One of the things I’ve been reading much about lately is the direction of the Internet. Where is it going, is it on the right track, what changes should be made, what happens when IPv6 is fully adopted… that sort of thing. In some circles, the adoption of IPv6 is as worrisome for the people involved as the year 2000 bug was for IBM.

I have a slightly different take on things, since I tend to be pragmatic first, and worry about lofty goals later.

It used to be, for those who don’t remember, that when some piece of software was released to the public, it was released to several places. For example, a shareware or freeware author could count on his offering going to download.com, channel1bbs.com, and simtel.net, at least, with possibly a few other repositories. Even huge companies, such as IBM, had several places where support files could be found. It also was a time when many large universities had very large repositories of software, with much of the newest available there first. This was great, because at any time, one’s connection to a certain part of the Internet could go away, with uncertain resolution of the problem. This redundancy was really great also, in that if one site was too busy, another was available to allow the quick retrieval of what one wanted.

Stepping forward in time to 2007, we have no real repositories any more, as they all have come to specialize in what they will have available. The universities, which have been huge repositories in the past, have curtailed their efforts, and seem to concentrate on Linux software, even though this is still just a small part of the freely available software. This is, in part, due to a more reliable Internet, and also to the volume of information available to store.

With the world situation moving toward more and not less stability, it seems it would make more sense to have more redundancy, not less. I see this as especially necessary for the United States, as information is our most valuable commodity now, as we manufacture and service less, as a nation, than ever before.

Centralization of information has benefits, but the very nature of the Internet was to have something decentralized, so as in the worst case, time of war, the information would be available.

Tags: internet, repository, simtel.net, download.com, ibm, ipv6, year 2000 bug