INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Mr. Richardson, Cisco is now considered as important for Internet as Intel is for chips
and Microsoft for software. What has been your contribution for the development of
Internet infrastructure in recent years?
Answer
First of all, I'd like to thank you very much for having me here on your show
today. I really do appreciate the opportunity to speak to an Italian audience. It's one of
the fastest growing and most sophisticated markets for networking in Europe and we're very
excited to be here today. With respect to the Internet and Cisco's participation therein,
our birth, our infancy, came from the Internet. The Internet was built using Cisco
technology. As such, today over 80 percent of the traffic that transits the Internet
transits over Cisco technology. Because of the rapid growth and the mass of this industry,
it was very, very important for us to partner with Microsoft and with Intel to ensure that
the next generation multimedia applications would be tied very closely with the network
fabric. It's very important that we get an end-to-end connection that will support
multimedia applications, because the Internet itself is connectionless. And by being
connectionless we have collisions of packets.
Question 2
Cisco controls almost half the market of routers. What are these routers, and how do they
work on the Net?
Answer
The technology that we built the Internet with are in fact routers. Routers go into the
protocol, TCPIP, and they inspect the protocol with microcode to make decisions on where
the packet came from and where the packet is going to, and then what is the best route for
the packet to take through the network. Our business was built on routers and the Internet
was built on routers. As I mentioned earlier, over 80 percent of the routers over the
Internet are from Cisco, a 50 percent world-wide market share in routers in general in the
corporate Internets.
Question 3
So in order to build the next generation of multimedia on the Internet we have a
network multimedia lab. What kind of research is there in Cisco for this and what
strategic alliances?
Answer
It is very important for Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel to work together, and
one of the pillars of this alliance is in fact multimedia. Because of the predominance of
Intel and Microsoft on the client or on the desktop market, in order to facilitate
communications across a network that is collision oriented, we have to guarantee the
delivery of the application data stream for voice or for video or for multimedia. So as
such, it's very important for us to work together with these two companies to ensure that
we can deliver a quality of service and guaranteed delivery of the application data
streams. We, Microsoft, and Intel have invested in this multimedia lab and in research to
ensure that the technology will flow across the network. This multimedia lab is available
for third party applications companies to come in and work with our engineers jointly to
ensure that their applications work across this next generation of multimedia networks.
Question 4
But are you working on open standards or on proprietary technology of Intel and Microsoft
only?
Answer
What we've got to understand is that when there is innovation, there is proprietary
innovation. It's a policy in Cisco, however, that as soon as we innovate, we want to make
that technology standard because we have to move on. The industry does have to be based on
standards. For example, in this arena we created a technology called RSVP, which was a
reservation protocol that would work across the Internet to guarantee delivery. We
submitted that as a standard, and it will be standard in its implementation in the IP
version 6 that's coming up from ITF. We did the same thing with our tag switching
protocol, which has 90 percent of the content from MPLS for the movement of TCPIP traffic
across an ATM.
Question 5
So coming back to the IP version 6 protocol, when will it be introduced, and what will
change with this new protocol?
Answer
The IP version 6 is going to be finalized, we believe, in 1998. What will be changed is
that there will be a standardized methodology to support volume of service, standardized
technologies for security. So what we're trying to do is standardize the innovation that's
gone on over the last two years and IP version 6 will allow us to do this. The users will
see a standardized methodology for doing these things across the Net.
Question 6
But also the possibility of expanding the address will be inside this protocol?
Answer
Yes, this has been a concern for many years that there has not been enough address space
for the current version of TCPIP, and so we've come to convergence on how we're going to
extend the address space in IP version 6, so we'll not have to manage the address space as
tightly as we have in the past, and we'll have more freedom to expand to more and more
nodes in the network.
Question 7
And will it influence on the speed of the Internet? Are there technologies that can
improve the speed of the Internet?
Answer
I think that the speed of the Net is not going to be impacted by IP version 6. I think
that there is a tremendous amount of capacity in the Net itself. With recent advances from
Cisco such as the gigabit router we have tons of bandwidth in the backbone of the network.
Where we find congestion, however, is in getting information from web servers and
transferring that information across the Atlantic Ocean, for example to Italy. So we're
working on other ancillary technologies to support more responsiveness from the Net. A
good example of this would be the cache director or web cache director that Cisco just
released. The technology that will allow your Internet service provider in Italy to cache
the web page or store in local memory the web page from across the Atlantic. Therefore
your request doesn't have to go across the Atlantic and pull the data back, it will just
be a local request. And with the expansion of the standards that are on the web that web
page will be automatically updated, even though it is not local; it's remote. So these are
the kinds of technology, giga-switch routers to improve the capacity, and software
technology to improve the latency or the response time across the Net.
Question 8
And about the providers? Recently Cisco closed a new agreement with MCI to deliver premium
Internet services. What are these services?
Answer
Premium Internet services are the innovation that we have been talking about and that
Cisco has been trying to deliver in conjunction with partners such as Microsoft and Intel.
Now we're talking about the commercial availability of those innovations: guaranteed
quality of service, guaranteed delivery of information across the network. Heretofore the
Internet has been what we call in the industry "best efforts". That doesn't mean
that it gets there in a certain amount of time. With the premium service from MCI you'll
be able to purchase a service that guarantees delivery of your information within a
certain time frame. A huge improvement in the quality of networking availability that's
going to be delivered from the Internet: more commercialized availability of services
across the Net. These are premium services.
Question 9
Are these services for business or also for private individuals?
Answer
Hopefully the best application of this will be for the enterprise initially. But the other
application for the future is that if you want to buy video from your Internet service
provider, you'll need a premium service from your Internet service provider because you
want to guarantee the quality of the delivery across the Internet. So it will have
application in the future to the consumer of the Internet services.
Question 10
About the transmission of video on the Internet, do you think it's necessary to wait for a
large ATM infrastructure to have good quality video on the Net or will it be possible to
have some compression techniques for streaming video?
Answer
The benefits of ATM for the delivery of video are not capacity, but the properties of ATM
in being able to deliver a virtual circuit and be able to deliver the traffic in a
guaranteed manner. These are the same qualities that we've just been talking about that
are premium services from an Internet service provider. So the question that will come
forward in the community is: do you need ATM to deliver premium service or not? And this
is a proposition. Cisco will deliver ATM capability with MPLS tag switching. They'll also
deliver the capability to deliver these services over native TCPIP networks which will
give the service providers the capability to use advanced technologies and less expensive
technologies for the implementation of networking to the household. ADSL over ethernet as
opposed to the ADSL over ATM, will this be more cost effective and easier to manage? This
remains to be seen but it will give the client the choice. IP or TCPIP over cable is
another choice. So we will provide the choice and the most cost effective and easiest to
manage solution.
Question 11
Do you think that in the next years Internet will replace television?
Answer
I don't think that it will necessarily replace television. Nothing every happens quickly.
I think that things happen slowly over time. Certainly the investments Bill Gates is
making is to enable him to deliver or distribute content, and video is one of those
contents over the Net. Will there be television stations? Well, he's worked out a deal
with NBC as a methodology to broadcasting across the Net. I think we have to get to a
situation where we can guarantee bandwidth and we have the right bandwidth to the home.
We're going to need DSL technology to the home, we're going to need ATM technology to the
home, to give the correct bandwidth to be able to guarantee that you get good video
services across the Net. The other avenue is, of course, the cable infrastructure, and
that will be coming along as well in 1998. It's going to be very exciting. I think you'll
have the opportunity to make choices. Do I get cable service, do I get telephone service,
do I get satellite service or do I get all of these services from my Internet service
provider? The tremendous opportunity is that the Internet service provider will be able to
deliver television, telephony, and Internet services all across the same route.
Question 12
That means that the service provider can be a telephone company or cable company or a TV
network?
Answer
Perhaps. This all remains to be seen, but it is certainly going to be an exciting space to
be in, in the telecommunications area, and Italy is a perfect example of this where you're
rapidly going into deregulation and the telephone systems and the telecommunications
environment and you have rapid investment in this environment. There are going to be
several different methodologies into the home.
Question 13
You talk about the home. Now, people who use a computer go on the Internet; if with
devices, Internet TV or GSM phone, all the people at home go on the Internet, is it
possible that the Net can support this growth of traffic?
Answer
Absolutely, because the Net is not one network. The Net is many networks communicating
together and this is how it's been able to scale and grow. Cisco has just delivered new
technology to the Internet service providers that will give them a 100-fold increase in
capacity. So we certainly have lots of scaleability left in the backbone of the network
and we still have the capability to build multiple networks. There's going to be lots of
bandwidth and capacity available to address the users. There's lots of software technology
that's embedded in the network as well that make sure that we use the Net more
efficiently. Considering all these things together, we certainly think that the Net will
challenge us as an industry but we don't perceive that it will stop us.
Question 14
What could be the role of your new technology called tag switching? What is it and what
are its applications?
Answer
Tag switching is just a methodology for the industry to make sure that TCPIP can go across
ATM. ATM was a standard that was delivered. The reason why you want to do that is that ATM
is a very vast switching fabric. ATM was developed with telephony in mind. And in
telephony you pick up the phone and you speak for a minute or two minutes. And ATM was
designed to support that type of communications, where a virtual circuit is set up for a
minute or two minutes. In the data world, when you do a hit on a web page or when you send
e-mail, the length of time of the session is very short. It's about 15 seconds or less.
You may be on the Net for hours, but the actual time you communicate across the Net -
these little spurts of data - take 15 seconds or less. And what happened is when we tried
to make the Net scale by putting ATM technology in the center is that there was an
incompatibility between the data world and the ATM because the ATM switches weren't built
for these little spurts. What tag switching allows us to do is to build flows of data that
will keep virtual circuits up for an extended period of time. So the switches don't have
to worry about all these spurts but can accumulate traffic from multiple sources and queue
that traffic and make that traffic flow to multiple destinations, allowing us to make the
most of the ATM technology and the most of the TCPIP technology. So tag switching is a
marriage of these two disparate technologies and it is something that is being
standardized in the ITF and it's something that's called MPLS.
Question 15
Within the next years the network on ATM will be spread also in Europe and in different
parts of the world so the speed will be improved, do you think it will be still necessary
to have an Internet 2, the consortium created by Bill Clinton?
Answer
I don't know that this Internet 2 was created by Bill Clinton. I think the Internet 2 has
been created by the research and educational institutions in the United States that want
their own network, that want to use the next generation of technology to create a network
that is purely research and educational. Certainly, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore are
supporting that effort. Is it necessary? It's just another Net. It will communicate with
the Internet. It will be accessible through the Internet. There will be gateways to it.
It's just that it will be a closed community of interests that has their own high-speed
infrastructure. I don't think it's something that we should be concerned about. I think
it's something that we should be very excited about because they're going to use the
latest technology and improve that technology, and it will be a visionary type of
environment.
Question 16
What kind of use of the Internet do you expect to increase in the next years: electronic
commerce, education, or entertainment?
Answer
All of the above. I think that the Net will be used for electronic commerce. Cisco Systems
is a great example of this where we believe that we have the largest electronic website in
the world where we will do well over US$2.5 to US$3 billion worth of business over the web
this year. Over 40 percent of our business is done in this corner of the web. The
entertainment side is certainly evident in that people find the web entertaining. It's a
methodology for you to go out and learn and play. So entertainment will be certainly
something that is very important. And education as well. I think that this is a political
and social question. Do you invest as a country in getting your students connected?
Because there's now a universe of information that's available to people and it's free.
This is a very distinct change in that you're not limited to your textbooks, you're not
limited in thought processes from your teacher. You are exposed to a world of information.
And it's a question that you have to answer for yourselves in Italy as to whether you fund
that and get your children connected. I think it's very, very important as we become more
and more technologically dependent that the children understand the technology, and the
web is an excellent way for them to get exposed to it.
Question 17
And your forecast, how many people will use Internet in the year 2000?
Answer
I can't predict. Lots more than today. We have a pretty accurate number of hosts that are
on the Internet, around 70 million hosts world-wide. That doesn't count all the users
because multiple users could be associated with hosts, and with the dynamic addressing
systems that are available today, the standard fare. For example anybody in Cisco can get
access to the Internet. We may have only five or ten Internet hosts at Cisco but all of
our employees have access. So it's very, very hard to tell how many users there are. We're
counting the number of hosts now and I believe the latest number is about 70 million
hosts. So that could identify an individual consumer or that could identify a company or a
subset of companies. I don't mean to be evasive, but I don't have numbers and I couldn't
pretend to be Leonardo da Vinci and predict what's going to happen.
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