ATLANTA - Network World columnists predicted the future this week - and took some potshots at each other - in a "crystal ball" session here sponsored by Network World Fusion.
Steve Blass, author of the "Dr. Intranet" column, started the predictions. He is worried that the Internet will dissolve into a series of "disconnected pay-per-view enclaves," with peering arrangements going by the boards and users of one network unable to reach those of another.
He pointed to the current DNS system, which is devolving from a centrally controlled root server into a series of domain registrars. If those registrars get greedy "and NSI wants to push the claim that they own the root servers," there could be trouble, he said.
Daniel Briere, co-author of the "WAN Monitor" column, said ISPs might be tempted to "insert all sorts of latency" when users try to connect to other services.
That brought a snort of retort from "Backspin" and "Gearhead" author Mark Gibbs. Gibbs said that would never happen because people would notice the slowdowns.
"How do you know?" Briere asked. Gibbs said people would discover such slowdowns by talking to their friends.
A host from coast to coast
Briere predicts that within a few years, at least 80% of businesses will use application service providers for major hosted services. While much of the focus has been on such heavy-duty applications as enterprise resource management, he said this would extend down to simple - and ubiquitous - applications. "You're going to have hosted applications in your car," he predicted.
But that will cause problems for IS managers, because they will be faced with a staggering number of ASPs and hosted applications, he said.
David Rohde, author of "Eye on the Carriers," reacted pessimistically. He said IT managers are already worried about outsourcing basic transport to third parties - especially after such incidents as last year's AT&T frame outage and this year's MCI WorldCom frame slowdown - and that outsourcing something higher on the stack would cause even more worry.
We're from the government...
Gibbs' prediction is that government interest in, and intrusion in, corporate networks will become pervasive. "The government is about to regulate your butts off," he said, forcing IT managers to deal with everything from privacy to ethics. Already, managers have to worry about the content of e-mail on the corporate network. Now, politicians are taking an even more active look at electronic content, he said.
Blass said continuing government efforts to control encryption could lead to increased use of steganography, a technique to hide information inside graphic and other complex files.
Gibbs predicts that we will start seeing civil disobedience over the encryption issue.
Directories everywhere
Dave Kearns, author of "Wired Windows", however, said operating systems will soon become irrelevant on networks as directories become more powerful and become repositories of information about network devices and services.
"The so called network operating system, which has been around for 14 years or so just completely disappears," he said, pointing to such industry standards as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. "Everything will be in the directory," he said. The file services will be in your directory... your toaster will be in the directory."
Gibbs didn't buy it, saying operating systems will still play a critical role and that interoperability isn't as easy as Kearns thinks. He asked what happens when two companies with disparate directory systems merge.
"They will merge very nicely [because of standard interfaces]," Kearns said.
"And they'll all be delivered by the sugar plum fairy," Gibbs said.
Briere took Kearns' side. "It's the interfaces that you see. It's the interfaces that are important. DEN [Directory Enabled Networking] is a big logical interface."
ATM lives
Rohde predicted that ATM will survive IP hype, at least at the core of carrier networks - and even if those networks try to hide their ATM legacy. Sprint's ION "is not called the Integrated On-Demand ATM Network, but that's what it is," he said.
"Why would anybody care?" Briere asked. Kearns agreed, saying that as long as he has a service-level agreement - and the carrier lives up to it - he could care less what's in the core of their network.
But Rohde countered that it could make a difference to the enterprise manager. If he has T-1 or lower-level links, for example, he might be concerned about ATM's high overhead.
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