Faster, Faster!
A new set of rules (or protocols) that drive the underlying mechanism for the Internet are being tested by researchers. One version, called BIC-TCP, dramatically increases the data speed of the network in the lab. If translated into use, a current high-speed home connection could run up to 6,000 times faster.
The original protocol (TCP/IP) was developed in the 1980s, and the size of networks and the volume of data has grown tremendously. The new protocol is designed to handle that data more quickly and effectively, particularly in areas of data congestion.
So at the rate things are going, pretty soon we’ll have high-capacity wireless Internet connectivity anywhere, anytime, almost free, and we’ll use cheap cardboard computers to access it (see previous article). Just what will that mean? Will ebooks finally take off? If you have virtually infinite storage capacity on a network, virtually limitless wireless capacity to send data, and inexpensive high-resolution devices for receiving and displaying that data, will we actually see the shift away from the printed book that has been predicted for so long? (It will certainly be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than huge printed books.) It will be very interesting to see where we are in five years.
Of course, we will still have millions of books under copyright (now extended to 75 years past the death of the author) that will be left outside this technology, often for lack of anyone to contact to obtain the permission to re-publish in digital form. Nobody ever said the issues created by technology would be easy to resolve!
You can read more about the new protocol (warning: somewhat geeky) at story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20040415/tc_nf/23720&e=4.