effort. Boulder will then have four different
systems serving the public: TogetherNet, OneNet (both large FirstClass
BBS systems with Internet mail and Usenet), another, smaller BBS with
city information online, and the new one. I recommend his paper because
of his thoughts on sustaining K12 Internet projects beyond the efforts
of individual and enterprising teachers.
Bob Tinker of TERC
Peter Copen
Following this was a BOF (birds of a feather) session on K12. Nelson
discussed the Prague preconference. I suggested that we do something
radically different and not have just papers and presentations, if we
are serious about changing the way learning takes place in a networked
environment. So much planning is geared to traditional ways of doing
conferences, that it would be hard to change.
Although I have described the K12 session in some detail, there were 30
other sessions in the following tracks: network technology (security,
mobility, the next IP, routing...); network engineering (heterogeneous
networks, capacity planning, topology, and network operations);
application technology (how to build them, new tools, multimedia, and
collaborative software); user applications (global emergency management,
cyber-knowledge and information space, virtual culture; policy issues
(economics and global network policy); and regional issues.
There were a number of sessions on social aspects of the changing
networks and the strange communities that are spawned. Amy Bruckman
INDUSTRY PANEL Eight men from a number of organizations such as 3COM,
Sun, Farallon, Cisco, Novel, and ISOC. Without attribution, I noted:
-huge growth in private networks
-where is the central governance for the network to thrive?
-customers want the connectivity of TCP/IP, but there is not enough
security or administration to satisfy many private firms.
-the next generation of users won't care about how it works; they will
want applications. Organizations will have to cease looking in because
the secure walls prevent many from networking outside.
-the new networks will cut distribution middlemen for electronic
products. Libraries, video stores, book stores, wholesalers will have to
change.
-Cerf said that the growth of the Internet was necessitating changes.
It's like trying to change a rocket engine in mid-flight!
-the net is effective because there is no meter running. Will there be
some tax? How will we shape it? Cerf called for a Boston T1 party, if
that happens. Flat rate pricing has been extremely effective, but with
video applications where a best effort attempt to get the packets
through the pipe is not enough, you may have a new tier of pricing ("Pay
this price and we guarantee all your audio and video will be
delivered.")
-it's easier to make a business case for delivering entertainment. It is
much more quantifiable than other productivity applications on the
network. That is why it will be important in driving the transactional
use of the net.
-the Internet will be used for signaling but not for entertainment; it
doesn't have the capacity. Cable and telcos are going to do this.
-the Internet will still be the first place a lot of applications will
be grown and tried. Then they will migrate to the business world.
CONFERENCE ENTERTAINMENT: NERDS CAN DANCE
Lunches were light, perhaps to keep people awake in the afternoon, or to
leave room for the food and drink lavished on the attendees in the
evening. A San Francisco Bay cruise and wine tasting (some very nice
vineyards poured some excellent varietals) was upstaged the next evening
by a party in a city square. Somehow, the hotel had permission to fence
it off and hire a cohort of young men from Gold Gym to keep the hungry
and homeless from competing for the food and drink.
There were four different cuisines, a dessert altar, and wonderful
entertainment. I kept wondering what the gentleman from Tanzania or the
woman from Peru thought as a campy accordion band played a rousing
rendition of "Louie, Louie". One woman made the rounds to exhort wall-
flowers to get on the dance floor. "I want to show them that nerds can
dance!" It was an astounding party.
FRIDAY SESSION: MIKE NELSON (OSTP) & ROBERT METCALFE
(INFOWORLD)
Mike Nelson spent the day before his talk attending the sessions, so he
had a feeling for what the issues were for many attendees. Nelson
described the Information Highway Onramp program. In 3-4 years ever
school should have "a" computer hooked in. We need policies to encourage
the public sector to invest; to promote competition; to re-examine what
universal access means. He saw the NII as a vehicle for US companies
working with foreign companies to develop and share new products. He
also wanted to continue some of the programs that the NSF has sponsored
to open up connections with Latin America, Africa, and eastern Europe.
Nelson's task force will be looking at global issues and be aiming at a
single world network. No details have been worked out.
Bob Metcalfe Publisher and CEO of InfoWorld called his talk "What if
there were PC's on the Internet?" Some of us thought we was joking, but
no, he did not think many personal computers were really on the
Internet. We wondered where he had been these past few years and why he
was unaware of the flourishing PC applications for using the net. He
said the Internet users were a pampered elite, that it should let go of
the Unix mindset, and make the Big Move. He used Novell as an example of
a firm that knew how to supports its networking products.
Metcalfe loved to be provocative, as you can tell. He was touting ISDN
which he just installed in his home. He advocated implementing billing
with a packet/mile type of charge. He loved talking about the vitality
of the commercial market and how Bill Gates and Ray Noorda should have
been on the panels. Interop was the place to be (it followed on the
heels of ISOC the next week), he said. The government should have no
role in the Internet; leave it to market forces.
The moderator would not let Metcalfe get away without a few questions
from the audience. Laura Breeden said that when the market is left to
its own devices for entertainment the most popular cable events are mud
wrestling and tractor pulls. How would he solve that? No real answer.
And how about support for schools and libraries in this networked
environment? Again, the mantra: market forces.
Vint Cerf jumped up; he wanted to defend the Internet and ISOC. He paced
and gestured, and persuaded Metcalfe to join on the spot. Money was
exchanged, then a hug, and loud applause. Cerf has a way of turning
charged events into something very beneficial. Now it's time to educate
Metcalfe and hear more of his ideas.
POST SESSIONS: AFRICA; INTERCULTURAL ISSUES
The Africa BOF drew about 50 people in a room that was meant for 25.
Howard Rheingold, Brewster Kahle (WAIS, Inc.), Lee Felsenstein
(Interval), and I were invited to share a few thoughts on inter-cultural
networking issues with a group of Japanese who had attended INET '93. It
was organized by Izumi Aizu of the Institute for Hypernetwork Society.
Most the attendees talked about the effect of the Internet connectivity
and information sources on relations between Japan and the US. We also
had input from the head of the Croatian and Slovenian national networks.
Howard Rheingold talked about the effects of virtual communities and the
challenge of setting behavior expectations in new environments. Also
discussed were the compromises in Unicode that has upset many Chinese,
Japanese, and Koreans. I spoke about the use of telecomms technology to
preserve culture and said that many cultures may resist Internet
connectivity because of the threats it poses in some people's minds.
Brewster Kahle of WAIS, Inc. said it's time tool builders began to think
about how their systems will play in other cultures. Bernard Aboba,
University of California, talked about friends whose lives were being
disrupted (mental harassment, loss of job) by false accusations
broadcast anonymously from Finish anonymous mail servers to American
mailing lists, BBSes, and Usenet groups. There is no way to trace the
perpetrator, even though they believe they know who it is.
Izumi wrapped up with a plea not to have either the US or Japan waste
its resources building an infrastructure just to compete with the other
country. He said the Japanese are very worried by the intense effort of
the Clinton administration, which in turn, uses the specter of massive
Japanese information infrastructure investment to line up supporters in
the business community and Congress.
The Internet Society Address:
Internet Society
Suite 100
1895 Preston White Drive
Reston, VA 22091
USA isoc@isoc.org
Steve Cisler
Apple Library
4 Infinite Loop MS 304-2A
Cupertino, California 95014
408 974 3258
fax 408 825 7502
sac@apple.com
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