![]() The Netheads believe in intelligent software rather than brute-force hardware, in flexible and adaptive routing instead of fixed traffic control. These engineers see the telecom industry as one more relic that will be overturned by the march of digital computing. Opposed to the Bellheads are the Netheads, the young Turks who connected the world's computers to form the Internet. They believe in solving problems with dependable hardware techniques and in rigorous quality control - ideals that form the basis of our robust phone system and that are incorporated in the ATM protocol. They are the engineers and managers who grew up under the watchful eye of Ma Bell and who continue to abide by Bell System practices out of respect for Her legacy. In broad strokes, Bellheads are the original telephone people. It is a war between the Bellheads and the Netheads. They see PacBell's in-terest in it as further proof that the RBOCs are doomed to be incompetent bumblers whenever they move away from their beloved voice networks. These people, the engineer next to me said, believe ATM is a flawed technology, one that causes more problems than it solves. That dissident cluster, I learned from the person sitting next to me, included some of the most important engineers in the room: people like John Curran, the chief technical officer for BBNPlanet Yakov Rekhter, a lead engineer at Cisco and Sean Doran, the lead engineer for Sprint's Internet services. While most of the audience listened with a fair amount of interest, laughter kept erupting from a small cluster behind me. By taking advantage of ATM, he explained, networks will soon be able to exchange traffic at speeds of up to 660 Mbps, instead of the current maximum of 45 Mbps. Williams's big news was that PacBell was about to upgrade its NAP with higher-speed equipment that uses ATM - or asynchronous transfer mode - technology. ![]() ![]() NAPs are a lot like freeway cloverleaves - they allow traffic to flow between the independent networks that make up the Internet. The first technical presentation that morning was by Warren Williams, a genial, chubby guy in charge of the Pacific Bell network access point, or NAP. They were the builders of a new age, and although lacking the brawn and defined cheekbones of the engineers in Soviet propaganda posters, they emanated the same heroic attitude of advancing civilization through Herculean struggles. The 250 engineers who filled the dark, wood-paneled auditorium during the two-day meeting of NANOG, the North American Network Operators' Group, were from America's largest Internet service providers - companies like UUNet, Netcom, and Sprint - and they possessed the self-confidence that comes from operating millions of dollars of bleeding-edge technology that the world increasingly depends on. It was the kind of braggadocio you hear among any large gathering of engineers, but, in this case, it was probably true. It was a frequent observation among the laptop-toting 25-year-olds who crowded into the UC San Diego auditorium on an overcast morning last February that if a bomb were to go off right then, the entire Internet would collapse. At stake is nothing less than the organization of cyberspace. The most vicious battle on the Net today is a secret war between techies.
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