WorldCom exec: Keeping up with
IP demand isn't easy
By Kristi Essick
IDG News Service, 2/25/98
With Internet traffic pushing the demand for bandwidth at
1,000%annually, even bandwidth king WorldCom Inc. is facing a
difficult challenge to deploy enough network capacity to meet
users' needs, said John Sidgmore, WorldCom's chief operating
officer, in a speech here at the Internet Service Provision (ISP)
'98 conference this morning.
WorldCom finds the current bandwidth demand quite frightening,
Sidgmore said, in spite of the company's impressive girth:
WorldCom's recent series of proposed and completed acquisitions
(including Brooks Fiber Properties Inc., MCI Communications
Corp., and portions of America Online Inc. and CompuServe
Inc.) combined with its expanding network of fiber across the U.S. and Europe
make it one of the largest providers of network infrastructure in the world.
"This is a scaling challenge that has never been faced before," Sidgmore said.
Some of the drivers of this large-scale bandwidth demand include faxing and voice
over the Internet, video and audio applications, and the migration of legacy corporate
applications onto the 'Net. However, an unseen traffic driver is what Sidgmore
described as an army of "silicon cockroaches" roaming the Internet.
These "cockroaches" are computer-to-computer communication applications such as
intelligent agents that automatically search thousands of sites, and automated modem
communication scripts.
The most important thing for telecommunication providers to remember is that voice
will become a limited application on networks in the future. By 2000, 50 percent of
all telecom traffic will be Internet related, a figure climbing to 99 percent by 2004, he
said.
"The networks of the next century aren't going to be built for voice," Sidgmore said.
"Voice will just be a niche market."
So how can large and small infrastructure providers -- from WorldCom to new
providers such as Level 3 Communications Inc. - rise to the challenge of providing
1,000 percent more bandwidth each year, while still keeping Internet access at the
very low cost expected by users? First, by laying miles and miles of fiber, Sidgmore
said. But also by deploying new technologies that let more traffic flow over existing
pipes - such as the Dense Wave Division Multiplexer (DWDM) system, caching
technologies, faster routers, and cheaper and better electronic equipment.
Merging with bigger telcos doesn't hurt either, said Sidgmore, who was CEO of
UUNet Technologies Corp. when he sold it to MFS Communications Co. several
years back. "I didn't see how we could scale on our own," Sidgmore said. "That is
why I sold UUNet to MFS."
But MFS was just a step on the road to a larger enterprise. Months later, WorldCom
snapped up MFS/UUNet to help increase its own network infrastructures. |
