Internet research center founded Northwestern University

    Tuesday, April 6, 1999


    IBM and Cisco spearhead effort to create technology for the future.
    ZDNet:
    By Matthew Broersma
    http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2237535,00.html

    Northwestern University on Tuesday banded together with several partners in the high-tech industry to create a research center focused on futuristic Internet applications for businesses and consumers.

    The International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), which is already in operation, is located at Northwestern's campuses in Chicago and Evanston, Ill., and at IBM facilities in Schaumburg, Ill.

    Corporate partners include IBM (NYSE:IBM), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) and Ameritech Corp. (NYSE:AIT). Along with Northwestern, the four entities contributed about $10 million to the project.

    "iCAIR is the first of its kind, an advanced center for the development of prototypes of advanced, 21st-century applications," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM's Internet division. "This is very much a real-world laboratory, enabling us to show customers how they can leverage high-speed networks to radically transform their businesses."

    The center will focus on applications for the faster, more robust Internet of the future, including videoconferencing, video-based distance learning, telemedicine and other rich-media-based communications.

    iCAIR is one of several current forays into advanced Internet-based systems. Northwestern University, for example, is also a founding member of the Internet2 project for linking academic institutions with a high-speed, next-generation network.

    Notable R&D decline
    But overall, research and development has declined in the last 30 years, according to authorities, and some believe more intensive, long-term efforts are needed to ensure the continued growth of the technology sector.

    According to U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, D-Ill., overall R&D expenditures as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product have dropped by half since the 1960s, while federal expenditures are down 40 percent.

    He said technology research from that era is currently responsible for 80 percent of the stock market's value.

    The founding members of iCAIR intend that the center will continue to fuel this same kind of growth in the decades to come.

    The future Internet
    "The Internet of 10 years from now will not be anything like the Internet of today," said Stephen Wolff, Cisco's executive director of its advanced Internet initiatives division.

    "There will be no such thing as logging onto the Internet -- you will always be on the Internet, it will be part of the woodwork... [and] if this is true, we need to think about how to build such a network."

    'There will be no such thing as logging onto the Internet -- you will always be on the Internet, it will be part of the woodwork.'
    -- Stephen Wolff, Cisco