TREND: NETWORKING Gnashed teeth may be the biggest health hazard on the Internet. The delays, the frozen screens, the error messages, the aggravation! Fast telephone modems, cable modems, and ISDN will ease the misery this year--at least a little. But they won't break up logjams at popular Web sites or at the crowded access points where the many networks of the Internet exchange information. Fortunately, a growing gang of software and data-networking companies have some excellent tricks up their sleeves. The new amalgam of hardware and software technology will gradually improve almost everyone's experience of the Internet. Small startups with names such as Exodus, InterNAP, and GlobalCenter are setting up data centers--banks of powerful computer servers--in key locations around the U.S. Organizations or companies whose Web sites get mobbed with visitors can enlist these facilities to steer traffic along the fastest routes. They can also use so-called mirror sites and large-scale ''caches''--huge repositories that store copies of their most popular Web pages. The result: Surfers in Florida who need information from a San Francisco company don't have to bounce a message cross-country through a series of crowded hubs or access points. Instead, their requests get handled by a surrogate cache, provided by the likes of Inktomi, Network Appliance, or CacheFlow Inc. Packeteer Inc. in Cupertino, Calif., has a different solution: programs that manage traffic on a network and guarantee quality of service. Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and IBM's Tivoli software unit also offer network-management products that distribute the message load, choosing the least crowded time slots and pathways. In 1998, Internet service providers such as Sprint, AT&T, and MCI will also do good business opening up virtual toll roads on the Internet. Here, well-heeled customers will get faster, more reliable service for a higher price. These tricks matter a lot to companies that are counting on electronic commerce to boost their efficiency and bring in new business. Yankee Group Inc. in Boston figures that E-commerce--defined as all business that takes advantage of the Internet--will blossom into a $39 billion market in 1998. Says Bill Bluestein, vice-president of Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.: ''Companies will realize that the Internet is in fact a fourth channel, after retail, telephone, and catalog sales.'' So far, the new channel has been pretty clogged. But it's nothing a little software ingenuity can't cure. Return to main story

Updated Dec. 30, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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