GEEKS - Japan Plans Internet Router Assault
By Jeremy Scott-Joynt and Kenneth
Cukier for CommunicationsWeek
International
01 February 1999
Japanese high-tech vendors have embarked on a
government-funded initiative that aims to develop data
networking equipment 1,000 times faster than today's
Internet routers.
Yet with technical details still unavailable and no sign of
public draft specifications, many Internet engineers believe
the chances for success against today's powerful U.S.
companies remain slim.
Four companies - Hitachi Ltd., NEC Corp., The Furukawa
Electric Co., and Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - have
formed the Real Internet Consortium (RIC) with the
backing of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI).
The ministry is sinking 1.06 billion yen ($9.2 million) of
public money into the project, drawn from last year's third
supplementary budget, the Y5.7 trillion public investment
package that the government hopes will help pull the
moribund Japanese economy out of its seven-year slump.
The consortium intends to present a new internetworking
protocol, that will allow for quality of service and
prioritized traffic, to the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), the Internet standards-setting body.
RIC is collaborating with seven Japanese universities,
including the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the
University of Michigan in the United States. |
