Internet 2 Crawls Forward

JimBoBereLLa writes sent us yet another story about that wondrous beast known as Internet2. Talks about specs and bandwidth and applications currently being used to test the new network (which currently connects 180 points, of which my sofa tragically is not one of them). A fairly fluffy piece, but at least it's nice to know that it's getting somewhere every few months.

Comments

Re:Moving past the electron autobahn

[Jon_Sy]

There's merit to what you say. I have, in fact, presented the argument at a rudimentary level: Roads cause cars, like you say.

Which is, in fact, a part of the problem, but not when separated from the whole view, namely urban development as an entirety. Take a step back to Portland, to San Diego, to Toronto. All of these cities have large urban populations and busy downtown cores, with major potential for traffic...but the cities in question have alleviated the problems by favoring inmprovements to transit rather than road infrastructure. portland took things one step further, drawing on traffic calming projects in germany (they know cars). What followed was a a series of laws that eliminated free parking for company employees, and large subsidies for transit and carpooling (either monetary, or physical allowances. In all three cities, one can find car lanes that are only for use by cars with three or more passengers, or buses).

What followed was a "the establishment of an urban growth boundary adopted in 1980, middle-class neighborhoods continue to grow and thrive close to the downtown instead of engaging in a suburban exodus, while more distant, exurban communities remain undeveloped, leaving the people there in therir pastoral splendour...this contrasts sharply with cities such as Detroit where 30% of the downtown core remains empty and the only people who live there are either the very rich who inhabit 'fortress' areas which are access controlled and patrolled by private police, or the very poor who live in run down areas with a decayed infrastructure...the stabilizing (emphasis mine) middle-class having fled to the suburbs long ago." [Namir Khan, Healthy Cities Report]

The pattern is cyclical...roads --> people --> traffic --> roads --> people...you can add elements to the cycle ad infinitum, as guaranteed by the butterfly effect. Pointedly, the statement worth making is not "roads cause cars", but instead "roads do not cause less cars, only more traffic".

It's interesting to think about the middle-class as the stabilizing factor in urban development (and by extension, traffic use). If we were to categorize a hierarchy of internet users, what would be the defining parameter? In the urban case, it's clearly money...on the web, i would argue that the class system of internet usage revolves around bandwidth speed (the obvious conclusion), but rather the wealth of knowledge and information in transfer. The premium is web space, just as in cities the premium is land. The purchasing power is in the value of your information...large multinational companies constitute wealthy, gated communities with private intranet policing and limited access, whereas the 'poor' netizens spend their time chained to useless IRC events and porn surfing. in this case, the stabilizing factor happens to be people with legitimate interests in technology and even a hand in the process. The stabilizing factor is Slashdot.

Uh oh

[The Queen]

4.5 gigabytes of data.... on a 1000X Web, ...can be yours in just 15 seconds.

Crap, don't let the RIAA and MPAA hear about this. ;-)

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Re:Who cares.

[stx23]

Perhaps the advantage isn't intended for you, but your university. After all, if there are 10 of you pulling mp3s from napster at 10Mbps, the link to the outside world will need to be 100Mbps to deal with it. I had assumed I2 was a technology intended to strengthen the backbone, not provide ultra fast connectivity to the client.