Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: We're Stuck In The Slow Lane Of The Information Trollway -- it's all about the billing relationship
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 20:13:50 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Bob Frankston <bob37-2 () bobf frankston com> Date: May 8, 2007 5:03:11 PM EDT To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () dandin com>Subject: RE: [IP] We're Stuck In The Slow Lane Of The Information Trollway -- it's all about the billing relationship
If you get what you ask for you will live in the poverty of your limited imagination. If you aren’t prescriptive and you take advantage of opportunity you will get more than you can imagine.
As usual I find these panic attacks to be very worrisome – it’s as if we acted on the belief that cell phones kill bees (as per the recent letter on IP). Need I keep reminding people that home networks now run at a gigabit only because no one worried about the speed and let normal marketplace processes do their thing. If we had set speed goals I am completely certain we’d be stuck at 10Mbps and any attempt to go faster would violate the detailed technical requirements presumed necessary to assure that all elements of the system interoperate (as per the Y2K theory of systems design).
Important Caveat – it’s important to understand marketplace architecture – it’s about decoupling, and limiting corporate control. But those who seek to do use good often confuse enabling marketplaces with protecting corporate from the very forces that give marketplaces their vitality.
This is precisely what we see here. You are supposed to petition your broadband provider to do more of the same and in doing so give it more control. These Privileged Service Providers are very threatened by the Internet so they have a strong stake in having the ability to be in legal compliance with goals (and being heroes to boot) and then using their clout to treat all those who dare do better than them (AKA, users – their competitors) as a threat to the natural order. This allows them sneak one past the antitrust laws.
If we can get gigabits from each strand of copper imagine what is available in a bundle of fiber! And even if we use the existing copper if you place a DSL repeater at the half way point you quadruple capacity (and repeat). Even better if you treat all strands as a common medium which reduces support costs since the strands become fungible. I’m not arguing copper vs fiber (or wireless) – just that we are falling for a con job that leaves us with an infinitesimal portion of the potential capacity.
And the con goes on – by keeping us mesmerized by the shiny strands of glass and we forget that what’s really important is coverage – what good 100Mbps to your TV or PC when you have fallen down in the park and can’t get up because you don’t have a billing relationship with the accidental path of service-limited access points. It’s all about the idea that you must have a billing relationships with the accidental path your bits take! This assures that we cannot create our own solutions. If we didn’t try to contain the bits within this billable paths it wouldn’t be possible to limit the capacity of the medium.
As a relevant aside it seems as if the security leak at TJMax was due to an unguarded link (Wi-Fi). In the spirit of redoubling our path dependency there are calls for better passwords for each link. There seems to be little understanding of the concept of end-to-end. These issues are very much aligned with a fundamental shift from naïve physical metaphors to more abstract concepts –how many generations will it take?
Speed is trivial – the dial up modem completely trounced the entire Interactive TV industry thanks to the web which gave people a reason to find their own solutions without waiting for a service provider to deign to provision a path. As long as you don’t over-defined the solution you’ll get speed – it’s hard not to.
The Information Highway to Hell is provisioned with the fast intentions that play well on TV. They play far better than “Land of Opportunity” does.
http://www.frankston.com -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 1:46 PM To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] We're Stuck In The Slow Lane Of The Information Highway Begin forwarded message: From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks) Date: May 8, 2007 9:49:49 AM EDT To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] We're Stuck In The Slow Lane Of The Information Highway WE'RE STUCK IN THE SLOW LANE OF THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY [SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] [Commentary] When it comes to reasonably priced, high-speed Internet service, the United States is an embarrassment. Despite years of promises from politicians and technology titans, the U.S. continues to lag far behind our global competitors. Worse, much of U.S. "broadband" service is only a smidgen faster than a dial-up modem. Both government and the telecommunications industry are to blame. The technology to deliver truly high-speed Internet access is there, especially for cable subscribers. Customers need to demand better service from providers. The government needs to step in, too. The U.S. needs a national strategy to get affordable broadband to every man, woman and child by the end of the decade. The federal government's lack of leadership in this area is a disgrace. Despite a 2004 promise by President Bush to deliver "universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," his administration has done nothing to advance that goal. <http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_5836382?nclick_check=1> ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Re: We're Stuck In The Slow Lane Of The Information Trollway -- it's all about the billing relationship David Farber (May 12)