Beware of the End of the World Wide Web, Says Intel
Sep 10, 2004 ( Remember those End of the World signs? Well, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) says it may be nearer than we think. Except the sign says End of the World Wide Web.
It's a vision apparently shared by Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T), all of whom are working feverishly, either together or apart to save the World Wide Web, which Intel and others see as becoming so overloaded it will eventually break.
At Intel's technical conference, CTO Patrick Gelsinger said the Internet will begin to collapse as millions of new computer users from developing nations begin to sign on.
"We're running up on some architectural limitations," Gelsinger was quoted as saying.
Gelsinger's solution is to build a new network over the current Internet, that would monitor and direct traffic and better fight security threats or traffic surges.
It's PlanetLab, some 429 computer nodes in 181 sites around the world, is supported by 150 universities and corporate research labs, including Princeton, Cambridge, Hewlett-Packard and AT&T.
However, Cisco controls most of the routers and switchers comprising the current web, and it may have other ideas.
Posted by at September 12, 2004 11:34 PM