Question:
It seems that various applications on the Internet, like e-commerce, will swing into full force.
The current Internet is in it's the third generation. The first generation did not have a commercial mission; in the second generation, Internet Service Providers (ISP) became commercialized. Now major communications carriers are starting ISP businesses. This third generation represents the real start of an infrastructure business. The current infrastructure is already at its limit. As long as we keep using telephone lines, problems like slow speed and high cost will not be solved. The same situation exists in the U.S. In response to this problem, a carrier like QUEST, who is specializing in Internet Protocol (IP), appears.
Two technologies are supporting this change. One is the development of a backbone technology: Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) enables the multiplexing of optical waveforms and is creating a four-fold increase in transmission capacity each year. The second is the development of network accessibility. Optical technology is one method, but it may be 5 years away and that is a distant future in the Internet world.
There are three currently hot technologies that are attracting the attention of the Internet industry. The first hot technology, as you may know well, is Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and the second is wireless Internet Protocol (IP). IMT2000 (International Mobile Telecommunications-year 2000), will be started in March 2001. I think the technology to connect homes instantly by wireless will spread rapidly. The third hot technology is Cable TV. Major companies in this field are already consolidating and expect the benefits of scale through consolidation, joint venture, or large-scale investment. The age of network access by circuit switching will be over and the age of the IP carrier will take its place, enabling high-speed connection at anytime without dial up.
Question:
It seems that various applications on the Internet, like e-commerce, will swing into full force.
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| Data Center for B to C |
The Business to Business (B2B) market is huge, but it is a replacement market for the existing main frame-base basic business, rather than a new IP market. What is interesting is the emerging Business to Consumer (B2C), e-commerce market. Like book or music distribution, it will fully displace existing routes and lead a distribution revolution. Current forecasts of B2C e-commerce are rather conservative.
An intensive data center specialized in B2C becomes a common platform for this purpose. There are already 3 companies, like Exodus in U.S.A, and they are called "Application Service Providers (ASP)", intensively hosting and housing mission-critical commercial Internet operations. We are planning to start the same thing in Japan. The image is as shown in the left figure, installing around 500 sets of rack equipment and integrating contents for consumers. They provide dual power generators for emergency back up in the event of a commercial power failure. This facility is connected directly to the Internet Exchange via dark fiber, and multiple providers can access it equally.
The features of this data center are, it is neutral to ISPs, and tremendous traffic is loaded. At the moment baseball player Mr.Matsuzaka pitched at Koshien stadium last year or Nagano Olympic, the server went down. Totally different from B2B, such enormous amount of traffic can be loaded. I suppose it will be a test site of load balancer, where we consider how to distribute load when 5 million people access simultaneously by using 1 board PC exchange server, not by installing a super large computer server.
