Remember the good old days of the Internet, about two years ago, when you could send an email message and be reasonably sure that it would get there in a matter of moments? Today, with the number of Net users nearing 80 million worldwide, delivery can happen in a heartbeat, or take long enough to cause considerable headaches. Almost everyone has a horror story of a message that took days to arrive due to online traffic jams.
You can change that if you're willing to pay the price. Technology will soon be available that enables ISPs to prioritize email messages. The technology is akin to bringing the First-, Second-, and Third-Class Mail system of the US Postal Service to the Internet. First-Class messages get through faster, but they're pricier than Third-Class fare.
Littleton, Massachusetts-based Xedia Corp. will announce next week the first ISP to use its prioritizing technology, called class-based queuing. The company's product, Access Point, is a mix of routing hardware and software that allows service providers to classify the different uses of their networks, prioritize traffic, and then automatically assign network capacity to those uses. Network priorities can be assigned by application, such as email or file transfer protocol, by department or user, said Karen Barton, vice president of marketing at Xedia.
"Part of the way to think about this is that by controlling the rate that traffic enters the network, you're providing a better ability for the backbone network to know what is coming at it, and it can now be provisioned to meet the real demand, rather than guessing what the peak demand is going to be, and either overprovision at a high cost, or underprovision and not be able to deal with the peaks," said Barton. "We think this traffic management has a lot of implications."
The idea of classing data messages is of interest to a leading ISP that serves the business market. "We've been kicking that very idea around here," said Patrick Demski, senior product manager at Ardis Co., a wireless data network and business ISP in Lincolnshire, Illinois, that serves clients such as Motorola and IBM. "Right now, there are no queues built into the network. It is on a first-come, first-served basis. Whichever packet of data gets there first gets priority."
But, said Demski, he doesn't think service providers need to rush out and buy a technology to create the service. ISPs can develop their own switching software to place the messages in a prioritized queue. They could also pass along upgrades to users for use with their email packages. Algorithms, installed in the message header on a PC's messaging software, would indicate the class of the message.
"It is the same kind of code writing that is used to create a subject line in an email message header. The technology exists to do that right now. It is a matter of developing switching software for the network. That could be implemented rather quickly. It is not a minor project. But it is not a major project to do. It is a matter of applying people to the job," Demski said. Any ISP could do this, he added.
However, selling users on the idea of paying for a service that they view as free may be the most difficult task, even if delivery can be promised within an hour or within 24 hours. "In practice, it would be like placing a postage stamp to a letter. The less postage you pay, the longer it takes for the message to get there," he said. "Trouble is, no one knows how to price this yet."
Is the move toward Net toll-ways simple price-gouging by ISPs, desperate for the added revenues that queuing email would provide? Perhaps. But, such a system could also be employed by computer users to determine which mail is spam and which is important to read, for spammers would employ the Third-Class mail route, as they do with conventional mail, said Michael Ferro, president of Click Interactive, a Chicago-based extranet developer.
"Who needs government regulation of spam, when you can self-regulate by classing the mail on the user end? Instead of having one in-box, you can have three: for First-, Second-, and Third-Class email. This routing idea is one that is long overdue."
