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Fourty years after fleeing to the United States from Nazi Germany, Arno Allan Penzias was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting the faint afterglow of the universe's fiery origin, thus grounding the Big Bang theory on the bedrock of scientific observation. His discovery set the stage for radically new developments in astrophysics and cosmology. During his career at Bell Laboratories, Penzias transformed himself from pure researcher into manager and prophet of innovation in the field of information and communications technology. But he has gone even further, tracing the outline of a society in which our way of living and working will undergo a radical change, so much so that “what looms likely just one human generation from today amounts to little less than a fantasy world”. |
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Looking beyond the Internet Innovation opportunities in a world of multiple networks In the past, vertical integration confined voice and data services to separate networks. More recently, we find voice networks shipping data and vice versa. While some expect a single one-size-fits-all network to emerge, recent developments suggest a networking environment that allows users to employ multiple network types from whatever appliance they happen to choose for the task at hand. Easier said than done? Early hints of new networking approaches suggest an architecture that might best be depicted in terms of three inter-operating fabrics, layered on top of one another. At the lowest (or closest to the user) level, we have the Group Fabric — exemplified by LAN’s, PBX’s and, more recently, home networks. It connects computers, telephones and other appliances, combines their outputs into traffic bundles, and links their users to one another, as well as to other networks. Next, we have the Grooming Fabric — as exemplified by edge switches, DLC’s, and DSLAM’s. It concentrates a wide variety of traffic and protocol types, converts their formats as required, and distributes the results to multiple network fabrics. Finally, we have the Global Fabrics — examples include public telephone networks, wide-area data networks, inter-exchange carriers, and the Internet. Each fabric specializes in order to optimize its performance, carries traffic between dispersed users, and exercises service policies via billing and authorization mechanisms. A host of novel networked appliances should spur network demand to unprecedented levels. Un-tethered, compact and hyper-capable, they will support applications ranging from jewelry-sized cell phones, to supercomputer-driven transportation systems. While steady improvements in existing technologies may satisfy some of these emerging needs, disruptive changes lie ahead. And with them, fundamental changes in the innovation process. The conference Milan, 22 October 1998 |
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