"Information Technology at AOL"
By Doug Peterson

John Paul still remembers staying up all night to build a multiplexor during his student days at CSL in the mid 1970s.  As he put it, "The thing I always come back to is a love for building products, and I first learned that at CSL."

Today, Paul's passion for building products shows through in his role as executive vice president in charge of the America Online Web Properties Product Group.  He oversees the development of products, features and platforms across AOL's Web brands and services - including such recognizable names as Netscape, Compuserve, MapQuest, and AOL Instant Messenger.

An electrical engineering graduate from the U of I in 1976, Paul first walked into the doors of CSL as a sophomore and worked as an operator on the laboratory's DEC system.  Twenty-five years later, he walked through the doors of CSL as one of the featured speakers at the laboratory's 50^th anniversary symposium.

At the symposium, Paul talked about the phenomenal growth in AOL, which boasted 14 million subscribers when he joined the company two and a half years ago.  Today, AOL has 31 million subscribers, and they're adding 5 to 6 million new ones every year.

What's more, during the peak period each day of 10 p.m. Central Time, 2.3 million people will be online with AOL at the same time.  And the numbers continue to go up at a tremendous pace.

What's amazing, Paul says, is that the AOL architecture can handle this rapidly rising traffic load without requiring a redesign in the software.  "We built the system so it can scale without being forced to redesign." 

But as scalable as the system might be, there are limits.  According to Paul, the system is designed to handle about 10 million people online at the same time and "then that architecture is going to run out of gas.  One of the things we're thinking about is how we can engage people at CSL to help us think about that architecture.  How are we going to deal with 25 million people online?  We're going to get there in the next 10 years."

As Paul explained, if you peel back the surface layer and look inside AOL, there is tremendous technology.  And that technology translates into reliability and connectivity.  It used to be that roughly 8 percent of the information packets on the AOL network were lost, Paul said.  But today, AOL is down to a 1-percent packet loss - a vast improvement over the horror stories of the mid 1990s, when some called AOL "America Off-line."

Looking to the future, Paul said AOL is expecting technologies to converge - until many forms of media, such as radio, music, cable TV, and movies, eventually come from the Internet through a single system in the home.  That's one reason why AOL recently merged with Time-Warner, providing links to all forms of "old media" - television, print, movies, and music.

In its "first chapter," Paul said, the Internet transformed certain businesses, most notably mail and the long distance telephone business.  Next to transform will be TV, movies, radio, music, and other form of old media.

The first chapter of the Internet is over, he said.  "This is the second chapter."

See John Paul speak on the future of IT and media services in the home

"The thing I always come back to is a love for building products, and I first learned that at CSL."

John Paul, Executive Vice President,
America Online