McGinn: Hold on for the next net

By Adam Gaffin
Network World Fusion, 10/21/98

Atlanta -- So many schoolchildren log on to the Internet when they get home that business users are seeing network slowdowns, according to Lucent CEO Richard McGinn.

McGinn said this morning that that anecdote, related to him by a vice president at "a major telco," shows the problems facing today's data networks.

"It's so severe that he forbade his children from getting online at that time,'' McGinn said in his keynote at NetWorld+Interop.

But relief is in sight, he said.

Carriers and network equipment vendors are beginning to roll out the next-generation devices and networks that will offer unprecedented bandwidth at reduced costs and complexity, he said.

Users will eventually see a blending of IP and ATM protocols, speeding their data across exponentially more powerful optical fibers.

"Breakthroughs in photonics are, in fact, outpacing Moore's Law at this time,'' he said. By the year 2002, Lucent will offer fibers able to carry 8 terabit/sec - a 1,000-fold capacity increase over the cables available just two years ago.

McGinn said the networks of the future will also blend the reliability of voice networks with the flexibility of packet networks, running over a new generation of "protocol-agnostic" routing switches that can talk IP on the campus and ATM on the WAN.

He also predicted that high-speed DSL - 3M to 6M bit/sec - will begin to roll out as a standard component of off-the-shelf PCs and that wireless will move from a low-speed luxury to a high-speed, standard access method, at least in major metropolitan areas - within two to three years.

And carriers will increasingly turn today's complex networks into utilities that require little, if any, oversight from today's "high priests and priestesses.''

And yet, he said, the revolution is really evolutionary. All the major pieces are in place - now it's up to vendors and carriers to put everything together.

"We're at the Altair stage of PCs at this point,'' he said, referring to a late-1970s PC kit. "Post-Heathkit, maybe pre-Apple.''

"What we are going to have to do is create a network of networks,'' that features not only a common set of network-wide protocols but management, QoS and program interfaces, he said.

McGinn said end users demand better, more reliable services at lowered costs. "They want what they want when they want it,'' he said.

"The Internet is sparking it,'' but the current Internet simply does not have the reliability and bandwidth that users are beginning to demand, he said.

Despite his optimism, McGinn said the network of tomorrow will take a lot of work. Building today's sophisticated voice network "took 10 million years of programming time,'' he said.

He added that he expects routers and related devices to make up 30% of Lucent's revenue in five years.