Business Trends:Internet
Online products, services, resources and tips
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Peer Pressure
When Internet traffic recently stopped flowing at one of the "peering points" between BBN Planet and ANS Communications' networks, Steve Blumenthal, BBN's director of network engineering, did what any diligent Internet service provider (ISP) would do: He picked up the phone and called one of his engineer buddies at ANS to check on the problem. This personal
"networking" among ISPs is fairly common, since there's no official way for ISPs to interact when th
ey have troubles with their interconnection points or security. Blumenthal and other ISP execs are pinning their hopes on the newly formed IOPS.ORG alliance to make things more official and structured, and ultimately improve the overall reliability and performance of the Internet.
IOPS.ORG is considering a
little-known IETF spec for exchanging trouble tickets among ISPs. So, next time BBN and ANS have trouble getting traffic between their networks, they can set up a trouble ticket to tackle and document the problem together. The group also plans to create a global routing repository for ISPs to track router performance and problems and keep on top of security threats and breaches, possibly through an alliance with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). The ISPs won't be exchanging sensitive or proprietary information, however. And they aren't likely to completely conform; they still plan to customize some aspects of their services, says Jordan Becker, ANS' vice president of network services. ANS,
for instance, will keep its policy routing in place, which filters out unregistered routes. ISPs need all the value-added they can get these days.
For Sale: IPv6 (Any Takers?)
The first IPv6 products due to hit the street later this year mostly will be shells of the next-generation IP. They won't come with IPsec security, one of the key elements of the new IP. Big-name vendors Cisco Systems, IBM Corp., Sun and 3Com Corp. plan to roll out IPv6-based products this year that are mostly intended for testing, not production. FTP Software's Secure Client, shipping since last year, and IBM's new eNetwork Communications Suite are the only IPsec-based IPv6 packages so far. And don't count on the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) being in these new products, either, except for FTP, which will add RSVP to Secure Client this summer. Without two of the sexier features of IPv6 in these upcoming products, it will be tough to tell them apart from IPv4 products. (Remember: This is only a tes
t.)
IP Wherever You Go
 It's your worst IP nightmare come true. As you download reports off the corporate intranet, your boss calls and orders you into her office ASAP--with the reports. Trouble is, the boss' office is on another IP subnetw
ork across campus, which means you either restart the entire download--including setting up a new IP session--from the boss' office, or sit tight, finish the download and risk being late.
If the Mobile IP Protocol from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) takes off, you could just plug your laptop into your boss' subnet and continue downloading the reports uninterrupted. Mobile IP, a proposed standard, notifies a "home agent" that you have physically moved, but it maintains your IP session, says Steven Glass, a staff engineer with FTP Software. The company sells the only commercial Mobile IP implementation to date with its Secure Client software. Ca
rnegie Mellon University, the State University of New York-Binghamton and Singapore University all have Mobile IP implementations, too.
Wireless may be just the killer app you're looking for. With Mobile IP, you can move from your wired Ethernet LAN to a hotel room and keep your IP session going through a wireless connection. And the IETF also is adding IPsec encryption and authentication to Mobile IP, for safer "tunnels," says Vipul Gupta, a member of the technical staff at Sun Microsystems, which is testing Mobile IP in its labs.
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