Storage and Networks
With electronic documents, there is a basic logistical choice. A storage-intensive strategy involves using local storage everywhere. In this case, the network need not be used to read the journal. At the other extreme, the document might be stored once-for-the-world at a single site with network access used each time a journal is read. Between these two extremes is a range of choices. With the cost saving of fewer storage sites comes the extra cost of increased reliance on data communication networks.
Data storage is an important cost. Although the unit costs of digital storage have fallen and will continue to fall sharply through time, there is still a considerable advantage to using less storage. Data storage systems involve not simply the storage medium itself, but a range of services to keep the data on-line. A data center typically involves sophisticated personnel, backup and archiving activities, and software and hardware upgrades. If 10 campuses share a data storage facility, the storage cost per campus should be much less than if each provides its own. Having one storage site for the world might be the lowest storage cost per campus overall.
To use a remote storage facility involves data communication. The more remote the storage, the greater the reliance on data networks. A central problem for data communication is congestion. Data networks typically do not involve traffic-based fees. Indeed, the cost of monitoring traffic so as to impose fees may be cost-prohibitive. Monitoring network traffic so as to bill to individuals on the basis of use would require keeping track of the origin of each packet of data and accounting for it by tallying a register that notes source, time, and date. Because even simple mail messages may be broken into numerous packets for network shipment, the quantity of items to be tracked is much more numerous than tracking telephone calls. If every packet must go through the toll plaza, the opportunity for delay and single points of failure may be substantial. Because each packet may follow a different route, tracking backbone use with a tally on each leg would multiply the complexity. Traffic-based fees seem to be impractical for the Internet. Without traffic-based fees, individual users do not face the cost of their access. Like a driver on an urban highway at rush hour, each individual sees only his or her own trip, not the adverse effect of his or her trip in slowing others down. An engineering response to highway congestion is often to build more highways. Yet the added highways are often congested as well. In data networking, an engineering solution is to invent a faster network. Yet individuals deciding to use the network will see only their personal costs and so will have little incentive to economize. The demand for bandwidth on networks will surely grow with the pace of faster networks, for example, with personal videophones and other video-intensive applications. Without traffic-based pricing, congestion will be endemic in data networks.
Another response to network congestion is to build private networks with controlled access. Building networks dedicated to specific functions seems relatively expensive, but may be necessary to maintain a sufficient level of performance. Campus networks are private, and so access can be controlled. Perhaps investments in networking and technical change can proceed fast enough on individual campuses so as to allow the campus network to be reliable enough for access to journals and other academic information.
Because the telephone companies have launched data network services, they seem likely to introduce time-of-day pricing. Higher rates in prime time and higher rates for faster access speeds are first steps in giving incentives to economize the use of the network and so to reduce congestion. America Online (AOL) ran into serious difficulty when, in late 1996, it shifted from a per hour pricing strategy to a flat monthly rate to match other Internet service providers. AOL was swamped with peak period demand, demand it could not easily manage. The long distance telephone services seem to be moving to simpler pricing regimes, dime-a-minute, for example. The possibility of peak period congestion, however, likely means that some use of peak period pricing in telephones and in network services will remain desirable. In the end, higher education's ability to economize on data storage will depend on the success of the networks in limiting congestion.
Figure 6.4.
Network Intensity and Database Integration
Some milestones in the choice of storage and networks are illustrated along the horizontal margin of Figure 6.4. The rapid growth of the World Wide Web in the last couple of years has represented a shift toward the right along this margin, with fewer storage sites and more dependence on data communication. The World Wide Web allows a common interface to serve many computer platforms, replacing proprietary tools. Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) seems to offer an effective vehicle to present documents in original printed format with equations, tables, and graphics, yet allow text searching and hypertext links to other Web sites. The software for reading PDF documents is available without charge, is compatible with many Web browsers, and allows local printing. Some of the inconveniences of older network-based tools are disappearing.
That rightward shift may offer the electronic agent an advantage over either the publisher or the library. That is, the electronic agent may acquire rights from publishers and sell access to libraries, while taking responsibility for an optimal
choice of storage sites and network access. Storage might end up in a low-cost location with the electronic agent responsible for archiving the material and migrating the digital files to future hardware and software environments.