Comments on: Are Bandwidth Mergers Enough?

By: Hungfun

Hungfun — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 15:51:33 +0000

What about this blimp technology I’ve heard about is there really going to be old style airships delivering serious banwith to rule areas like mine in upstate new York and if so how long do you think it will take ?

By: Bill Nicholls

Bill Nicholls — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:57:57 +0000

Re: Bandwidth Mergers

There may be another way to look at this. Google’s dark fibre
acquisition gives a hint.

Specifically, I see some separate networks, some physically separate
like Google, some technically separate by being encapsulated in the
current nets (note plural).

Your comment about the deficiencies of Internet 1.0 are dead on, but
certainly not the fault of the originators in 1968 and 197x. Our use is
outgrowing the design of the original net, with somewhat predictable
results. QoS, priorities, filtering, etc. are all adaptive attempts to
remedy these limitations.

The high speed Internet2 used by science and government is slightly
different than 1.0, but more specifically, limited in who connects for
what currently. It will probably remain that way.

What will be the result? We will eventually realize that not only does
one size not fit all, it *cannot* fit all. We are in the process of
building multiple nets that will interconnect at well defined points,
not everywhere, with well defined protocols and limits. It must be that
way to serve the separate interests.

Yet it will not result in Balkanization, but speciation. Nets will be
optimized for classes of traffic and classes of applications. They will
be invisible but there if you need them, efficient for specific
purposes.

Overall, a network of nets will be more robust and more efficient than
one master net that has to either warp itself or warp traffic to work.
One net cannot work well with all these new demands, therefore we are
seeing sprouts, seedlings of a new growth that will deliver the MultiNet
(C).

Bill Nicholls
(link)

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:53:25 +0000

Jacob, Ed Whitacre is not so much generically crazy as meglomaniacal. The Internet is the worst possible thing he can imagine, because it involves cooperation for the common good. Ed wants control and restriction, with his company being the gatekeeper. His concern is about squeezing the maximum profit from things he can envision and control, not facilitating new services and having to live with ancilary revenue.

By: flnerd

flnerd — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:14:38 +0000

The real issue is missing last-mile diversity. As long as a broad band connection is as expensive and as slow as it is now, there will be no traffic to feed this backbone. Right now, it doesn’t look like the US will ever catch up to more modern countries like China and Korea.

By: Ymer Venture Capital’s China Hotpot » Blog Archive » iTunes video sales top 1 million downloads in 20 days…see content counts, not free access!!

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 13:35:57 +0000

[...] Here is a hint…look at the broadband market in the US…its consolidating…fast! Om Malik from Business 2.0 has a lot of intelligent things to say about this, click here to read more [...]

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 05:50:47 +0000

This should make for another interesting round of peering negotiations.

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:37:47 +0000

Good analysis. I always wondered how that market was shaking up with all the new build-out. Thanks Om.

Good question by Jacob on the last mile.

By: Jacob Varghese

Jacob Varghese — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:57:37 +0000

Om,
Is the SBC CEO crazy or does he have a legit point?

SBC CEO Edward Whitacre
“The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts! ”

(link) *IUQu7KtOwgA/magazine/content/05_45/b3958092.htm

By: Clint Sharp

Clint Sharp — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 19:45:00 +0000

Wow, I can’t believe how cheap telecoms are getting these days. They have to be selling their assets at pennies on the dollar compared to what they’ve invested.