IP: Cables: Anyone home?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "Bob Frankston" <BobRMF17 () Bobf Frankston com>
> To: "Dave Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> There have been a number of cable modem and Internet issues mentioned
> recently and very much confusion. I don't expect to address any of these
> in depth in a short note but I feel obliged to make a few quick
> comments:
>
> 1. ATT has created a great deal of confusion by applying the "@Home"
> name to the MediaOne services it acquired. I do know that ATT paid six
> billion dollars for Excite by itself on the assumption that people would
> leave their home pages set to Excite. This seemed particularly naive and
> foolish. It was compounded by ATT comments about wanting a share of the
> e-commerce revenue generated by their customers. This seems to be part
> of a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Internet is. I think of it
> as confusing the Internet with the Home Shopping Network and not
> recognizing the layering and the end-to-end architecture. Are the
> current financial problems simply a result of foolish attempt to make
> money off of Excite? Is the connectivity service itself a problem?
>
> 2. I had a long argument with an ATT customer support person who pointed
> to the FAQ that said I couldn't run a server at home. But nothing in the
> legal agreements (for MediaOne) said this and I final got bumped to a
> senior tech who said there was no legal and binding agreement and the
> first tech was simply wrong. This also means the FAQ was wrong and (to
> put it nicely) disingenuous. He did say, and I understand, that they
> want to discourage high volume servers. But this kind of confusion only
> exacerbates problems. Closely related is the whole notion of supporting
> an operating system. The lack of an architectural understanding
> compounds the problems by confusing supporting the network with
> supporting the OS. Often the advice about the OS and home networks is
> simply wrong and exacerbates problems.
>
> 3. As to NATs, given all this confusion and the ownership of the service
> by companies that believe it is their right to choose what you are
> allowed to watch and then charge you based on the value of the content,
> is it any wonder that they don't have the notion that they are not
> supposed to make rules on content? One reason I am concerned about
> applying the @Home brand to the MediaOne services is that MediaOne has
> been one of the better providers. In addition to not banning servers
> they actually encourage the use of NATs for home networks.
>
> 4. But, for those enamored with NATs, remember that they are just an
> interim kludge because of the artificial limits on the number of IP
> addresses. With IPV6 NATs should go away. All we would need are routers.
> The port blocking capabilities are of value to legacy systems that
> default to running all network connections open and exposed. Rather than
> focusing on NATs we must take the responsibility to make sure that each
> system can safely be attached to a septic network. Otherwise we have a
> situation akin to a "bubble child" (one raised in an sterile bubble) who
> fails to develop the immunities necessary for the larger world.
>
> 5. Finally we have the "death of the Internet". Yes, there is a war
> raging. It is about real tolerance for disruption, not just tolerance
> for other religions. A Geoff points out, the Internet has been a source
> of economic growth. If we are afraid of taking chance, we must prevent
> anything that is not tried and true. Unfortunately, this means we must
> ban the opportunity for doing any better based on the false premise that
> given the possibilities of both better and worse we will choose worse.
> The confusion stems from confusing different with worse and the
> confusion between short term chaos and long term benefit. I would argue
> (and plan to do so at length) that "worse" is self-limiting and thus a
> decentralized evolving system like the Internet does select for better
> simply because better persists. The consequences of foolish choices like
> purchasing Excite seem to confirm this.
>
>
>
> Bob Frankston
> http://www.Frankston.com


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