EMedia Professional - The CD/Web Connection, May 1997

the CD/Web
connection

Talkin' 2000:
Will Breakthrough Internet
Bandwidth Sink CD-ROM?

Jan Ozer

EMedia Professional, May 1997
Copyright © Online Inc.

Today, CD-ROM is best used for big chunks of static data, while the Internet's strength lies in providing timely updates of small chunks of data. But what will happen to CD-ROM when the Internet can deliver data at or near the same speed?

Having just spent the last month looking at new high-speed access mechanisms for the Internet, I'm pretty sure that by the new Millennium, most corporations and end-users will have at least 10Mbps access to the Internet. The vehicle of choice could be cable modems, Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL), T-1 lines, or even satellites. Regardless, the pure bandwidth will be there. Do the math and you get close to 8X CD-ROM rate; not the fastest, but certainly perky by anybody's standard.

I'm also waking up to the fact that while the hard-driveless network computer won't ever replace the computer on my desk, network PCs will become popular as email devices, dumb terminals for mainframes, and simple browsing mechanisms, kind of like the terminals in public libraries that help you track down books and magazine articles. I haven't seen any plans for a Network Computer with an integrated CD-ROM drive and probably never will, which means a whole new class of PCs will ship without CD-ROM drives.

The juxtaposition of the two means a class of computers with high-speed access to the largest, most diverse source of information in the world, all without paying tribute or--more importantly--royalties to the CD-ROM industry. While it's not time to circle the wagons just yet, it is difficult to imagine that this will not have some economic effect on the CD-ROM industry.

The CD-ROM industry's answer to claims that the Internet will supersede the disc has always been that the two media serve different functions. CD-ROM is best used for big chunks of static data, while the Internet's strength lies in providing timely updates of small chunks of data. But what will happen to CD-ROM when the Internet can deliver data at or near the same speed?

APOCALYPSE WHEN: BANDWIDTH BOTTLENECKS AND OTHER DETERRENTS

As it turns out, the question of the Internet catching up to CD-ROM in the bandwidth department is largely hypothetical, at least in the short term. Even if you can achieve the rated 10Mbps inside the closed system, like from cable head end to the cable receiver, or central office to the home, the speed of delivery through the Net won't come anywhere close to that of CD-ROM.

That's because effective throughput depends on maneuvering through at least three bottlenecks, with the user's connection speed being only the final one. First is the connection from the Web server providing the data to the Internet. Today, moderately fast servers use a T-1 connection, which provides about 1.5Mbps, slightly faster than a 1X CD-ROM drive. Until the majority of servers upgrade to much faster connections, home surfers will be limited to their share of the 1.5Mbps bandwidth, which, of course, must be shared with all other surfers requesting information from the page.

After successfully getting out onto the Internet, the data must make its way through the various routers and pipelines between the source server and the user requesting the information. This morass represents the single largest question mark about the Internet, because if the Net's overall throughput doesn't increase, access speeds to and fro simply won't matter--it will all be slow.

How much overhead does the Net currently place on information? My office, for example, shares T-1 access with other tenants in our building. On nights and weekends we typically have the buildings to ourselves and full access to the T-1 line. Judging from statistics posted during file downloads, the fastest we've ever accessed information has been around 560Kbps, about a third of total capacity. However, this only happened once; usually it tops out at about 160Kbps. This means that even if we had benefited from a 10Mbps connection, our access time would not have been any faster.

MILLENNIUM MELTDOWN? CONSEQUENCES FOR CD-ROM MAKERS

But let's assume that the MCIs, Sprints, and AT&Ts of the world will have built bigger pipes that speed throughput all around, at least by the new Millennium's dawn. So that when end-users have 10Mbps access, they'll actually be able to achieve close to the rated speed.

What happens to the CD-ROM industry then? CD-Recordable drive and disk manufacturers will be ecstatic, since CD-R looks to be the odds-on favorite for consumer mass storage. All this information means more to store, because its always better to have something local than to have to find and download it again.

Pure CD-ROM manufacturers should also be in great shape. I'm not sure I'd consider Oracle's new Network Computer Division a great prospect, but for mainstream computers, as long as there's Windows 95, or Windows NT, or Cairo--and there will be as far forward as I can see--we'll need ever-larger hard drives to store programs and CD-ROM/ DVD-ROM drives to install them from. One computer, one drive.

For most business-to-business applications, however, I think once the pipes get fast enough a majority of customers will want to access their data online, especially if the information is dynamic. After all, at 10Mbps, you can download an entire CD-ROM's worth of information in just under nine minutes--hardly a deterrent when balanced against the threat of staying current.

Which brings us to CD-ROM title publishers, where the picture becomes murky. Sometime over the next few years then, most CD-ROM publishers will need to get very comfortable with how to sell their information profitably over the Web.

For in-house corporate developers of training or marketing materials, the same holds true. Most users will want to view the information from the server, if they don't already, which will dramatically reduce the need for CD-ROM. One immediate consequence is that in-house authors will have to become as familiar with HTML as they are with IconAuthor or ToolBook.

But these same developers of authoring programs must continue their push to make their products as Web-friendly as possible, and here there's room for improvement. One recent experience with a "Web-friendly" program revealed a tool that left much to be desired, with its failure to treat data at a remote Web site exactly as if it were on the user's hard drive. Without this capability, Web authoring tools are ill-equipped to provide developers with a mechanism to charge customers for new content.

Whatever the next millennium may bring in terms of data pipelines, for now the inability to create applications easily for profiting from online data continues to impede the profitability and viability of the Internet as a multimedia data delivery mechanism-- as does the sluggishness of the mechanism itself. Together, these current barriers combine to make the long-awaited new era in online data delivery still seem a long way off.

Jan Ozer is a contributing editor for EMedia Professional. President of Norcross, Georgia-based Doceo Publishing, a multimedia title developer, and publisher of the Video Compression Sampler series, Ozer consults widely on digital video and is at work on the second edition of his book Video Compression for Multimedia, published by AP Professional.

Comments? Email us at letters@onlineinc.com.

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Talkin' 2000: Will Breakthrough Internet Bandwidth Sink CD-ROM?

APOCALYPSE WHEN: BANDWIDTH BOTTLENECKS AND OTHER DETERRENTS

MILLENNIUM MELTDOWN? CONSEQUENCES FOR CD-ROM MAKERS

Talkin' 2000:
Will Breakthrough Internet
Bandwidth Sink CD-ROM?