● 重大網絡產品技術 |歷史上最重要的網絡產品和技術
美《網絡計算》雜志“網絡技術排行榜”評選結果
一：十大最有影響力標準組織
1．互聯網工程特別小組（IETF）：互聯網沒有真正的管理者，但是這里的“游戲規則”卻是IETF制定的。
2．電氣電子工程師學會（IEEE）：高速以太網、千兆位、虛擬局域網……這些標準的出臺全部都離不開IEEE。
3．幀中繼論壇（Frame Relay Forum，FRF）：幀中繼成為連接廣域網的一種價廉高效方法，完全應當歸功于FRF的工作。
4．EIA／TIA：如果你希望成為網絡的一份子，就不能無視這個組織的存在。
5．異步傳輸（ATM）論壇：1991年10月在美國成立，現有500多家公司參加。
6．國際電信聯盟（ITU）：從移動通信標準到H.323和v.90調制解調器標準，這一切都要歸功于國際電聯。
7．環球資訊網聯合會（W3C）：全球惟有該組織制定的WWW技術標準得到一致認可。
8．（美）國家標準技術研究所（NIST）：NIST對于促進關系型數據庫標準取得令人矚目的進步做出了不可磨滅的貢獻。
9．電信產業解決方案協會（ATIS）：所有電信運營商一級的技術均源自ATIS之手。
10．國際標準組織（ISO）：說到ISO9000和ISO9001國際質量標準體系，不知道的人恐怕不多吧？
二：十大技術失誤
1． 國際商用機器公司的OS／2營銷策略
2． 蘋果公司堅持生產成本昂貴、擁有自主產權的計算系統，但是卻并沒能成為企業計算平臺。
3． Novell耗資8.5億美元收購WordPerfect，3億美元收購Unix系統實驗室，1.3億美元收購DR－DOS和1750萬美元收購AppWare公司。
4． Novell堅持開發基于字符界面的WordPerfect軟件，最終卻發布了一套錯誤重重的視窗版軟件。
5． 微軟公司在聯邦法庭上堅稱IE瀏覽器與視窗95不可分割。
6． 著名黑客凱文·米特尼克被公眾輿論塑造成一位英雄。
7． 英特爾公司發布含有浮點運算錯誤的奔騰處理器。
8． 微軟推出的Bob產品。
9． 蘋果公司推出的Newton掌上電腦。
10． TP軟件公司先是試圖向市場推銷一款Ipsec客戶機軟件，后來又推出了IPv6存儲棧，這兩項技術都是過了很長時間才成為標準。
三：十大熱門新技術產品
1．802.11b技術
2．藍牙技術
3．寬帶技術
4．目錄服務
5．IP語音通訊技術
6．IPv6技術
7．波分多路復用傳輸技術
8．存儲區網絡與纖維頻道
9．應用程序外包與出租
10．質量服務
四：十大被嚴重誤導的錯誤觀念
1． 消費者都愿意支付寬帶網的昂貴費用
2． 異步傳輸技術將被運用于每一部臺式電腦
3． 思科公司在技術標準獲得通過之后馬上就會推出千兆位以太網產品
4． NT5的發布時間是1998年
5． 大型計算機已經壽終正寢
6． Java永遠不會取得成功
7． 即插即用
8． ISDN是下一代最先進的技術
9． 3Com是企業界巨頭之一
10． 企業不需要互聯網
五：十年來的10項最重要產品
入選《網絡計算》雜志編輯部“過去十年10項最重要產品”評選的產品都是對網絡產業產生過深遠影響的產品，其中部分產品（如Mosaic）以創造了一種全新的觀念而在信息產業發展史上占有重要的一席之地，其它則是以大幅度降低生產成本而聞名于世。
1: NCSA公司的MOSAIC軟件
2: Novell公司的NetWare 3.x軟件
3: 思科系統公司的7500路由器
4: 微軟公司的Windows NT軟件
5: Kalpana公司的EtherSwitch產品
6: Apache的Web服務器
7: Network Associates的Sniffer產品
8: 思科系統公司的2500路由器
9: Check Point的FireWall-1產品
10: Lotus公司的Notes軟件
六：過去十年對電腦業最具影響力的10個人
十年來，計算機產業的飛速發展與本行業優秀人物所取得的巨大成功是緊密相連的。例如此次入選的10人中，前3人來自不同領域，動機不同，支持他們的力量也各不相同，然而雖然他們的背景、觀念差異很大，但是他們都對網絡建設產生了深遠的影響。隨著時代的發展，還會有更多有遠見的優秀人物影響和改變信息產業前進的步伐和方向。
1． 蒂姆·伯納斯－李
2． 比爾·蓋茨
3． 林納斯·托瓦爾茲
4． 吉姆·克拉克
5． 拉里·艾利遜
6． 勞·郭士納
7． 史蒂夫·喬布斯
8． 艾利亞斯·列維
9． 里克·布切爾議員
10． 文諾德·科斯拉
F E A T U R E
The 10 Most Important Products of the Decade
October 2, 2000
By Art Wittmann
Products
Look at that. The editors of Network Computing picked a product that’s no longer sold--one that was never sold--as their product of the decade. Ridiculous? Well, yes, if you measure the importance of a product by the number of shrink-wrapped boxes sold. We don’t.
Our 10 "Most Important Products of the Decade" are those we believe shaped the networking industry, period. Some, like Mosaic, earned their place in history by introducing entirely new concepts. Others, like Kalpana’s EtherSwitch, drastically reduced the price of technology, enabling mass deployment. And still others, like Novell’s NetWare, brought reliability and ease of management to a product category that previously had neither. The top products of the past 10 years clearly demonstrated how best to deliver on a widely needed technology. That’s impact.
Here is our list:
# 1: NCSA’s MOSAIC
# 2: Novell NetWare 3.x
# 3: Cisco Systems 7500 Router
# 4: Microsoft Windows NT
# 5: Kalpana EtherSwitch
# 6: Apache Web Server
# 7: Network Associates Sniffer
# 8: Cisco Systems 2500 Router
# 9: Check Point FireWall-1
# 10: Lotus Notes
Most Important Networking Products & Standards
Twenty years ago, networks were three-letter corporations that owned television. Today, they are the fabric of our information society. Following are the products that form the woof and warp of this new world.
SNA
IBM’s mainframe networking standard, SNA (Systems Network Architecture), is arguably the major milestone in networking technology in the last 20 years. Virtually every Fortune 500 company’s mainframe networks are based on it, as well as any other company that has an IBM mainframe. SNA, officially introduced in 1974 with products becoming available in subsequent years, gave users access to the enormous amounts of data stored on mainframes.
With SNA, IBM developed a layered approach to communications th at was to be the basis for all the company’s subsequent data communications work.
DECnet
Introduced in 1975, DECnet supported communication over a variety of networks, including Ethernet LANs and baseband and broadband networks. DEC adapted its architecture to interconnect workstations, terminals, PCs, Macs, PDPs, and VAXes.
Because of an architecture that put intelligence at each network node, and because of the connectivity to PDPs and VAXes, DECnet was widely embraced by research and academic communities.
TCP/IP
A funny thing happened while we were all waiting for OSI to take off. A stopgap networking solution developed years ago by the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, TCP/IP, blew OSI off the map.
Between 1978 and 1980, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed and deployed the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol on its Arpanet. Today, TCP/IP is used in most large corporate network s to give users access to a wide variety of platforms on different networks. It is also the protocol of the Internet. Enough said.
Oracle SQL
If any one standard is responsible for the current boom of client/server networking, it’s the database language SQL (Structured Query Language). Related to IBM’s massive mainframe database DB2, SQL was brought to minicomputers in the late 1970s by the prescient Oracle corporation, which eventually ported SQL down to microcomputer LANs and stand-alone PCs (and even the Sharp Wizard--but nobody’s perfect). Oracle’s SQL became one of the first truly scalable applications development platforms. You could write and test your application on a workstation and then upscale it to your big iron when it was ready. Or better yet, you could downsize your mainframe apps to less expensive and more efficient systems, like PC networks.
SQL is such a popular standard that today, every major client/server application supports it; no competing architect ure has come close.
Group 3 Fax standard
Remember being amazed when a fax machine could transmit a page in less than 30 seconds? That increase in speed was due to the CCITT’s Group 3 recommendation for fax tranmissions. Issued in 1980, the Group 3 fax standard specified transmission rates of up to 9600 bps and included built-in compression, which made it possible to transmit a typical page in less than 30 seconds.
Ethernet
Today, when most office workers hear the name Xerox, they think of the photocopier machine, or they erroneously use the corporate name as a verb. We could just as well be using Xerox as a term for sending a file down the network wire.
In 1981, Xerox made history by introducing the original Ethernet LAN in the form of its Star Ethernet Series. The LAN was an office system that linked devices, such as workstations, servers, and printers, so that users could share and print documents.
The Star Ethernet Series wa s the result of Ethernet research conducted by Xerox with DEC and Intel. It was the first introduction many corporate users got to LAN technology. Xerox was a name player in the office market, and thus its sales staff at least had a foot in the door of most corporations.
NetWare and Sharenet
In 1981, Novell introduced Sharenet, the first product in the line, which soon became NetWare . It took the simple idea of dedicating one node on a network as a central resource and developed it into the most highly used NOS today.
Novell was not the only company in that newly emerging NOS market. Other early players included IBM and 3Com. But NetWare, especially versions 2.x and 3.x, delivered the features that organizations needed most: solid file and print services.
Hayes Smartmodem
Before 1981, modems were just plain dumb. They had no memory, and they couldn’t recognize commands. The early modems simply did as their name implies: th ey modulated and demodulated signals.
With the advent of the Hayes Smartmodem in 1981, modems understood and could execute commands (the Hayes AT Commands) on their own.
The Smartmodem and the Hayes command set became the standard for modem communications and made Hayes the dominant player in the market for the next 10 years. Even today, most modem ads still state that the device is Hayes-compatible.
3Com Etherlink
In 1982, a small Silicon Valley company cofounded by Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, introduced the first Ethernet adapter card for a PC. The card, the Etherlink, became the best-selling networking product ever. 3Com, Metcalfe’s company, also developed its own NOS (network operating system) with which to use its new creation and drive the sale of its core hardware product.
The Irma board
The Irma board has to be the one product that symbolizes the acceptance of PCs by the corporate world. Befor e Irma’s introduction in 1982, corporate data, which resided on IBM mainframes, was accessed through 3270 terminals. From these 3270 terminals, users could view data and run applications that printed reports.
In the early 1980s, as PCs started to make their way into corporations, there was a cluttering on the desktop. A terminal and a PC took a lot of room-- especially those early IBM PCs with their large footprints.
Technical Analysis, soon to be acquired by Digital Communications Associates (DCA), developed a brilliant solution. Their Irma board, which plugged into a slot in an IBM PC, could give the PC user access to the mainframe data. The board included 3270 terminal emulation software and a coaxial-cable connection on the back to attach to the IBM network infrastructure.
Streettalk for Vines
Today, many corporations are looking for some way to easily keep track of resources and people on their networks. Ultimately, they’ll probably use some form of a standards -based directory service, perhaps the ISO’s powerful X.500.
In the meantime, they are stuck with stopgap solutions--unless, of course, they are Banyan Vines users. Since 1984, Banyan has offered its users Streettalk, its LAN-based directory services, which are needed in enterprise networks. Streettalk was the first of the enterprise directory services, and some say it is still the best.
Token Ring
IBM developed token-ring technology in the early 1980s, and the first commercial products hit the streets in 1985. Token Ring was based on the concept of using a token, which was passed around the network, to give a device access to the network. When a device needed to transmit data, it would seize the token. This technique made a token-ring network more deterministic compared with Ethernet’s contention-based method for accessing the network.
The deterministic nature of Token Ring quickly became a popular choice for IBM SNA shops and it was quickly adopted by virtually all of IBM’s large corporate customers as the way to link users throughout a corporation.
Cisco AGS multiprotocol router and Proteon Multiprotocol Gateway
These were the first routers to solve the problem of routing different protocols from and to a single network. Cisco’s AGS supported TCP/IP and PUP. Proteon’s Multiprotocol Gateway handled ARP, Chaosnet, TCP/IP, and PUP. We would like to award the laurel for first multiprotocol router to either Cisco or Proteon, but the companies are squabbling over who was first. Cisco, a source tells us, has produced the invoice for its first router sale and challenges Proteon to produce an earlier one.
ISDN
Still don’t know? ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is the phone system of the future. Fully digital and quite affordable, it offers enough bandwidth (64 Kbps) for acceptable Internet access and almost enough for videoconferencing. It’s also a flexible system, offering scalability up to 1.544 Mbps (not coincidentally the same speed of a T1 line) for corporate sites. The downside of this noble mid-1980s standard is that it’s really not standard at all--a lot of telephone markets implement the system differently, so bringing the next generation of communication into your home or business can be an exercise in frustration. Nonetheless, when analog modem technology runs out of steam (as it is beginning to do right now), ISDN will step in as the next great data communications standard.
Kerberos from MIT
In the mid-1980s, wizards at MIT developed Kerberos, a security system that controls access to network services. Their scheme requires that users be authenticated before they can get to any service on a network. Kerberos does this in an ingenious way. Users gain access to applications, data, printers, and so forth by using the equivalent of an electronic ticket, which is good for only one-time access and which, if the security administrator so desires, can expire within a fairly sho rt time.
The system encloses the access ticket in an encrypted message using the user’s own password. If the user is whom he or she claims to be, the user can decipher the message and the ticket will be available. The user’s password is never passed over the network. Security is maintained.
OpenView
Enterprise network management was easier in the days of homogeneous networks. Companies whose networks were exclusively IBM, for example, would turn to IBM’s NetView to manage all the devices on their SNA (Systems Network Architecture) networks.
That was fine until other vendors’ products were introduced into a company’s network--each with its own management system. Network managers had a deskful of monitors--one for every management system. They had to check the status of different devices on different monitors and assimilate all that information in their head. That was great for the aspirin companies, but for IS managers, it was impractical.
In 1988, Hewlett-Pac kard introduced OpenView to overcome such problems. OpenView was the first multivendor network management system. It also offered open APIs. Network equipment vendors could use these programming interfaces to make their products capable of being managed by the system.
Access/One
Today, virtually all corporate networks are built around intelligent wiring hubs that offer management capabilities and can isolate troublesome cabling flaws. The first commercial network to offer these features was Ungermann-Bass’s Access/One hub. Before this, most local networks were made up of daisy-chained components, and a single cable flaw would crash the whole system. Next time you find a flaw that affects only one user and not your entire network, give thanks to Ungermann-Bass.
The Sniffer
In 1989, Network General introduced the Sniffer, a single tool that helped network administrators develop and troubleshoot LANs. Today, the Sn iffer is synonymous with network analyzers.
The Sniffer offered detailed protocol decoding capability and let LAN managers set traps to watch for certain conditions. It could also capture a trace of all the traffic passing over a LAN segment. These features were (and still are) useful when trying to understand performance problems on a network or when troubleshooting a problem.
Xircom Pocket Ethernet Adapter
Similar to the way the Irma board symbolized the acceptance of the PC in the corporate world, the Xircom Pocket Ethernet Adapter symbolized the networked arrival of the laptop computer. Xircom had the brilliant idea of using a standard, universally available entry point into the laptop. The company’s slick little box plugged into the parallel port--probably the only truly standard PC part. That gave every laptop user a quick and easy way to connect to a LAN.
Mosaic
The most important reason for the explosive growt h of the Internet over the past year is the mass distribution of the Mosaic browser for the World Wide Web. Developed by the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Mosaic gives nontechnical people an easy tool with which to find their way around the Internet. Those who could care less about HTTP or HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) can use a Mosaic browser and weave their way through webs of information on their own.
Marc Andreesen and his lesser-known colleagues at NCSA deserve some sort of prize for their efforts. Not only did they invent a brilliant vehicle for navigating the Internet--but they gave it away.
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U.B.: Hubba, Hubba, eh?
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Long before PCMCIA, Xircom was plugging portables into ethernet
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You’ll Need a Princess to Find this Pea
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Books. Lots and lots of books. Somewhere in there is the actual Ne tware 3.11 software. But where? We’ll never tell.
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Irma Board: Made PCs Politically Correct
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We can think of exactly 3270 reasons that Attachmate’s Irma board, which connects PCS to mainframes, was an incredible success.
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Managing a Mess: HP’s Openview Console
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Mosaic, the Fairy Godmother of the Internet
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Mosaic is like the fairy godmother of the Internet, turning it from text rags to graphical riches.
The Best Things On-Line
In 1975, the number of people going on-line was smaller than the membership of the Young Republicans for Captain Beefheart Fan Club. Now, those massive networks of computers and databases known as the on-line world have become an electronic extension of the traditional, off-line world.
Text Search Tools
Information is buried on the Internet. Tunneling its way to fame is gopher. If your site is gopherless, you can Telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu and type gopher at the log-in prompt. Even better are WAISes (Wide Area Information Servers). If your system doesn’t have a WAIS client, Telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu and type bbs at the log-in prompt. Follow the directions.
Code Talk
Tools, languages, source code , tips and tricks, advice, and folks who’ve gone through hell. Sound good?
Here are some of the best sites. For programming languages, anonymous ftp to quartz.rutgers.edu and take the path /pub/computer/languages/* . For a discussion of the 32-bit Windows API, see the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 . For Unix, post your problem in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.questions .
Internet Directories
If Hercules were around today, one of his labors would be indexing the Internet. Luckily, someone has already done the work. Go to Yahoo at http://www.yahoo.com . Or, you can try the WWW (World Wide Web) Virtual Library. It’s at http://www.w3.org/hypertext/ DataSources/bySubject/overview.html.
Fun & Games
If you want to play in the MUD, see alt.mud , a good introduction to multiuser dimension games. Game Server at the University of Stuttgart provides a huge list. Telnet to castor.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de and type games at the log-in.
Technical Support
A Web page that you can visit to get technical assistance sure beats listening to cheesy music when you’re on hold. Novell’s home page is one of the best examples of how useful a Web site can be. Point your browser at http://www.novell.com .
Web Spelunkers
What if you need to find something on the Web fast? Lycos is from Carnegie Mellon University, and it’s hot. Start at http://lycos . cs.cmu.edu. WebCrawler is good, too, at http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/WebCrawler/WebQuery.html . For its part, InfoSeek can pull information from anywhere. But it costs $9.95 a month. Send E-mail to info@infoseek.com .
Finder of Missing E-Mail Addresses
What if you don’t have your recipient’s address? Four11 is like an ace detective. To step into its office, E-mail info@four11.com , or point your browser at http://www.Four11.com .
Home pages
We like Netscape Communications’ page: http://www.netscape.com . It’s diverse and fun. But for serious computer talk, try the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu /General/Internet/WWW/HTML Primer.html.
Mailing Lists
Mailing lists are the most efficient way to get targeted information. An electronic version of Prentice Hall’s Internet: Mailing Lists book is available via anonymous ftp to ftp.nisc.sri.com and follow the path /netinfo/interest-groups .
News
Online Today on CompuServe is the most timely source of daily computer news. But Clarinet distributes the Dilbert comic strip. Look for newsgroups that start with clari .
Travel Arrangements
With CompuServe, you can make air, hotel, and rental car reservations. Type GO TRAVEL and be on your way. On America Online, click on the Travel block.
Music
If you want to talk about music or keep up with what’s new, the Internet’s the place. For alternative bands, go to http://www.iuma.com . Or try out the Music Server: Anonymous ftp to ftp.uwp.edu ; path is /pub/music .
Financial Information
If you haven’t spent all your money on connect time, invest some of it. Clarinet provides the broadest range of financial and business information. clari.biz.market gives you the latest on the stock market and clari.biz.invest discusses IRAs, mutual funds, and other investment arcana.
Weather
If you want to know what’s going on outside without having to look up from your computer, try the National Climatic Data Center’s http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/interesting/us-se-wxmap.html .
Education Resources
AskERIC, run by the Educational Resource and Information Center, is like a giant help desk for K-12 teachers. The address is askeric@ericir.syr.edu , or point your browser at http://eryx.syr.edu/COWSHome.html .
Sounds
If it’s been recorded, it’s on-line somewhere. Try the Usenet group alt.binaries.sounds.misc . And DSP Group’s TsPlayer lets you play a WAV sound file before you download it. Anonymous ftp to ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/win3/sound/tsplay100.zip .
Free Software
All you have to provide is the shrink-wrap. For PC software, gopher to merlot.welch.jhu.edu . For Mac software, anonymous ftp to oak.oakland.edu ; the path is /pub2/macintosh . You Unix mavens will find a C archive if you anonymous ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu ; use the path /systems/unix/unix-c/* . Finally, you’ll get OS/2 software at anonymous ftp to ftp-os2.nmsu.edu ; the path is /os2/* .
Art
From Mona Lisa to Beavis and Butt-Head, you can get a look at the digitized works of some of the world’s greatest artists. Start with ArtMap at http://wimsey.com/anima/ARTWORLDonline.html . Then try ArtServe at http://rubens.anu.edu.au/ .
Shopping
There’s no re-creating the mall experience. Thank God. Start at the Branch Mall at http://branch.com . AutoPages is the place to shop for that new Lamborghini. Speed on over to http://www.clark.net/pub/ networx/autopage/autopage.html.
Talk to Computer Companies
CompuServe’s company forums are still the best places to tell vendors what you think, to talk with company officials. Join the Hardware and Software Forums for starters--most major companies have support forums on CIS.
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Lycos Makes Searching the Internet Virtually Painless
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Lost? Gone forever? Oh, my! Darling, don’t you worry-services like Lycos will index and find Clementine in a matter of seconds.
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Shop the Internet for the Rare and Unusual
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A burp gun? Excuse me? Only on the Internet will you find loving restorations of such oddities as the Burp Gun. Specifically, you’ll find it (and nearly everything else) at your local branch mall.
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You Don’t Have to Go Out for Great Art Anymore
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The Metropolitan Museum And The MOMA can e at their hearts out: The Internet is home to electronic versions of some of the greatest art ever created. You can check out Yoshiaki Araki’s Home Page at http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~t93827ya/ .
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Computerized Weather Forecasts
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No need for the weather channel. Just tune your browser to the National Climatic Data Center.
By Lynn Haber
Network World, 03/26/01Here’s a look at the 15 most important people, inventions and events that shaped our networked world.
The personal computer
The LAN/Ethernet
The breakup of AT&T
Telecommunications Act of 1996
The router
Packet technologies
IP
Birth of Cisco
Fiber-optic networks
The Internet
World Wide Web
Bernie Ebbers
Java
The availability of capital
Loss of privacy
The personal computer
Without the PC, networking as we know it would not exist. More specifically, the growth of the commercial PC market in the early 1980s made it affordable to put powerful computing devices on the desktop. This created user demand to distribute processing power to departments, buildings and far-flung geographic locations.
Hello PC. Goodbye dumb terminal. Goodbye minicomputer. "With the move away from the mainframe, the PC helped facilitate highly dispersed networking with PCs running mission-critical applications for the enterprise," says Jay Pultz, vice president and research director at Gartner Group.
The LAN/Ethernet
A multipoint data communications system with collision detection, Patent No. 4,063,220 with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, is more widely known as Ethernet. Reliable, and easy to install and set up, Ethernet enabled companies to rapidly interconnect computers. "From a price/performance view, this LAN technology single-handedly took networking to a new level," says Dave Neil, vice president and research director at Gartner Group.
What Robert M. Metcalfe and his associates at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center began more than 25 years ago continues to evolve today.
The first published standard for 10M bit/sec Ethernet came in 1985, followed by 100M bit/sec (Fast Ethernet), 1000M bit/sec (Gigabit Ethernet) and, a work still in progress, the proposed IEEE 802.3ae standard for 10G Ethernet - which is poised to propel Ethernet beyond the LAN, and into the metropolitan-area network and WAN.
The breakup of AT&T
In January 1984, Ma Bell, as she was known, was laid to rest. The New Year saw the formation of a new AT&T and seven regional telephone holding companies, known as the regional Bell operating companies. The breakup of AT&T, the national telephone monopoly, was the end of the road for a government antitrust suit against the company that began in 1974, in which AT&T agreed to divest itself of its 22 wholly owned Bell operating companies that provided local telephone service.
Whichever way you look at it - for better or for worse - the telecom industry has never been the same.
Telecommunications Act of 1996
What the breakup of AT&T never achieved, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to rectify by creating the concept of competition in the local loop. Liza Draper, principal at McQuillan Ventures, a network technology consulting company, says the telecom act was the single most important piece of legislation related to telecommunications.
"It changed the landscape for service providers and created the opportunity for venture-backed start-ups to sell equipment into the marketplace," she says.
Rosemary Cochran, an analyst at Vertical Systems Group, adds that the law was a bellwether spurring the competitive local exchange carriers, DSL services, and a slew of other cable and telecom companies in an environment reminiscent of the Wild West.
The router
The router let companies establish more complex data networks. "I can’t even imagine distributed networking without the router,’’ Gartner’s Neil says.
Before TCP/IP, the realm of networking existed in the world of multiprotocols - SNA, X.25, DECNet.
With the advent of TCP/IP, the network industry saw the demise of time division multiplexing (TDM), which firms used in their attempts to integrate voice and data. "But TDM didn’t lend itself to IP, and the circuit/packet issue became important," Cochran says. For new applications, desktop networking and LAN internetworking, the multiplexer didn’t cut it.
Cochran notes that in 1986, the router market was less than $100 million. Today, it’s a multibillion dollar market that continues to increase as networks run more data than voice over their networks.
Packet technologies
In packet technologies, IP or anything else, voice and data are treated as a stream of packets. With the introduction of packet technologies, the network industry saw a change in the types of customer premises equipment (CPE) and services that carriers could deliver. The lines between public and private networks also began to blur.
Sold as a service, frame relay provided a way for carriers to drum up new enterprise business. This packet technology was well-suited to LAN traffic, and the industry saw businesses route LAN traffic onto frame relay networks. Many organizations replaced leased lines with frame relay services. The carriers began to provide businesses with CPE that the carriers also offered to manage.
IP
Considered the great unifier that changed the way people thought about protocols, IP today is known as the protocol of the Internet. "IP has become the universal protocol, the interoperability protocol," says Frank Dzubeck, president of Communication Network Architects. As IP became increasingly popular, a dark shadow fell over Open Systems Interconnection and IBM’s SNA. "There was no longer any need for them," he says.
Going forward, industry watchers expect there to be one protocol - IP. Part of the beauty of IP is that it is associated with a different way of thinking. "IP isn’t associated with one company, nor does it come from the normal standards body," Neil says. Instead, IP developed on a distributed ad hoc basis to become what it is today.
Birth of Cisco
An $18.9 billion company, Cisco is a worldwide leader for networking. "Cisco is the company that brought marketing to the network space," says Kathryn Korostoff, an analyst at Sage Research.
Prior to the advent of Cisco, which incorporated in 1984 and shipped its first product in 1986, it was accepted practice for corporations to make buying decisions based on technology with no emotional bond to the purchased product. "Cisco has built a brand name as the safe choice with which you can’t go wrong," Korostoff says.
Fiber-optic networks
For starters, fiber-optic networks increased the capacity and reliability of networks, particularly long-distance networks. This technology also flattened out the cost of communications. "It used to be that long-distance calls were more expensive than local calls," Gartner’s Pultz says. "Today, in large part because of fiber-optic networks, it’s almost as cheap to go long-distance as it is to go local."
One of the key technologies in fiber-optic networking is the laser. With the advent of the reliable, low-cost laser, which is how signals are sent over optical fibers, you can have more of them. "The inexpensive laser created fiber-optic networking," Dzubeck says. There was a time when lasers used to be a big dish and cost $50,000 to $100,000. "Today, they cost $5,000 to $10,000," he says.
With the advent of faster lasers, better filters and amplifiers, the industry is moving toward an all-optical switching environment - the next step in carrier networking.
The Internet
The Internet has changed the world of networking more than anything else. "What it comes down to is that prior to the Internet, it was difficult to access resources over a network," Pultz says. In contrast, having a universal network, and network resources, that anyone can access via a common means, is revolutionary.
The Internet, and related technologies, created the next wave in business - the Information Age, changing forever the way business is conducted worldwide and opening new channels for interbusiness communications as well as business-to-consumer communications.
World Wide Web
In the high-tech industry, ease of use is everything. So when the first Web browser was written in 1990, the popularity of the Internet took off. The Web is a system that lets users interact with documents stored on computers across the Internet as if they were parts of a single hypertext.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1990 while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The WWW is an Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing.
Bernie Ebbers
Considered a model of people who have shaken up the industry, Bernard J. Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom, was an outsider, a nobody, in telecom. Today, he is considered one of the industry’s most powerful people. With revenue of more than $37 billion and approximately 77,000 employees based in more than 65 countries, WorldCom is an industry leader in global communications.
Known as the "Man from Mississippi," although a Canadian by birth, with a degree in physical education, not an M.B.A., Ebbers built WorldCom from the ground up through a strategy of acquisition and consolidation that began in the early 1980s. His ultimate coup was the acquisition of MCI (the No. 2 provider) by WorldCom (the No. 4 provider at the time).
"It was a stunning event. Over the years, Ebbers has demonstrated how an entrepreneur with an idea could change the structure of an industry," Neil says.
Java
Sun’s Java is a programming technology that revolutionized how applications are developed and processed. Known for its write once, run-anywhere capability, Java won favor in the marketplace by making it easy to build and deploy applications that can run on any network, on any operating system.
Java is significant because it allowed network developers to start moving pieces of code around the network, executing on different devices.
The beauty of Java is that it helps reduce the time and costs associated with application development given its platform and device independence.
The availability of capital
The unleashing of capital over the past decade has been significant for the networking industry, opening the floodgates for countless start-ups.
Remember the corporate funding of skunk works and spinoffs? "That’s back when it took a start-up two years to raise $20 million and another year to move ahead," Vertical’s Cochran says. Now by comparison, it’s pretty easy for start-ups to get cash. However, more recently with the sparkle on the high-tech industry growing dim in the world markets, networking companies, among others, are seeing a tightening of the purse strings.
"It will impact the markets, but I think it’s a good thing because we’ll see more quality," Cochran says. "Ultimately, the cream always rises to the top."
Loss of privacy
If the ultimate objective of networking is to achieve "anywhere, anytime" communications - perhaps the single greatest advance of networking - something has got to give. Is that something a loss of privacy?
In the corporation, the requirement to be reachable - by telephone, cell phone, pager, e-mail - has become accepted work practice. But what are the implications - health, turmoil, aggravation - when we come out of the other side of this great advance.
Clearly, there are advantages to always being in touch - the automobile industry can send information or help to drivers on the road, industry can speed the supply chain, business communications can occur without skipping a beat.
Less explicit, however, are the implications on individuals and cultures, as pervasive networking follows you - everywhere.
Most Important Products Of The ’90s
1990s was a decade of rapid technological advances. Client-server architecture evolved into a viable alternative to mainframe computing. Enterprise applications such as groupware, inventory control, supply chain, and systems management emerged as platforms for the evolution of business systems. The PC became a ubiquitous and increasingly powerful desktop tool. And the Internet was embraced as a communication medium, consumer platform, and business conduit. There were also some spectacular failures--remember object-relational technology? Ignoring such one-hit wonders, here are 10 of the most important and influential products introduced in this decade.
Sun Microsystems’ Java. The brave little embedded operating system started out as a platform for write-once-run-anywhere computing and ended up as the Web’s favorite tool.
Netscape Navigator. There’s probably no greater development in the history of IT than the emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web. By the time Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark launched their graphical Web browser, Navigator 1.0, in 1994, there were more than 1 million Internet hosts. While Mosaic was the first widely distributed browser, Navigator set the standard in terms of look and functionality. And in the process, it shook Microsoft to its core--no small feat.
Lotus Notes. Lotus Development Corp. licensed Notes, the product most commonly associated with the term groupware, from Iris Associates in 1989. By the time IBM bought Lotus in 1995 for $3.5 billion--primarily to acquire the groupware technology--Notes had an installed base of almost 2 million seats. Lotus made a successful effort to integrate Notes with the Internet when it introduced Domino in 1996.
Microsoft Office. Microsoft didn’t come up with the idea to bundle a spreadsheet, word processor, and graphics package into a productivity suite, but it made the most of the concept--and created a business computing standard. Microsoft has continued to enhance the bundle, including links to the Internet.
Oracle’s relational database. The original work on relational database technology was done by Edgar Codd when he was at IBM in the early 1970s. However, Oracle took the relational model and established it as a database standard, through both rapid technological advance and aggressive marketing. In the 1990s, Oracle continued to enhance the basic architecture to incorporate symmetric multiprocessing and object extensions.
Sun Microsystems’ Enterprise 10000 server. Sun made believers out of many of those who had been skeptical about the scalability of multiprocessing servers when it shipped the 64-node E-10000 in May 1997.
SAP R/3. The third version of SAP’s suite of enterprise applications, introduced in 1992, integrated and automated back-office systems and convinced many companies to reengineer their business processes to accommodate the software.
Computer Associates’ Unicenter. Introduced in 1993, CA’s systems-management software unified a disparate set of products and processes, and provided a comprehensive view of IT systems. CA continued to strengthen the product with the introduction of the graphical, object-oriented TNG version in 1997 and the three-dimensional TND version in 1998.
Intel’s x86 architecture. Intel led the PC industry on a price/performance curve that mirrored Moore’s Law--and then some. When Intel launched the 66-MHz Pentium processor in 1993, it set the stage for a quantum leap in desktop processing, making possible powerful personal productivity applications--and eventually online commerce.
Microsoft Windows. In the spring of 1990, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates introduced the latest iteration of the company’s graphical front end, Windows 3.1--and it was an instant hit with the public. Since then, billions of copies of the operating system have been sold, and, along with its siblings, Windows NT and Windows CE, Windows has proved to be one of the highest-impact products in IT.
