What are some of the competing visions for the National Information Infrastructure?
There are probably as many visions of the NII as there are nodes on the Internet. But the two broad models are the Internet model (“many to any”) and the cable TV model (“broadcast to couch potatoes”). A well-written discussion of the “Internet model” vision is available in [National Academy of Sciences1994]. One critical issue is the amount of bandwidth provided from the home. The Internet model sees bandwidth as being more-or-less symmetric; the cable TV model sees a much more limited outbound bandwidth: essentially enough for home shopping. As one wit has said about interactive TV networks, “how much bandwidth do you need to send `I want it’ to the Home Shopping Network?
There are probably as many visions of the NII as there are nodes on the Internet. But the two broad models are the Internet model (“many to any”) and the cable TV model (“broadcast to couch potatoes”). A well-written discussion of the “Internet model” vision is available in [National Academy of Sciences1994]. One critical issue is the amount of bandwidth provided from the home. The Internet model sees bandwidth as being more-or-less symmetric; the cable TV model sees a much more limited outbound bandwidth: essentially enough for home shopping.
