New Technology Predicted To Improve Internet Performance

In the year 2001, people will see widespread deployment of new technology that will promote the use of wireless computing and also significantly increase Internet connection speed, says a University of Alabama computer science expert.

The use of the Internet is directly impacted by two things — what you can do on it and how long it takes to do it, says Dr. David Cordes, head of the computer science department in UA’s College of Engineering. And while the number of things you can do on the Internet continues to rapidly increase with new applications springing up constantly, the problem is taking advantage of these new applications, which generally require increasingly longer amounts of time to download to your machine.

Next year, as connections to the Internet get faster, potential uses for the Internet will continue growing, predicts Cordes. “As the user’s response time and ease-of-use continue to improve, people will start to use the Internet for more and more diverse applications,” he says

Most people are accustomed to using dial-up modems that connect to a phone line to access the Internet, but we can look for much faster connection times as existing technologies work their way into the marketplace. “Cable modems and DSL are two types of technology that are up to 100 times faster than what people are used to, and they do not tie up phone lines for hours at a time,” Cordes said.

A second aspect of technology that will impact people’s use of computers is wireless computing. “New systems will not be tied to a specific location but able to move about from place to place with ease,” Cordes says. “This will allow computing to become more integrated with daily life and activities, because some computing mechanisms will be at your disposal regardless of your physical location.

“As these new technologies become more common in the upcoming year, people will start using the Internet in ways they never thought of before,” Cordes predicts.