Written Presentation of
John Curran, BBN Planet, FCC Bandwidth Forum
January 23rd, 1997
Washington, DC
Good morning. I'd like to thank the FCC for inviting me to this forum, and I will try to
keep my comments brief. My name is John Curran, and I am the Chief Technical Officer
for BBN Planet. BBN Planet is the Internet services division of BBN Corporation, the
company that folks traditionally think of when discussing the origin of the Internet. My
role at BBN Planet is to think 12 to 24 months ahead of the Internet and to try to
understand the challenges we will face growing the Internet.
When I started with BBN in 1990, the Internet was a remarkably successful activity
which connected several hundred organizations and several thousand researchers across
the country. Over the years, we've expanded on this success to now reach hundreds of
thousands of organizations and what is estimated to be in excess of fifty million people
worldwide.
This growth has not been without its difficulties but due to the decentralized nature of the
network, it has been possible to rapidly expand the Internet infrastructure in a very short
time through independent efforts of hundreds of companies. The fact that we have been
able to grow the Internet several orders of magnitude in recent years is a testament to the
success of the decentralized management structure of the Internet.
By highlighting the decentralized nature of the Internet management, I do not mean to
imply that the community does not work together on important issues. Nothing could be
further from the truth. In important matters ranging from the scaling of Internet routing to
the need for more Internet addresses, the Internet community has come together to make
the changes necessary for the continued success of the Internet. The process is facilitated
by a variety of forums hosted by the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), the Internet
Society (ISOC), and other Internet associations.
Despite these successes in scaling and evolving the Internet, all is not perfect in the
infrastructure. In recent months, there have been a number of reports of "network
congestion" both from the user community and in the mainstream press. These reports
have some basis in fact, and I'd like to outline what is being done today to address the
situation. First, I'd like to spend a moment briefly reviewing the architecture of the
Internet so that we have some common terminology on which to continue the discussion.
The Internet infrastructure in the U.S. is composed of nearly a dozen major backbones,
each operated by an interexchange carrier (such as MCI and Sprint) or operated by an
independent Internet Service Provider (such as BBN). These network backbones are
composed of high-performance Internet routers and digital circuits operating at DS3 (45
Mbs) or OC3 (144 Mbs) speeds. (Note that several Internet providers have deployed
digital packet or cell "switching" technologies into their infrastructure, but that is quite
distinct from the voice-switching infrastructure used for standard toll calls.) The
principal task handled by the Internet backbones is to take Internet Protocol (IP) data to
its appropriate destination with a minimum of loss and delay. Since the Internet is
composed of many different providers, it is quite likely that a given "packet" of Internet
data will have to flow over multiple providers' backbones before reaching its final
destination.
Connected to the backbones are customers with very high speed Internet requirements,
and in addition, the networks of smaller Internet providers who often serve only a limited
geography or market segment. These smaller providers may in turn service still more
service providers, until the entire network looks like an inverted tree, with the available
Internet bandwidth getting smaller and smaller with distance from one of the major
backbones.
All of this infrastructure exists to provide service to businesses principally via dedicated leased-line circuits (e.g. 56 Kbs DDS or 1.5 Mbs T1 digital service) between the customer's local area network (LAN) and the Internet. This is the "business" Internet marketplace, not to be mistaken for the "consumer" Internet market in which customers access the Internet principally via dialup modem pools and traditional analog phone lines.
To return to the matter of Internet congestion, there are two main areas where congestion
can occur in the infrastructure: in the backbones and their interconnections, and in the
access network of local dialup modem pools and the associating call switching
infrastructure. Congestion in the former case results in traffic loss and delay, and
congestion in the latter prevents users from being able to connect due to call blockage. I'd
like to focus on the backbone congestion issue for the moment before moving on to the
more complex question of how to resolve congestion in the access networks.
We have evolved the Internet backbone architecture over the last five years from a model of single national backbone service, to an intermediate position of having several commercial Internet backbone providers which interconnect at key exchange points (known as network access points, or NAP's), to today's network configuration where the major backbone providers have direct interconnections between their Internet networks to ensure the fastest possible exchange of traffic. While there have certainly been problem spots in the infrastructure during these changes, I believe that we now have the necessary interprovider dialogues in place to manage interconnect capacity and am confident that the overall performance of the Internet can be scaled as needed to meet increasing traffic demands.
As we all know, a network (just as a chain) is only as strong as its weakest link. In this
manner, having a robust Internet backbone infrastructure doesn't satisfy the user who can't
reach the Internet due to congestion in the access network. Also, due to the inherently
shared nature of the public switched infrastructure, there are other consequences of access
network congestion, including blocked calls for non-Internet users.
While recent growth in the Internet has brought the issue of access network congestion
into the public spotlight, the actual application of switched phone service as an access
method for the Internet is no different than is done in numerous other applications, such
as dialup access to corporate networks or bulletin board systems. In these applications,
dialup networks are built over switched phone service, which are in turn often accessed
by users at home over flat-rate residential phone service. This does bring into question
some of the basic economics that apply to cost-recovery in the switching infrastructure,
and the issue needs to be considered in the context of the full range of applications that
can result in significant switch loading.
By its very nature, the Internet is a global construct. However, many of the most exciting
activities taking place on the Internet are actually quite local in scope, whether you
measure this by the user community or network traffic involved. Nowhere is this more
clearly evidenced than by the abundance of city and community-based online directories
which are growing rapidly in popularity. For many communities, it is now possible for
one to go online and find almost everything that you'd expect in your local newspaper
(e.g. local sports coverage, community events, regional calenders, and more). It is
noteworthy that some of these projects are even affiliated with local newspapers (Chicago
Tribune, Boston Globe, and LA Times) serving the region.
It is not just publishers that are making use of the Internet for their local distribution; we
now have an increasing number of state and local governments which are "going online"
to reduce costs and improve service in every area from consumer advocacy to online
motor vehicle registration.
Both the community publishing and local government initiatives are good examples of
the type of information services that the enhanced services exception was designed to
support. While Internet service is often used for interexchange communications, it is
important to recognize the rich tapestry of local information services which are being
formed using the Internet as their medium. As such, elimination (for Internet service
providers) of the enhanced service providers exception from access charges will have a
dramatic impact on the deployment of useful information services which only now have
become practical with the widespread availability of the Internet. It is hard to imagine a
more effective strategy for decimating the online information industry than removal of the
access charge exception for ISP's and resulting cost propagation to the end-user which
will occur. If there is indeed difficulty recovering the appropriate costs for use of local
switching infrastructure, then this is an issue which applies to all users of local phone
service, not simply to the Internet service provider industry. Corporate dialup modem
pools and bulletin board systems are but two examples of heavy usage applications
outside of the Internet industry, and which suggest that local and alternative exchange
carriers should have sufficient freedom in pricing of business switched lines to recover
the necessary costs even in the absence of interexchange traffic calls and associated
access charges. Done in this manner, any correction to the cost recovery model could
distribute the costs in a more equitable manner across the entire local switched-line
customer base, as opposed to singling out just the ISP industry when using such lines.
Another reason to consider directly addressing the switched line cost problem by pricing flexibility (as opposed to the indirect method of LEC's assessment of access charges) is compatibility with the open market conditions for local phone lines which will exist in many areas with the increasing implementation of the Telecomm Reform Act. A healthy market absent artificially established access charges will also bolster the development of alternative interconnect strategies such as bypassing the local switch altogether via open interconnect and adoption of new local loop technology such as satellite and cable.
In closing, it should be recognized that, while highly decentralized in its decision making
process, the Internet is a very dynamic industry which will adopt new technology at a
rapid pace if provided with equitable market forces. The Internet has demonstrated in the
past its ability to evolve quickly to meet changing circumstances, and the current
challenge to move to more efficient end-user interconnection will be resolved in a similar
manner if we can avoid introducing artificial cost factors in this situation. There are very
real challenges associated with appropriate cost-recovery for heavy-usage business lines,
but if these concerns can be addressed through the ongoing open interconnection
initiative, we have the ability to turn a problem into an opportunity which will promote
the adoption of new technology and new service models.
Thank you for your consideration.
John Curran
Chief Technical Officer
BBN Planet