| William H. Magill on Tue, 10 Jun 2003 12:48:05 -0400 |
|
On Monday, June 9, 2003, at 03:51 PM, Jeff 'Jephree' Mealo wrote: Is this a possibility anytime in the near future? if those with broadband
What you are asking for is "free for you" access. It is NOT free for the person who is "sharing" their bandwidth. They have to pay for it. That sounds like a pretty selfish position on your part. Now you might argue "But the Internet is free," but that would be simply a very naive statement. Even in the "good old days" of the ARPAnet, it was never free. It was paid for by the Military -- ARPA = Advanced Research Projects Administration of the Defense Department. (And if you are not aware of how much TCP/IP and the Internet were involved in the recent Gulf War, you were not watching the nightly news and paying attention.) In the "old days" Companies, including Universities, buried the costs of ALL data processing activities in "overhead." Today, that is no longer true, and hasn't been for 20 plus years now. The cost of an OC6 connection is not "pocket change." The scenario today is still that some grant, still frequently from the DOD, pays the actual costs, and the rest of the corporate entity gets to use it. So you now have some person shelling out $50 per month for 1.5 meg worth of Cable modem bandwidth. (You don't believe that they really give you 10 meg do you?) Now comes the nasty part... unless you cough up some big bucks for the appropriate hardware to control it, bandwidth is basically an all or nothing proposition. So if one person is using the bandwidth, it's cool, but when two or three or more climb on, response can go to hell in a hand-basket, fast. And if someone does a large transfer, it can effectively cease for the others. One other thing to remember. The days of anonymous access to the Internet are over. Similarly, so are those of "free" access. Even at Colleges and Universities, the cost of your access is bundled into the tuition and fees you pay. Somebody has to pay the piper somewhere along the line. So, today, you have the Starbucks model. Which is also being played out at many other locations around the country, including most "top of the line" hotels. You can latch on to their wireless "carrier" "for free," but you then have to log in to their ISP and pay to use the Internet. There have been quite a few places in the country where the "wireless community" has been established. Here are two of the oldest projects. http://www.seattlewireless.net/ See the FAQ: "So will I be able to get free Internet access if I connect to SWN?" http://www.bawug.org/ Another useful resource is: http://www.nodedb.com/ One last point... there is a very big difference between "Free" and "Low Cost." There is nothing in this world which is Free, including Speech. But there are many things which are "low cost." (Interestingly, the cost of "Free Beer" is much cheaper than the cost of "Free Speech," but that is another topic entirely.) T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com _________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
|
|