Expert opinion:
About convergence ...
Scott Bradner, Vice president of standards, Internet Society; transport area co-director, Internet Engineering Task Force; and senior technical consultant, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass."Internet telephony is the big question. In order to successfully get telephone services onto the Internet, we need regulators with a clue. If it does happen, the telecommunications manager and CIO will finally both be forced to learn and practice both disciplines. The biggest change for the data people will be in accounting: They'll have to learn how to charge back for data services."
Judy Estrin, Senior vice president and chief technology officer, Cisco Systems, San Jose, Calf.
"Everything will eventually be just a packet: data, video, and voice. This will be driven by new levels of bandwidth availability, especially `last-mile' technologies such as cable and Digital Subscriber Line, added capabilities in IP infrastructures such as multicasting and quality of service, and competition among the different service providers."
About the next 10 years ...
Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld columnist; inventor of Ethernet; and founder of 3Com, Boston"Commerce is the grand reason for the Internet, and micromoney will open up a whole new line. But it will take 10 years. The technologies must be developed, then go through the standards process and the deployment phase. Merchants must figure out how to keep the cost of the transaction -- the processing -- cheaper than the cost of the purchase, which could be a fraction of a cent. But eventually, authors could charge, say, 2 cents for someone to read their published works. Component Internet sales could emerge for inexpensive downloadable items such as modem software drivers. The market potential is huge."
Vint Cerf, Chair, Internet Society and senior vice president, MCI Communications, Washington
"Over the next 10 to 30 years, I expect a major effort to design and field an interplanetary Internet system for communication among space missions. Each planet will have a `dirt-side,' conventional Internet, and there will be interplanetary gateways between them. The gateway protocols will be a challenge because, so far, we haven't solved the speed-of-light impact on high-variable-throughput delay! Efforts are already underway at Jet Propulsion Labs, and a number of key U.S. research agencies have expressed interest in supporting this interplanetary gateway effort."