Dear NANOG, You've perhaps already heard that I made good on a promise to eat the 12/4/95 InfoWorld column in which I predicted Internet collapses during 1996. If not yet, then please. Yes, eating the column was a publicity thing, of course, and look at all the publicity it got. As widely reported, I ate the entire column out of a bowl with a spoon before an appreciative live audience of about 1,000 people attending my terminal keynote at the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference in Santa Clara, California. Some reports skipped that I ate (and am still digesting) the entire column. I did. Rest assured. So, sorry to those of you who could not be there to witness my comeuppance. And sorry to those of you whom I over excited during 1996 by warning of Internet outages and arguing for more organized cooperation (than NANOG) among ISPs in managing Internet operations. Of course you should understand that I ate the column only because the Internet, as far as I can tell, did not suffer a gigalapse during 1996 -- a billion lost user*hours in a single outage. The Internet has indeed bogged down (hit STOP much?) and has indeed suffered large outages (the biggest being a 118 megalapse at AOL in August). The Internet still needs much more cooperation among ISPs on managing its operations, and perhaps we'll see some soon. Which is to say that, despite eating my column, I stand by my story. But, again, I was wrong -- we were lucky -- about the 1996 gigalapse. Again, I was wrong. I ate the column. I am sorry. I am not worthy. Now, be thinking about what you're going to eat (;->) if we don't get our Internet operations acts together in time to avert gigalapses. Lovingly on your case, /Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld columnist
Bob, I'm probably stating the obvious. The reason that I objected to your comment and object to your analysis is that we are dealing with an Internet. If the failure in one network rippled through the network and caused ever larger outages, then it would meet my criteria for an internet collapse. See the effects on loaded power grids for the analogy I'm after. You are certainly right that the dollars lost by outages are large. I will promise you they will get larger because the dollar flow is getting larger quickly. Your metric will well come true without your logic being validated. Using AOL's outage and others to identify local and global systemic management problems is fair and valid. Predicting collapse based on it is not. I stand by my opinion that the article was inflammatory. Jerry
But, again, I was wrong -- we were lucky -- about the 1996 gigalapse.
I don't think we were lucky, Bob. I think you were just wrong. You seem still not to have any clue about how much cooperation DOES exist among providers or how good IP service engineers are at predicting and managing growth, or at how the feedback loop between capacity and demand works in large scale networks. Service engineering is very different from product engineering. Most folks, including you, who are excellent at one are not excellent at the other.
Again, I was wrong. I ate the column. I am sorry. I am not worthy.
I don't know if I'd go that far. I wish I was sure that you'd meant well but I think you're poised to do better next time.
At 12:47 PM 4/14/97 -0700, Paul A Vixie wrote:
Service engineering is very different from product engineering. Most folks,
including you, who are excellent at one are not excellent at the other.
This is so true. As an experienced product designer (car seats, Saturn, Neon, etc.) I was totally amazed the first time I attended an interoperability bake off between 10 vendors in the network arena. There was very little planning before hand. No Taguchi matrix. No Design Failure Mode Effect Analysis. Everybody just got together in a big room and started hurling packets at each other. After five days everything started to work! Networking is *not* rocket science. It is a completely different animal and I am enjoying the transition to it. What other infrastucture can double in size every 6 months and just get better and better? <center>Richard Stiennon See The ISP B-Plan at http://www.knowledgetech.com/~richard/ISP Or, the Java Developer plan at http://www.knowledgetech.com/~richard/javaplan richard@stiennon.com </center>
On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Paul A Vixie wrote:
growth, or at how the feedback loop between capacity and demand works in large scale networks.
Not to mention the fairly tight feedback loop between engineers, researchers and vendors that takes place at the NANOG meetings and on various lists. Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
At 02:35 PM 14-04-97 +0000, Bob Metcalfe wrote:
Dear NANOG,
... despite eating my column, I stand by my story.
But, again, I was wrong -- we were lucky -- about the 1996 gigalapse. Again, I was wrong. I ate the column. I am sorry. I am not worthy.
Now, be thinking about what you're going to eat (;->) if we don't get our Internet operations acts together in time to avert gigalapses.
Lovingly on your case,
/Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld columnist
[If you hate long asides on NANOG then please delete now with my apologies.] Bob; You're a class act, if a bit on the PT Barnum side. You didn't have to post this note to NANOG. But I understand you have a publication that needs to get noticed. I appreciate your acceptance of our position that your prediction did not come true within the time frame you specified. I thought it might be fun to look back at your column of 4 Dec 95 and see how the whole thing stacks up today. You made ten predictions in that column, but we seem to remember only the gigalapse piece and, ironically, in looking back I find no reference in the original column to a precise definition of the disaster, only that the Internet will "catastrophically collapse". But let's look at the other predictions: 1) Money. You said that investors would be disappointed and that has turned out to be true, not only of the Internet but of all computer networking. But is that really anything more than the usual ups and downs of the stock market? I think not, since most Internet stocks slid down to something more reasonable in terms of P/E or at least no greater than cisco/Ascend/Cascade. I give you credit for this one. 2) Digital money. You said that digital money would remain too complicated and that Internet ecommerce wouldn't take off. That seems to be largely true, but do you think that will continue? Does Amazon.com prove anything? I give you credit for this one too. 3) Measurement. Advertisers will be disappointed and Internet users will drift back toward television. That doesn't seem to be true. More like TV is drifting as fast as it can toward the Internet. Does WebTV prove anything? I give you credit for this one. 4) Monopolies. You said that the phone companies would focus on long distance and not invest in the Internet. Do xDSL trials and Internet subsidiaries prove anything about the RBOCs interest in Internet? I give you credit for this one, since neither the phone companies nor the cable companies have demonstrated yet that they are up to the Internet growth challenge, although I think that they will rise to the opportunity as quickly as they are able. 5) Security. You predicted some major security breaches that would drive the rest of the productive Internet to safety. Didn't happen. I don't think it will happen, so you lose on this one. 6) Compatibility. You predicted IPv6 would tear the Web. Didn't happen. Won't happen. No credit. 7) Capacity. Collapse. Didn't happen. You did say the naive flat-rate business model is slowly changing. Give you partial credit for that. 8) Privacy. You said there would be some well-publicized privacy violations, but that didn't happen. I don't think it will happen. No credit. 9) Video. If the Internet succeeds in carrying video, then it will collapse. It didn't happen and I don't think it will. The ISPs that I know that are doing video are doing it conservatively and the hobbyist video conferencing suffers from incompatible standards and poor directories, stunting its growth and resultant traffic loads. I don't think you got this one. 10) Pornography. This prediction wasn't exactly clear to me, but neither the availability of pornography on the Net nor troubles downloading it caused the Internet to collapse and it never will. You missed this one. Four out of ten, the scorecard looks pretty good, because pundits, like baseball hitters, never get many home runs. Even when you are on the mark, it's hard to get the timing right. I think on the whole, you were and are correct about the money, the business models, and the difficulty of advertising revenue. While those issues haven't caused collapse, they are certainly still threats. You are essentially correct on these issues, in my view. With respect to the catastrophies, you outlined some plausible ones, but you were and are fundamentally wrong on this. Security, privacy and pornography catastrophies haven't killed the Net. Capacity issues haven't killed the Net. While I can't say that nothing will ever kill the Net, I believe that to be true. I think where your column falls short is that back then and more so today, the Internet is an unstoppable phenomenon and nothing will ever kill it dead. We are too far past Ethernet, DECNET, XNS, and all the rest to ever turn back. So I think you were and are fundamentally wrong on this point. There may well be a gigalapse in future, but by that time we will have tera- numbers of users. So when the time comes and a gigalapse happens this year or next, don't pretend you were right after all, because it is only the unending scaling of the Net that will ever make a gigalapse prediction come true. You've learned a lot in the last year. I'm sure you're not ready to hide in a cave and leave us alone. I suppose on the whole that is to the good, because while you may not be right about the collapse or understand why it won't happen as you think, you certainly know a thing or two about technology, you are a good writer, and I think you know 300% more about the Internet than you did when you wrote that column. Just stop calling us the Internetgensia. It's too hard to say. :-) In future, I'd advise that your Chicken Little columns be printed in InfoWorld in special inserts on rice paper. It would seem that your blender pulp was quite a stomachful and I wouldn't feel right if you collapsed with an intestinal blockage at some future NANOG, should you have to eat another column. On the other hand, keep hitting on the economic models and keep publishing your previews of new and interesting technologies and startups that might just show us new models that might work. Luck to us all. --Kent ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ Note new area code ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ Kent W. England Six Sigma Networks 1655 Landquist Drive, Suite 100 Voice/Fax: 760.632.8400 Encinitas, CA 92024 kwe@6SigmaNets.com Experienced Internet Consulting ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ (If you can't reach me using 760 area code, use the old 619 instead.)
On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Bob Metcalfe wrote:
Dear NANOG,
You've perhaps already heard that I made good on a promise to eat the 12/4/95 InfoWorld column in which I predicted Internet collapses during 1996. If not yet, then please. Yes, eating the column was a publicity thing, of course, and look at all the publicity it got.
<sigh> Great, now we can all stop working the 20 hour days using spit and duct tape to keep the net running. Hard bet to loose, hat's off to the guys at the core for keeping it up and together. Tim Gibson NOC Manager Skyscape Communciations
participants (9)
-
Alex.Bligh -
Bob Metcalfe -
Jerry Scharf -
Kent W. England -
Michael Dillon -
Paul A Vixie -
Peter -
Richard Stiennon -
Tim Gibson