The world’s most advance technology will have it 20th Birthday on Aug, 8th; thats when the “World Wide Web (www)” first gained a public face in 1991.
CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few Web pages at CERN.
The World Wide Web in its short span has grown into a multi-trillion dollar business – making it the fastest growing business in the history of mankind. In 1998, less than .1% of the population of Costa Rica (including the World) had no clue to what the Internet was.
With the Costa Rica’s Free Trade Agreement and ICE’s suddenly lost of its IP monopoly (caused by competition), and its recent monopoly on Apple iPhones Costa Rica is demanding technology, particularly internet service at an alarming rate.
According to a poll we have been conducting, seventy-eight percent of Costa Ricans are influence by technology. As one person commented on one of our Blog posts:
“The area we stayed suddenly had NO 3g coverage. I’m told that ICE is scrambling to ‘reconfigure’ their network to fight the new competition. Had a good signal in September and later in February, but now almost nothing. The new company (don’t know who it is) is putting up towers and running fiber at a blazing pace. Six months to a year and we should be good.”
The key to this comment is, running fiber [cable]. Fiber cable offers many advantages over conventional copper cable lines. It is able to transmit data much faster over greater distances and because the cable is smaller in diameter and weighs less, it makes an ideal alternative for a wide variety of cabling solutions. Since the conductor is glass and cannot generate electricity, fiber is immune to all sorts of interference. This means that it can come in direct contact with high-voltage electrical equipment, water, power lines and lightning, all while still putting out a superior performance. Because fiber optic cables cost less to maintain, the price for service tends to be much less than cable and very competitive with Costa Rica’s current copper DSL/Internet system.
Obviously this competitor of ICE is no dummy and looking towards the future. Up until a few years ago, the major concern was IP address were running out of their digit numbers. IP addresses are limited, one to every internet user. Before the number of available addresses is only limited by the current IP technology in use. We are currently using IPv4, which allocates ONLY, about 4.3 Billion possible unique addresses.
BUT in the next few years the internet will be migrating towards IPv6, In theory, using IPv6, there would be exactly 2128, or about 3.403 × 1038 unique host interface addresses OR 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique IP addresses or AS Simson Garfinkel wrote, “… roughly 5,000 addresses for every square micrometer of the Earth’s surface”.
Look at it this way, IPv6 is being tested (probably the first partnership of heated rivals) by the two major heavy-weights of the Internet, Facebook and Google.
Why, the partnership? The answer is a no-brainer, more users, means, a ton of more revenue.
In other words, Facebook and Google are no dummies and assures us that the Internet will continue to grow at an alarming rate. By 2015, the Internet is expected to quadruple in size.
But IPv6 will have its Good, Bad and Ugly.
1) Costa Rica Internet use has jumped 1000% in the last 4 years and that will continue to grow as more and more get Internet service. By 2016, it is estimated around 80% of Costa Ricans will be online and with that said, more international users logging on to see what the Central American country has to offer.
2) Competition, businesses building websites increases at about 3 million a day. If you had a website 4-8 years ago, it may have took ONLY a 100 website views to get 2-4 sales and/or inquires. Nowadays, with so many competitor websites and users surfing the Internet, it may now take 1000, to maybe even 10,000 views to now get that 2-4 sales and/or inquires. Since we deal in websites, we have seen a 500% increase just in Costa Rica websites in the last two years.
2) Malicious Means, like, sp@m, h@cking, phishing viruses, malware and spyware. As a directory our sp@m is almost gotten out of control. Phishing scammers have already targeted a few Banks of Costa Rica and the Internet now makes it easier for real estate fraud. And with IPv6, this will be 20 times worse, because it will allow those with malicious means to change IP addresses in a heatbeat. The other day, I spend almost six hours updating security on my accounts websites.
All in all and no matter which way you look at it, the “Good” will dominate over the Bad and Ugly – or just good ol’ fashion growing pains 
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