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Remember when AT&T's goal was the creation of a "seamless network?" The idea lives on at Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. But this time, the Bell System progeny are after more than just linking us by telephone. They want to combine all our communications media -- from the phone to the pager to the Web browser -- into a single entity that would keep us connected all the time.
Bell Labs is teaming with network software giant Novell Inc. on the adoption of a new network software standard called PAM (for "presence and availability management"). If it eventually becomes an "open" standard, PAM would enable providers of various services, such as phone, paging, Internet, and cable TV, to share data so that users could send and receive interactive, customized communications across both wired and wireless networks. With PAM, the companies claim, we will have one identity -- instead of our multiple phone numbers, inscrutable e-mail addresses, and passwords to numerous Web sites.
PAM works by sharing authorized information about a subscriber's identity, presence, and availability across both telephone and Internet networks. In effect, users will tell all their service providers their electronic addresses and aliases. This will enable the network to identify which devices a subscriber is using at any time -- such as whether your cellular phone is switched on or if you are logged on to a computer. Users will be able to specify when and in which medium to accept calls or data and establish priorities, such as by caller, time of day, and importance of the message.
GOOD TRACK RECORDS.
The list of services that could always be at your fingertips seems endless. Among them: e-mail; fax; Web browsers and portals; mobile and handheld devices; TV set-top boxes; wireless, paging, and unified messaging servers; PBX systems and call centers; conferencing and gaming systems; and content distribution and caching engines. "Software vendors could create common services to be offered by providers using different technologies," says Bell Labs research scientist Guda Venkatesh.
The partners unveiled their new vision of a seamless network at an annual Novell user conference this week in Salt Lake City. Then, Lucent and Novell will submit draft proposals and software programming specifications to the industry for comment and -- they hope -- eventual adoption by standards committees, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
If their track records are any indication, Bell Labs and Novell have a good chance of winning widespread acceptance for PAM. In 1948, Bell Labs researcher Claude Shannon set the direction of modern networks in a paper entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Bell Labs researchers developed the Unix operating system, which became the basis of the Internet, in 1969, and later created the C++ programming language, which is used to write code for many Internet applications. Meanwhile, Novell's software dominates the network-server industry, providing the foundation of the global Internet.
If PAM does take hold, it promises to allow us to reach out to each other more easily than ever before. But don't worry, if you want to be out of touch, you can still turn everything off.
By Alan Hall in New York EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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