Subject: Trip to WAIS From: rexb@dowjones.com eDate: Tue, 04 Nov 93 14:33:56 PDT
How the Web Was Won
Trip to WAIS From: rballard@dowjones.com Date: Fri, 10 Jun 94 14:33:56 PDTMessage-ID: <366@imagen.UUCP> Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Interoffice Memo To: Mike Rauch From: Rex Ballard Date: November 2, 1993 Subject: Trip Report to San Francisco October 19: Arrived at WAIS Inc., at about 9:40 and met John Duhring, who gave me a quick tour of the facilities while we waited for the others to arrive. Mike Bloom, Mike Compoly, Mark Feffer, and Greg Gerdy arrived by 9:50 and we started the meeting at about 9:55. Greg Gerdy reviewed the history of the relationship between Dow Jones and the principles of WAIS Inc. including the DowQuest project. He then described the planned relationship with WAIS Inc. John Duhring reviewed the recent history of the Internet and the recent growth in the Internet. The one caveat was that his information was already out of date. WAIS Inc. has been directly connected to the Internet since December 1991. Current figures given included: Breakdown: Commercial Users 51% (currently estimated at 75%) R&D 29% ( number not decreased, but now only 15%) Education 20% ( now about 10%) Population: 1,776,000 computer hosts (counts only hosts connected 24 hours per day, 7 days per week), Now almost 3 million. Over 60 million users have access to Internet in some form (E-Mail, News, File Transfer) through direct connection (SLIP, PPP, Frame Relay, or ATM) or indirect connection (Compuserve, Delphi, PSI, Fidonet, Genie, America On-Line...) with various levels of service. Average 250 gigabytes per day in traffic. Trip Report to San Francisco 11/02/93 Page 2 Related Projects: Network Navigator from O'Reilly signed 6000 subscribers for 16,000 pages on the first day. By October 1993, they were up to 45,000 pages per day. Subscriptions start at $5000/year for corporations and organizations. John also showed us the computer room. This included the Internet connection hub (about 8"x11"x3") and the customer interface box (about the size of a modem). WAIS also provides ethernet service to other companies in their office building. There were also several servers managed by WAIS as client servers. Technologies: We then began to distinguish the various types of connectivity that were available. For example, many of those who have access to the Internet only have access in the form of E-Mail to known recipients. Others have access to E-Mail, New, and File Transfer, but do not have access to interactive connections. There are those who have terminal access, but can only access the network in character (ASCII) mode. Then there are those directly connected to the Internet through dial-up or dedicated line service using Internet communications protocols such as SLIP or PPP. The quality and pricing of such Internet connectivity varies from region to region. We identified these directly connected customers as the "Low Hanging Fruit". These customers are more sophisticated to begin with and are in a position to make optimal use of the interactive WAIS clients and servers. Many of these clients are already using the "General Public License" version of WAIS. The Freeware version is slower and limited in its ability to serve users. The commercial version adds security, billing, auditing, and accounting capability. The commercial version also provides better performance and the ability to serve more users and larger databases. Demonstrations: John then gave demonstrations of WAIS, Gopher, and Worldwide Web. The commercial client and server offered some interesting features including multimedia retrieval. The examples shown included photographs of crystals from the Smithsonian Institute and spoken announcements from Digital Research. It wasn't much of a leap to consider the possibilities of advertising such as a Diamond Ring from a jewelry store, or a radio commercial. We discussed the possibility of Dow Jones referring to targeted advertising. This was possible. Wais can deliver GIF, TIFF, and MIME (Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions), and QuickTime formats as well as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. Lunch: At lunch, we discussed the overall direction of the information industry and some of the trends among Internet users. We discussed some of the trends coming up in electronic publishing. Global Village We went to Apple to discuss the Global Village project. This project is Apple's strategy for providing high quality Macintosh oriented user interfaces coupled with wide-area network (Internet) capability. The primary issues revolved around customer service and support. The different character of Macintosh users compared to Dow Jones users was noteworthy. The Macintosh users often required more support in terms of basic functions. Driving While driving from WAIS to Apple and Apple to WAIS, I was able to work with Mike Compoly to develop a simple non-technical explanation of Internet. He had a fairly good understanding of why Internet and TCP/IP markets were able to grow so rapidly. He also had a better sense of what was needed to support customers coming through the Internet. Trip Report to San Francisco 11/02/93 Page 3 Dinner We went to dinner at fisherman's wharf. Mike Bloom paid the check. We talked about some of the various ways that Dow Jones could take advantage of the Internet and some of the economics and logistics of serving Internet customers. We also discussed some of the new technologies that are coming as a result of the high speed 1 megabit and 24 megabit bandwidths. There was also an electronic publishing exposition going on in which WAIS was making a presentation. Essentially the challenge is now making the several hundred terabytes of information available to the millions of users (possibly 250 million by the end of 1994 -- including Europe, India, and Asia) in a way that will not overwhelm them, but in a way that gives them a few megabytes of information which can have the greatest impact on their business and personal lives. The simple examples of Jobs, Housing, Transportation, and "Personals" are examples of what drives the growth of the Internet. October 21 We began the meeting with a discussion of how to handle accounting and billing information. John focused primarily on a strategy based exclusively on a single user per Internet address. This raised a concern over multiple users using the same host to access the server. The question of how to best track the billing and accounting was left to WAIS to work out. The questions of customer service, including who would set up accounts, were also described. John recommended an on-line or E-Mail "form", which could be followed up with a confirmation phone call if necessary. Mike Bloom had several questions with regard to the international characteristics. One of the main concerns was the "culture" of the Internet, both here in the U.S. and in Europe. Europe has been building commercial TCP/IP networks for several years now. Encryption was most significant issuefor international. In the U.S., there was a concern about the hostility toward "Advertising". The specific concern is "Mass Mailings" to individual mail accounts based on capturing a "List". John was quick to distinguish the difference between this type of "Mail Barrage", and the type of user requested information characterized by WAIS and the interactive "News" groups. Internet etiquette, and technical contraints require that users only receive information in response to a request. We broke the discussion into two groups. I reviewed the certification with their programmer, Harry Morris. One interesting twist is that they are working on a cooperation between Ensemble and WAIS. Ensemble will forward the DowVision messages in TCP/IP packets to WAIS. This is part of a larger "quid pro quo" agreement between them. This may mean that we will want to certify Ensemble as a TCP/IP relay as well as certifying the Ensemble Database. There may be several interdependency issues. This is especially true if both client databases must acknowledge the packets before the DowVision packets are acknowledged. Summary Action Items 1. Contract - The contract needs to be signed. 2. DowVision Certification We will need to receive more detail than usual on the Internet Protocol being used between the "Modem" and the servers. Since this server will eventually be installed at Dow Jones, we want to be sure that we can duplicate the protocol being used between Ensemble and WAIS. WAIS was also less concerned about the "Real Time" characteristics of DowVision. They may simply choose to capture 5 minutes worth of data and transfer these capture files across the network. WAIS and Ensemble may be good candidates for the new tool- kit and broadcast integrator, even if in a relatively "Raw" form. Trip Report to San Francisco 11/02/93 Page 4 3. Customer Service and Billing. There needs to be some sort of system that identifies specific users. This is similar to the "Logit" code in current Dow Jones products. In addition, we will probably want to provide a "subscription kit" which can be distributed via Internet (A WAIS server can also function as an File transfer server) the alternative may be a flat rate per server. The user may be willing to set up billing directly through his credit card if the number is encrypted when it is sent to Dow Jones. 4. User Interfaces. Currently, the focus is on the real-time connected customer connected via a SLIP link or dedicated Frame Relay link. A "mail" or similar interface designed to minimize the time spent on the dial-up link. In the Eastern States business users are charged a premium for using analog modem links for more than a certain length of time. This is an incentive to upgrade to digital service. The main reason is that they can transmit almost 6 times as much traffic, and they can use "idle time", time the user spends reviewing information. A single 56Kb circuit can actually service over 180 users if each reads 1000 bytes and spends 30 seconds reviewing it. Strategically, we may want to create a presence by supporting a "Mail" interface where one connection provides the headlines from a search and the second downloads selected articles. 5. Latency. Currently, the WAIS interface to graphics is somewhat slow, even at 56Kb. Most of this appears to be server latency. It still requires 16 seconds to download a 100KByte illustration (GIF file). The current client just has the user wait. The user needs to be able to queue up multiple illustrations and read them as they come in so that he has the sense of being "busy" rather than "waiting". 6. Build demo software here. WAIS offers their demonstration software over FTP. We should get an MS-Windows client and an X-11 Client as well as the local SunOS and HP servers. The version WAIS will provide can provide better indexing of Metadata, Category Codes, and Company Codes. Clients (with Dow Jones Logo) could provide a custom TextManager type interface. 7. Internet Connectivity Real-time interactive Internet connectivity is critical. This will make it possible to communicate with both WAIS and Ensemble as well as several other Alliance Developers. We can test their servers and clients for "Look and Feel" issues and have many of the customer service issues handled without having to make as many trips. We need to have Mike Kardasz, Mike Bloom, and Mike Compoly and Rex Ballard in close communication. This will help everyone get a better sense of what the customer will be encountering as they connect. It will also help us to determine what support for fire-walls and gateway management are necessary. WAIS will also be able to help us look at interactive fire-wall gateways. We can also explore security options used by other major corporations such as Kerberos (Used with IBM Mainframes), DES (Military), or Clipper (the security chip "blessed" by U.S. Law Enforcement). The key here is that we want to be at least a few steps ahead of customers making the transition from E-Mail to full service Internet. Dow Jones also has 65,000 Internet host addresses (1 class B address) and connection to several X.25 networks. Each of these connections is worth a minimum of $100/month.