Going Public: More Corporate Network Traffic Bypasses Private Paths

Computerworld - A few years ago, the idea of using the public Internet as the primary network connection at MasterCard International Inc.'s branch offices wouldn't have been a serious option. Today, some of the financial services company's smaller offices are doing exactly that. For those locations, the Internet has become the access point for data entry, e-mail and other internal functions.
"All of that is supportable," says Jim Hull, vice president of engineering services, because end-to-end reliability and performance have improved to the point where the Internet is now "good enough."
MasterCard isn't the only organization to take notice. "The Internet is improving in its performance and in its price point," says Doug Hill, associate technical fellow and network chief architect at The Boeing Co. in Chicago. "We're using it a lot more than we used to."
In addition to supporting smaller remote offices, Boeing even runs some voice-over-IP traffic over the Internet, although broader adoption will need to wait for quality-of-service (QoS) functions to evolve, Hill says.
By using the Internet, both companies cut operating costs because the traffic no longer moves over ISDN, leased lines or other private network services.
"Enterprises are increasingly interested in Internet substitution. They're finding that they can offload a great deal of [network traffic]," says David Passmore, an analyst at Burton Group in Midvale, Utah.
Today, the Internet is chipping away at the periphery of the private network services that make up global networks. As the Internet continues to evolve, more of corporate IT's global traffic will be routed over it.
Although the Internet is likely to play a bigger role in corporate networks, it isn't likely to replace private network services anytime soon. Among the limitations: a lack of QoS capabilities needed for multimedia applications such as videoconferencing, and relatively weak security.
Faster, Better, Cheaper
The Internet is not only a better network than it was a few years ago, but it continues to improve rapidly.
"The Internet is larger than it was five years ago by a factor of at least five," says Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet and chief Internet evangelist at Google Inc. "It continues to function reliably, and the underlying systems have higher absolute capacity."
Long-term studies of the Internet back up Cerf's assessment. At Stanford University, the International Committee for Future Accelerators has been tracking Internet performance and reliability for several years. Its tests show that the global reliability of the Internet has been improving by 40% to 50% annually, while performance has increased at an annual rate