Internet still collapsing, Metcalfe says, Founding father regrets words

Even though he was literally forced to eat his own words recently, Bob Metcalfe still thinks the Internet is collapsing. That was the gist of a speech Metcalfe gave last week to the MIT Enterprise Forum in Cambridge, Mass.

Metcalfe, an InfoWorld columnist, was the inventor of Ethernet and founder and former chief executive officer of 3Com Corp. In his December 1995 column, he predicted there would be at least one gigalapse - an outage that would cost users at least 1 billion lost Internet hours - in 1996.

On April 10, at a meeting of Internet service providers, Metcalfe gamely admitted that no gigalapses had been documented in 1996 and proceeded to drink shredded pieces of his column mixed into a glass of water. But two weeks later - on April 25 - Metcalfe said that the first real gigalapse occurred when a rodent chewed through a cable near Stanford University, causing "between zero and 40% of users to lose between zero and seven hours of Internet access" throughout the Bay area, a figure he calculated to be well over a billion lost hours.

Such outages are hard to document and report because users have no way of knowing whether their problems are isolated or part of a larger pattern.

In a talk rife with colorful analogies, Metcalfe took shots at Bell regional holding companies and carriers, a group he derisively referred to as "the telopolies." He used the theme and characters from the movie "Star Wars' to illustrate today's telephony and Internet battles.

"The Internet is The Force," Metcalfe said. "The telopolies are the Empire. Central offices are the Death Stars. They are being attacked by the ARPA Knights. One of these knights now defends the Empire. Cerf Vadar [a reference to Vinton Cerf, creator of TCP/IP while at the Advanced Research Projects Agency] and the Imperial Storm Lawyers are defending their Empire against the ISP-woks. Tim Berners Lee-pio [inventor of the World Wide Web] has been captured by Java The Hut. You are Luke and Leia. I can feel the hate growing inside you, and now I must complete your training. Call me Yoda.

Finally, Metcalfe blasted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, calling for the public to "take up a class action and sue somebody" over the act's failure to create meaningful competition in telephony.

He also called the ISP community too "loosey goosey," saying ISPs need to concentrate on coordinating business efforts. He also called for the creation of "e-postage" for Internet e-mail and advocated micro-money to create Web-based revenue streams.

July July 14-16, Optimizing the Functionality and Cost of Set-Top Box San Francisco, Hyatt Fisherman's Wharf, (800) 999-3123 July 15-17, Best Practices for Billing and Customer Care in Telecom Washington, Madison Hotel, (800) 882-8684 July 21-25, Internet World Summer '97 Chicago, McCormick Place, (800) 632-5537 July 23-25, Mergers and Acquisitions in Telecommunications and Cable New York, Helmsley Hotel, (800) 599-4950 July 26-30, OPASTCO Summer Convention San Diego, Marriott, (202) 659-5990 July 29-30, Profiting From Internet Service Provision San Francisco, Hyatt Fisherman's Wharf, (312) 540-5685

AUGUST Aug. 13-14, ADSL Business Strategies Chicago, Ramada Congress, (312) 540-5686 Aug. 20-21, Profiting From Wireless Cable and LMDS Chicago, Ramada Congress, (312) 540-5698 Aug. 20-22, Utility Industry Hand-held and PDA Forum St. Louis, Marriott Pavilion, (415) 252-8008

September Sept. 4-5, Telco-Cable IX Washington, J.W. Marriott, (800) 822-6338 Sept. 7-10, PictureTel User Group Conference San Antonio, Texas, Hilton Palacio del Rio, (800) 784-4636 Sept. 8-9, CDMA System Engineering Dallas, Hyatt Regency at Dallas Reunion, (510) 490-6459 Sept. 8-14, Telcom Interactive '97 Geneva, Switzerland, Palexpo, +41 22 730 5298 Sept. 10-12, PCS '97 Dallas, Dallas Convention Center, (800) 269-8999 Sept. 15-18, International Engineering Consortium Network Futures Event Reston, Va., Hyatt Regency, (312) 559-4619 Sept. 15-18, IT Forum '97 New York, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, (800) 232-3976 Sept. 24-26, Internet and Telco Summit Washington, Watergate Hotel, (508) 481-6400