Re: Request for input on the definition of Broadband

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Stan Hanks" <stan () colventures com>
Date: September 2, 2009 4:21:39 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: Request for input on the definition of Broadband

Years and years ago, I had some minor skin condition that I showed to  
my regular doctor. He took a look and said “I’m going to send you down  
the hall to Dermatology”.

I queried as to why, since he was the medical director of this very  
large practice in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, and I liked  
to give him grief any time he showed any shortcomings.

He paused and said “It’s an “Aunt Minnie” thing.”

Couldn’t let that stand unchallenged, so I pressed him.

He elaborated, “You know, you walk down the street and you see an  
older lady standing at a bus stop and you say ‘Oh, that’s Aunt  
Minnie’, Anyone with whom you might be traveling could ask you, not  
unreasonably, ‘So, how do you know it’s her?’ You can’t really explain  
it elegantly – you grew up with her around all the time, you’ve known  
her forever, you just know it’s her. If really pressed, you could  
describe her in extreme detail – how tall she is, color of her hair,  
glasses, how she usually dresses, the mole on her nose, that sort of  
thing – but you’d wind up with a description that could lead someone  
that doesn’t know Aunt Minnie to mistakenly identify any number of  
older ladies as Aunt Minnie. I’d rather send you to someone that can  
look at this and go ‘Oh, it’s X’ rather than wade through a pile of  
differential diagnosis and still have a decent chance of getting it  
wrong.”

For me, “good broadband” is an Aunt Minnie thing.

I know it when I use it, and I know when I’m not using it, but even as  
a skilled professional in the space, I am hard pressed to devise an  
adequately robust definition which will both survive the test of time  
and press of progress, AND not let someone fob off a vastly inferior  
product and claim it’s good broadband because it meets the  
definitional criteria.

Stan


From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:49 AM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: Request for input on the definition of Broadband





Begin forwarded message:

> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> Date: September 2, 2009 11:46:39 EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>, Stagg Newman <lsnewmanjr () yahoo com>, Rob  
> Curtis <robert.curtis () fcc gov>, Tom Brown <thomas.brown () fcc gov>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Request for input on the definition of  
> Broadband
>
> Here is a concise, precise,  and I believe complete, definition that  
> can serve as a good starting point. Readers may note that it is a  
> definition that has served the Internet well.  It is 3 sentences long.
>
> Broadband is a low-latency and high-datarate access service that  
> provides ability to send and receive IP datagrams to hosts on the  
> worldwide public Internet, as defined by the full address space  
> defined by the IP versions currently  used.  The broadband transport  
> may use only the information placed into the IP header/envelope to  
> manage delivery, does not use, record, or retain content information  
> for any purpose other than law enforcement purposes. The public  
> internet is defined as the reachable set of hosts on all autonomous  
> systems that have agreed to exchange Internet traffic with one or  
> more peer autonomous systems in the public Internet.
>
> Comments:  this preserves technological evolvability, since it says  
> nothing about the technology underlying the transport, nor does it  
> say anything about the applications served.
>
>
> On 09/02/2009 04:55 AM, David Farber wrote:
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com>
> Date: September 1, 2009 6:01:00 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] Request for input on the definition of Broadband
>
> Dave,
>
> Yes, surely "broadband" should be parsed out into bandwidth,  
> latency, availability, and so on.
>
> More significantly, though, a useful definition will not be stated  
> in terms of specific values for those properties but rather will  
> adapt with changing technology and expectations.
>
> I would suggest this intuition for an adaptable definition: that a  
> "broadband" connection supports the vast majority of the currently  
> popular information resources on the internet with satisfactory  
> response time.  That is, "currently popular" at the time the  
> definition is invoked.  As new applications emerge, they up the ante.
>
> For example, as people are induced to put their information into  
> "the cloud", broadband service should make that indistinguishable  
> from local storage, which means that fast uploads will be required  
> as well as fast downloads.  Any form of offsite storage suffices for  
> this point -- I keep the master copies of my files on a university  
> server, so I really notice even brief service interruptions, and I  
> need symmetrical service rather than the common fast down/slow up  
> service because I need fast uploads for things like intermediate  
> file saves.
>
> Mary
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 11:07 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
> The other day I had a conversation with a friend at the Federal  
> Communications Commission. He asked an interesting question. When  
> people talk about broadband they tend to talk about numbers bits per  
> second except for.
>
> Something seems wrong with this approach. First it is very sensitive  
> to the advancement of technology any number will be obsolete in a  
> few years. Second of all, and maybe most important it ignores other  
> issues that would make any speed usable in many applications -- --  
> like latency chair etc. He asked if there was a "syntax" for  
> broadband -- -- that is a deeper way of characterizing when a system  
> supports broadband and when it does not.
>
> I offer to the IP community a chance to take a crack at this  
> interesting and potentially profitable challenge.
>
> Dave
>
>
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