Just as we’re getting comfortable with the awesome implications of the Internet we’re told it’s becoming obsolete and a next generation, all singing and dancing, industrial strength version is necessary.

While we complain that what we have is still too expensive or not fast enough, the hype continues about making everything Internet enabled from your microwave to your wristwatch, and the old infostructure is being stretched like a laddered stocking.

The Internet, including the Web, will undergo more change in the next five years than it has in the previous five. The first requirement for the next level of innovation will be upgrading the Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer to provide more addresses and greater flexibility. The network software layer also needs optimising so machines can have more complex conversations with each other.

It’s been predicted that the four billion addresses available under IPv4, the existing 20-year old 32-bit system, will be gobbled up by 2005. There’s an urgent need to move from this increasingly fragile environment to the 128-bit IPv6 addressing scheme, extending capacity to 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses, to more than adequately meet requirements into the distant future.

Cisco Fellow Steve Deering, lead designer of the IPv6 protocol, warns things will only get worse if there are further delays. Many opportunities have already been lost because current network address translators (NATs) only work with certain types of applications. IP telephony and peer-to-peer gaming for example don't work through network translators. Cisco, Intel, 3Com, Ericsson, Hitachi, Nortel are rapidly upgrading their equipment to IPv6 to open the gates on the new world.

In Yokohama, Japan more than 300 taxis, buses, and delivery trucks have been continuously monitoring road conditions, speed and weather February in an IPv6 project called 'real space' networking. Toshiba has been using IPv6 for its smart kitchen project, giving every appliance an IP address for instant maintenance and monitoring. Nokia is demonstrating its Mobile IPv6 technology for location-based, directory and ‘always on’ services and Sony is preparing all types of media, including broadcasting, to be Internet-enabled using IPv6. In the future all Sony products will have an IP address.

Another advancement that will have spin-offs for our on-line electronic evolution is Internet2, the super high-speed network being developed by 180 US universities in conjunction with large corporations and research networks in Canada, Europe and Australia. It’s being funded by the United States National Science Foundation and uses protocols and middleware to support new applications only recently dreamed of.

The ‘Abilene’ Internet2 backbone operates at speeds of up to 2.4 gigabits per second for very-large file transfers, such as beaming a hologram into an auditorium in real time, or telemedicine where 3D images of organs can be sent to doctors around the world.

Forester Research has written an obituary for the Web as we know it, claiming it’ll be supplanted by the X internet (X = executable) by 2005. Downloadable code enabling more entertaining and engaging experiences with on-line services, and the proliferation of smart internet-enabled devices, will reshape the role of the Internet as we know it. Real time information on everything from anywhere will enable businesses to have better control of their enterprise.
The current market for internet devices and services is $US600 billion annually, by 2010 it’s expected to rocket to more than $US2.7 trillion worldwide with 14 billion devices on-line.

So you thought the Internet was already pervasive and invasive enough? Well think again we’ve yet to see the full might of the global information superhighway. Even the visionaries are only guessing at what this will morph into when it is unleashed and tied in with advancements in digital TV and every mobile and static appliance imaginable.

Meanwhile most of us are still on the dirt roads at less than optimal modem speed trying to see clearly through the dust being kicked up in our face by broadband users who’re getting the first glimpses of what the Internet is really about.

Be warned. Technology is shifting gear again. This decade governments, businesses and individuals who’re unable or unprepared to be pro-actively involved will be mercilessly sidelined, economically and culturally, into the new digital third world.