Today's Internet vs. Tomorrow's

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What do you think will be the differences between today's and tomorrow's
Internet?

-- Claudio Gatti, December 22, 1996

Answers

A huge number of people will be wired up with 10 Mbit/second connections by their cable TV companies. The cable companies have exactly the right sort of system architecture to support this, as I note in my chronicle of 7 months of struggle against the demons of ISDN.

Tomorrow's Internet might change the nature of computer ownership. Maybe we'll stop spending our lives doing system administration. Maybe we'll stop buying software like tables and chairs. Our computers will download programs automatically as needed

Maybe we'll get semantic tagging of Web content so that computers don't have to understand natural language to find us the cheapest pair of blue jeans for sale.

-- Philip Greenspun, December 22, 1996


Today's internet predominantly uses HTML and only a limited range of IP addresses are possible. The protocols used are TCP/IP and only a predefined range of web solutions are feasible.

Tomorrow's internet could use anything like XHTML, XML, RDF and OWL. Every living human being in this planet could own a web page. The IP addresses are multiplied by billions. A large internet backbone using VRRP would enable a highly scaled up version of the present internet and offer a wider range of web solutions.

-- KS Madhavan, June 18, 2005