| William H. Magill on 10 Dec 2004 19:52:02 -0000 |
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On 09 Dec, 2004, at 10:21, Eric Hidle wrote: There are a few conditions that make asymmetric linespeeds not only feasible, but appropriate.
First, traffic patterns from home users typically include far more
The "problem" is that of "computer literacy" ... and not on the part of the end user!!! Usage increases as familiarity with the mechanisms increase. "The Industry" as a whole still has no idea what a "Personal Computer" is good for, or how to use it, let alone what "the net" is all about. In the beginning, the Internet was all about peer-to-peer communication. However, "The Industry" had no idea what that was, all they had any experience with was Centralized Main-Frames. It is an attitude left-over from the 19th Century Industrial Revolution -- "Centralized capital expenditure," spread the cost over many users of the "service bureau." This is the model of the Electric Power grid, and to a lesser extent of the Telecommunications business. When "Big Iron" was expensive it "made sense" because not many people had it or could afford it. The same was true of the Central Office Switch. The ARPAnet was far more "interconnected" than the Internet is today. Today, "everybody" has re-made the Internet in the image of Ma Bell. But even Ma Bell is re-configuring. They don't build expensive Central Offices and burry 500 pair cables any more. They don't have to, the technology has changed. For one thing, almost any PC (let alone a G5 or AMD64) is significantly more powerful than any main-frame was 5 years ago! And disk storage? At one time disks were expensive, today, they are dirt cheap. Global Crossing and L3 had the right idea, they were just abut 5 years too early. Today, there is a lot of unused "dark fibre" in the ground. The problem that is growing with DSL is that people are uploading more and This is the "computer literacy" issue -- The asymmetric model may have been valid when the only traffic on the Net was ASCII text. The problem is not with DSL as a technology, but with the particular hardware used to implement it... which was DESIGNED around that asymmetric fallacy. You hit the nail on the head. But you forgot VoIP and that long held dream -- the Video Phone. People are sending "music files, home movies and pictures," not only to family, but to friends and acquaintances! They are also creating their own websites and streaming servers, not to mention things like iChat. The "last mile providers" don't realize this change has happened, or if they do, refuse to do anything about it. They still believe that AOL and CompuServe is the standard by which all others should be judged! But we all know what happened to CompuServe, and what is happening to AOL -- they are no longer relevant! But that is who both Cable and DSL folks compare themselves to -- XX-times faster than "dial-up." The "Last mile providers" have no clue what is happening in Their Industry. They don't even know what "Their Industry" is anymore. They talk about "convergence" but they have no idea what the term means, let alone what it implies. They dismiss Apple and their "iLife" and "Digital Hub" talk because Apple is not Microsoft and has no market share -- but they don't realize that while Apple's market share is small, the absolute numbers are not. And they don't realize that every OS X box is a web server and can stream Quicktime without even trying. And Linux ... that is even lower on their radar than Apple, after all anything that is "free" can't be any good or widely used! It was interesting yesterday to listen to John Mallone of Liberty Media claiming that Verizon's Fibre to the Premises plan was a waste of money! ... that they didn't need to provide that kind of bandwidth -- that NOBODY would ever need more than 20 meg worth of bandwidth, up or downstream! Mallone clearly never had anything to do with any kind of Computer Gaming and has no idea how close home-based Virtual Reality "Interactive gaming" is. It will easily be "quite common" amongst "early adopters" within 5 years ... especially with enabling technology like Fibre to the Premises. The US is ranked something like 6th (or was it 18th) worldwide in terms of bandwidth available to the home. Hopefully, Verizon will roll-out their FTTP program in University City, sooner rather than later. Hopefully, it won't be hamstrung with all kinds of "hub and spoke" topology issues. Hopefully it will provide a "mesh" so that the Internet can go back to being the Peer-to-Peer environment it was intended to be. ... after all, that's what Bit Torrent and its friends are all about. 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 # XP1000 [Alpha EV6] magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com whmagill@gmail.com
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