Imagine the future Internet

Some people ask, what will the Internet of the future look like?

This question is difficult to answer because there are too many uncertainties, such as whether there will be any new technology that completely changes the way people surf the Internet today, or wars that cause network technology to go back 50 years ago. We can put aside the small probability things first, and imagine the future from a more certain aspect.

Starting from some facts we can feel, make a comparison with the Internet 10 years ago (2012), and look forward to the Internet 10 years later (2032).

internet speed, traffic

First of all, the speed of the Internet has been significantly improved. According to "Gilder's Law" ---- "In the next 25 years, the bandwidth of the backbone network will double every 6 months, and its growth rate is 3 times the CPU growth rate predicted by Moore's Law and Internet access will be free in the future. "

Ten years ago, mobile traffic was relatively low, and the more popular plan at the time was 100MB of traffic per month. Computers were generally used to surf the Internet, and Internet cafes were doing very well at that time. Mobile phones are still in the era of feature phones, Nokia is still alive, and Apple and Samsung have launched their own smartphone products. Most mobile phone users surf the Internet to see WAP pages in plain text.

Now, although broadband and mobile data still need to be paid, many places have free WIFI, such as shopping malls and cafes, which should have been very rare ten years ago. Internet cafes are gradually losing their appeal to young people. On the one hand, home computers have become popular. On the other hand, the popularity of mobile games allows young people to have entertainment anytime, anywhere, and there is no need to endure the bad air and noise in Internet cafes. Internet cafes began to provide services other than Internet access, such as snacks and drinks, a better environment and so on. Mobile Internet has become an indispensable part of life, and accordingly, people's demand for network bandwidth is also increasing.

It is roughly estimated that the network speed and network bandwidth in ten years will be dozens to hundreds of times that of today. New Internet terminals may replace mobile phones, smart glasses? smart watch? Even biochips embedded in the human body are possible. In addition, the upstream traffic may increase greatly. For example, ten years ago, people mainly posted posts and pictures on the Internet. Now they can start live broadcasts and send videos. Ten years later, they may express themselves in better ways, such as no The man-machine surrounds him to do a multi-camera live broadcast.

terminal

I mentioned just now that Internet access devices have changed from PCs to mobile phones, but in fact, I think the mainstream Internet access devices in the future will be all kinds of things, which is often referred to as the Internet of Everything. Let's talk about the development of the Internet of Things in this decade.

Ten years ago, although many public places already had cameras, most of them were not connected to the Internet, so in social news, it was often seen that there was a dispute to check the video, and the data was lost. Shared bicycles and shared charging treasures have not yet appeared. The Internet of Things devices that can be used in life may be access control cards, IC cards, subway cards, etc., which cannot be accessed by themselves.

Now, in addition to the various items that can be connected to the Internet brought by the sharing economy, we also have cameras that can be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, drones that can fly in autonomous formations, and community access controls that can scan their faces to enter the door. In summary, the IoT device itself is connected to the network.

Ten years from now, this trend will continue and most of the traffic in the network will be generated by machines. For example, intelligent robots in factories can estimate the usage of raw materials by themselves and place orders online; intelligent cars on the street can detect the surrounding environment every minute and every second, and realize autonomous driving which is safer than human driving; The smart meter automatically recommends more energy-efficient products by analyzing the electricity consumption and model specifications of household appliances. We can even be bolder. Don't people always say that it is too "rolled" now, maybe one day we can make machines face cruel competition, and the machine that can best improve people's living standards will win.

In addition to IoT devices becoming the mainstream of the network, what will happen to the main devices that ordinary people use to access the Internet? There is a high probability that it will go down the road of external devices, that is, more powerful smartphones. First of all, it took at least 50 years for humans to transition from keyboards to touch screens, so touch screens should still be the king of interaction in ten years. Secondly, interaction methods such as brain-computer interfaces are still immature, and their dangers are difficult to be accepted by the public.

pay

Why take out electronic payment separately, because it is too important and completely changes people's consumption habits. More importantly, even though we use electronic payment every day, it still has many problems.

Ten years ago, except for some big cities, electronic payment was not popularized in most places in China, and many people even did not have WeChat wallet and Alipay. Many people still don't know what a QR code is, and most people's access to Internet applications is still web sites and search engines. Some people will shop online, but logistics generally take days or even weeks.

Now, you can use WeChat to scan the QR code to pay for groceries in large cities, and most shops in small cities can support electronic payment. Online shopping is a very common thing. If you order a takeaway at dinner, and you want to cook at home, you can also buy ingredients online, and you can have it delivered on the same day or picked up the next day. Each platform APP has a built-in wallet, which can bind various bank cards or third-party payment wallets. Traditional banks have made great progress in the field of electronic payment compared with ten years ago, and the experience is very close to the wallets of Internet giants.

Electronic payments mean that everyone's personally identifiable information and transaction data are in the hands of service providers. Mainly Internet giants, as well as banks. When data is too concentrated in a few institutions, there may be a problem of large-scale leakage of personal privacy. We need to think about whether we introduce new problems when physical cash is replaced by electronic cash.

First, each banknote on physical cash has a unique serial number. If each merchant keeps a record of the serial number of each banknote it receives, in theory, law enforcement agencies can use these records to find the flow of dirty money. At the same time, these records do not contain personal information, so there is no risk of personal privacy leakage. Electronic cash is usually implemented without taking these into account, and each transaction is directly connected to a person, which has privacy issues. At present, technologies such as block technology and central bank digital currency being explored by various countries are precisely the hope of realizing the privacy protection and traceability of physical cash on electronic cash. Therefore, it is expected that in ten years, electronic cash based on blockchain technology will completely change the current situation of being operated by a single institution.

Network protocol

I think a lot of people have heard the news that IPv4 addresses are going to be depleted a long time ago, however due to the development of technologies such as NAT, as well as too much old equipment and code, IPv4 continues to be used until today. Driven by governments and Internet giants, IPv6 has gradually been adopted. However, most ordinary users still use IPv4 to surf the Internet.

Considering that IPv6 is a proven technology that can be adopted on a large scale, it has obvious advantages: such as simpler network topology, faster transmission speed, better scalability and so on. We have reason to believe that most Internet users and IoT devices will use IPv6 in ten years.

Epilogue

Ten years can be long or short, and it is fascinating to imagine the development of science and technology. Or watch the tide from the shore, or make the tide yourself, let us watch the future come together.