TCP/IP Goes Mainstream

But What's Next?

TCP/IP has gone mainstream. At least that's what the folks who gathered in San Jose in early August to put on the TCP/IP 1995 Expo would have you believe. Not that it's all that tough to be convinced. TCP/IP, after all, has increasingly been the network transport mechanism of choice since its evolution began with the Internet revolution in the early 1980's. It's the glue that holds innumerable networks together, whether corporate, enterprise, or the mother of all networks--the Internet.

Just as one wouldn't expect a network protocol conference to draw teeming masses, this one didn't. But judging from the quality and intensity of audience participation in the sessions, the audience distinguished itself as a thoroughly involved group. If the conference's purpose really was, as its literature states, "to give network managers, integrators, vendors, OEMs, and resellers a focused venue to talk about TCP/IP internetworking issues," it easily made its mark.

Debates on managing Internet firewalls, data encryption, integrating the remote office, and understanding SNMP MIBs raged on for three days, while a highly focused, if small, show floor kept up a steady flow of traffic. Clearly, making TCP/IP protocol transparent to a person who uses it to conduct most of his or her business is no small task.

In his keynote speech, Jon Kannegaard, president of SunSoft, Inc. hammered home the point that everyone in the information age relies on their network. Using the analogy of a trusted dog, he said "The network is your best friend. It's the basis for all communications." Sun has just kicked off a marketing campaign in which a dog named Network goes out and fetches what you need over the Internet. Prosaic as the comparison may seem, it makes sense.

After all, where would any of us be without a reliable network protocol to go out and fetch at our request?

Kannegaard said that early on TCP/IP was not expected to become the mainstream networking protocol it is today. It was seen as a wide-area protocol, and later became a workgroup protocol of choice for campus networks. Kannegaard says the reason TCP/IP ultimately won out over OSI, the standard from which it evolved, is due to the pragmatic attitude of its designers and the unfettered way it was tested over a large scale.

He also chalks up TCP/IP's success to a handful of basic principles:

The ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990's is only surging TCP/IP forward in terms of new growth. "In the 90's, every vendor of computer networking products has said TCP/IP was the standard," said Kannegaard. Over the last decade even mainframe connectivity has become fair game for TCP/IP. Kannegaard claimed the overwhelming use of the protocol in the industry has even helped TCP/IP to shed some of its "nerd" image, although a rough sampling of show attendance might make one wonder.

What is ahead for TCP/IP? The greatest problem facing TCP/IP in the future may be its success. Kannegaard cites expanding addressing as a crucial issue, and marks the mobile market as the next primary hurdle. Powerful firewalls are now hitting the market, but the challenge will be to apply those to the home or mobile market. "The demise of some of the competing protocols means that some of the best minds in the industry can focus on TCP/IP now," Kannegaard says.

Some of those minds were in San Jose in August making a sizzling debate of a subject others would consider dry as dirt. And speaking for those of us who like to consider our networks as reliable as a trusted dog, but spare us the details please, it's good to know that they were.

--Mary Margaret Peterson