National Information Infrastructure (NII)
——In fact, information infrastructure has already existed in every country, but it is different in terms of scale, advanced nature, and functional perfection. That's it. However, the NII proposed by the United States this time is a high-level goal. It requires the establishment of an information highway across the United States that can reach all parts of the country, that is, a ubiquitous and ubiquitous interconnection composed of communication networks, computers, information resources, user information equipment, and people. The information network, through it, provides each person and his (her) information equipment with the ability to access NII. With this ability, people, families, schools, libraries, hospitals, governments, and companies can be connected one by one. , Can obtain a variety of public and dedicated information resources, can transmit various forms of information such as audio, data, graphics, video and multimedia, and can meet the different applications and different performance requirements required by different types of users ( Such as distance, speed, time delay, connection frequency and hold time, etc.). In other words, through NII, a series of complex and different but easy-to-use services can be provided, so that each user can get the best performance-price ratio.
National Information Infrastructure Content
——NII (National Information Infrastructure, National Information Infrastructure) specifically includes the following five points:
A series of continuously expanding instruments and equipment
Such as cameras, scanners, keyboards, telephones, fax machines, computers, switches, high-density disks and CDs, audio and video tapes, cables, wires, communication satellites , Optical fiber transmission lines, microwave communication networks, televisions, monitors, printers, etc.
NII integrates and interconnects these physical devices to lay the foundation for the various technological advances in the information age to be used by the public. In addition to the physical composition, the importance of NII to the majority of users and the country depends more on the following four contents.
The information itself
This information can be embodied in the form of television programs, scientific or commercial databases, images, recordings, library files and other media. At present, a large amount of this kind of information is distributed in various government agencies, and valuable information is disseminated from laboratories, studios, publishers, etc. every day.
Various applications and software
Users can use these programs and software to access, process, organize and refine a large amount of information that is provided by NII facilities and available at any time.
Various network standards and transmission codes
Rely on them to realize the interconnection and interoperability between networks to ensure the safety and reliability of personal secrets and networks.
People
The job of these people is to mine information, develop applications and services, build equipment, train other personnel, etc. Most of them are in private companies.
——Why did the government come forward to propose the construction of an information superhighway in the United States? This is as the US Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly emphasized: Building an information superhighway is the hub for the United States to grasp the opportunities for future world competition. In fact, the U.S. government is launching an information revolution, hoping to integrate the strengths of different companies to jointly build an information highway, complete the transition from the industrial age to the information age in the United States, develop a larger potential market, and slowly recover the United States from the economy. Freed from the predicament, once again stimulate the prosperity and development of the US economy, just like the role played by the American highway network in the industrial age, and promote the United States to become the world's top economic power.
——The new services provided by NII in the future will be based on the following facts: 1. Mainly to transmit graphics, text, video and multimedia information; 2. Networked computer capabilities; 3. Advanced Audio, graphic and video processing capabilities; 4. Personal mobility and unrestricted communication; 5. Various information services; 6. Intelligent broadband network.
——The new services provided by NII will have the following characteristics: 1. It has nothing to do with distance; 2. It has nothing to do with location; 3. It has nothing to do with time; 4. It highlights interactivity and provides services on demand; 5. Human-to-human communication tends to be personal, that is, it has all the attributes of personal communication; 6. The interaction between humans and machines becomes more natural, such as using voice control or using natural language instead of machine language.
In short, a high-level NII will be able to provide humans with information services anytime, anywhere. To achieve "anytime, anywhere, anytime," it is necessary to produce a large amount of dynamic information that can be circulated and stored arbitrarily in the NII. It is necessary to build a highway that allows any information to circulate and access channels to every household. It is necessary to equip the network with the ability to manage the entire system and The high level of intelligence to provide various friendly services according to people's wishes requires the manufacture of various user information devices that can ultimately transmit information to humans in the best way, and a set of policies and management methods need to be formulated. What the United States wants to achieve is such a high-level NII.
Development prospects
In fact, it is more accurate to rename the information superhighway as the super information superhighway, because the original English word for the information superhighways is Information Superhighways, not Information Highways. One more key word Super (super) is added to reflect its level. In the ITU ITU document on Global Information Infrastructure (GII), Information Superhighways and Information Highways have been distinguished to indicate different levels.
From a physical perspective, NII in each country consists of four major parts: information resource system, user information equipment, local network and long-distance network. The information resource system is the place where information is collected, stored, updated, provided and managed to form information resources. User information equipment is the interface equipment between human and NII, through which digital information in the network becomes an information form that human organs can perceive. The local network and long-distance network complete the information service mode setting, information transmission, information exchange, information distribution, information service monitoring, maintenance and billing functions. From the perspective of service provision, NII can be divided into three layers. The first layer is the service layer, which defines and produces various services for each user; the second layer is the service delivery layer, which is responsible for delivering services to users in a cost-effective way. The third layer is the service management layer, which completes all the operation support work required to provide services to users, including monitoring, maintenance, and billing. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no equal sign between NII and the information superhighway. The information superhighway is only a major component of high-level NII, and NII involves the entire process and all links of information activities. It is also stated in the ITU document that the network elements that make up the GII include existing networks, information highways, super information highways, service providers, application providers, and transportation providers. Therefore, having an information infrastructure in a country does not mean having an information highway, and having a few high-speed channels does not mean having a high-level modern NII. Just like transportation, having transportation infrastructure does not mean having highways, and having a few highways does not mean having high-level modern transportation infrastructure. The U.S. government initially considered the Internet as the cornerstone of NII in the United States. Later, after listening to the opinions of many large companies, it realized that the Internet is still far from the goal of NII in terms of information resources, information networks, or information usage. It cannot replace NII to connect professionals from all walks of life and ordinary citizens to achieve the purpose of serving the whole people.
——Achieving high-level NII requires some basic technology to support. Although many technologies (such as chip technology, signal processing technology and software technology, etc.) are common, the different components of NII still require some specific basic technologies. The information source part requires processor technology, information storage technology, signal processing and compression technology, information change technology, information navigation technology, user account management technology and database technology, etc.; user information equipment involves various information appliances, audio and video signal processing and Compression technology, display technology, software, etc.; local network and long-distance network part need advanced copper wire, optical fiber and wireless broadband transmission technology (including access technology), voice/data/video/multimedia switching technology, intelligent network node technology, Communication protocol, signal processing and compression technology, numbering and addressing technology, network management technology, software, etc. The technologies of B-ISDN, intelligent network, ATM switching, multimedia communication, and personal communication that began to be researched and developed vigorously in the late 1980s and early 1990s are actually inseparable from NII, and they are all key technologies to realize NII. From a network perspective, the key is to solve the three major problems of access, interconnection and intelligence.