42 MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2005
IPv6 is now being tested
on servers like this one
at the National University
of Singapore.THE CONCEPTION
It’s easy to fixate on the wires and switch-
es that make up the physical network, and
lose sight of the fact that all computer
networks actually consist of seven concep-
tual layers piled on top of each other. Only
the bottom layer is physical, the other six
are implemented in software as a series
of protocols. In fact, LambdaRail today
resembles the ARPANET of the 1960s. As
that research network evolved into the
early Internet, it was the software that
made it something the rest of the world
needed. E-mail, the web, instant messag-
ing, FTP, RealAudio, and Valve’s Steam
distribution system are all built from pro-
tocols running on protocols running on
protocols running on the actual wires.SPAN AND SEED
The physical scale and capacity of
LambdaRail is undoubtedly an impres-
sive bit of engineering, but by itself,
all that fiber-optic cable won’t solve
the current problems of the Internet. If
every copper telephone wire and CAT5
Ethernet cable were replaced with 40-
wavelength fiber, we still wouldn’t have
the “Internet Mark II.” The move to a fully
fiber-based Internet backbone is just the
next step on that long road called prog-
ress. After all, there are really only two
performance metrics for communica-
tions hardware: span and speed. Once
your network covers the globe, all that’s
left is to make it faster.
The real potential for innovation lies
not with the network, but with what you
use it for. In 1989, the Internet was just
e-mail plus a dorky collection of text-
based cataloging systems. Once Tim
Berners-Lee invented the World Wide
Web, even those without goatees could
see the point of the Internet. The web
came to dominate the net because it cre-
ated a democratic, flexible, and scalable
way of sharing information. Before the
web, it was relatively easy for individuals
to access information held in large, cen-tralized repositories such as university
libraries, but very difficult for each user
to make information of his own available
to the rest of the world.
So if LambdaRail is just the replace-
ment wiring, what is the next concept as
revolutionary as the web? We’ll tell you: It’scalled the Grid. This is a conceptual shift as
radical and as subtle as the web was in its
day. Just as the web is the Internet to most
people, so the Grid will be.
The Grid is a way of connecting com-
puters so they don’t just share data,
but also processing power. It’s a bit likeWe’re accustomed to the convenience
of reaching web sites by typing in
descriptive addresses such as http://www.
maximumpc.com. But all devices on the
Internet, be they web sites, individual
PCs, game servers, or whatever, are
actually identified by their IP address,
which is a 32-bit number in the form
of “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.” This convention
was defined by version 4 of the Internet
protocol more than 20 years ago, and it
can theoretically address 4 billion dif-
ferent nodes. This probably seemed like
plenty at the time, but that IP address
space is nearly all used up today,
and the network address translation(NAT) used by routers to get around the
problem makes network routing much
harder than it needs to be.
The answer is IPv6 (IPv5 was an
attempt to enable real-time stream-
ing and never caught on). Version 6
addresses use 128-bit numbers, enough
for a billion separate addresses for every
bacterium on Earth. Even if everyone on
Earth was allocated a new, disposable IP
address for every second of their life, you
wouldn’t run out in the lifetime of the uni-
verse. IPv6 also enables easier routing,
better security, and seamless transition
from IPv4. The first IPv6 networks are just
starting to appear now.WHAT IS IPV6?
What happens when we run out of Internet addresses?
SON OF INTERNET