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Are We Ready For Broadband Internet Access?
"The Internet as it is today is obviously not technically ready for such massive broadband connectivity to the end user. Think about one single person being able to saturate a 100 meg peering link at a NAP somewhere (or ten people saturating a gigabit link, etc.). Look at it this way. If you have a 100 meg peer somewhere, you can handle quite a few people on modems hitting your Web site at any given time. Now let's say that all those people have 100 meg connections at their house. Instead of looking at a few pages over a 10 minute session, the user can view a few pages in a 1 or 2 minute session.
Now some people may say that this won't matter, because a session that would have taken someone 10 minutes now takes 2, then they're off, and someone else is on (ie bandwidth dispersion). Not quite, folks. The user is bound to download/view/leech/click/etc *much* more data when their connection is faster. Remember when we all had 2400 baud modems and 80 meg HDs and BBSing all day? If you had DSL you would have filled an 80 meg HD in a snap.
The ratio is out of whack. If the Big Scary Internet Business Dot Com has X Bandwidth, and the Home User has X / 2 Bandwidth (not X / 500) as it should be), there is a BIG problem.
Since we obviously are going to have serious broadband dispersion in the near future, what must be done, legally, technologically, and otherwise in preparation to support such a network?"
I have recently witnessed a similar project getting launched in a residential area. Huge pipe, no IP's. Yes, they're using NAT. Of course, if you want to pay extra, you can get statics. But the point is, the company is asking these new users to take as 'normal' the fact that the only available services are web and mail. Forget about peer-peer filesharing, or anything else which won't travel across the company firewall. This ISP won't take the chance of incurring liability for J. Random User getting owned, and therefore is cutting off all of these 'extra' services - for everyone. Regular folks get scared when their illusion of security if threatened. Then they call their reps. Then congress makes portscanning into a Class 2 Misdemeanor. (Well, maybe not, but anyway, you get the point)
When I lived in the dorms, the first thing I did was set up my firewall to block all inbound traffic from the local subnet. Not reject, but just quietly discard the packets. Then explicitly allow access from IP addresses of friends I want to have access. Works out nicely. Crackers see 'connection refused' and get motivated. When they see "Trying... (30 second timeout)" for each connection attempt, their portscan takes orders of magnitude longer to complete and they likely just give up trying. Silence is the ultimate defensive weapon.
Well not quite, but close. I have VDSL from Qwest. It's a 52Mb/sec Pipe that passes video, POTS (your phone), and 1024k Internet over the same pair. Just because it's a 100Mb connection, doen't mean your I-net will be that fast.
Security: Often nonexistant. Sub-units (departments, etc) may implement security measures, or they may not. There's often no oversight to make sure something happens until and unless a serious compromise occurs. Even then, each department is often independant and whatever central authority exists has very limited power.
Responsible use of bandwidth: It wasn't that long ago (a few years) that some idiot at a university thought it would be a fabulous idea to webcast an iguana for 24 hours. That, supposedly, is research.
If consumers want to pay for 100Mbps, give it to them. They'll use it exactly as responsibly as everyone else doesn't. (grammatical discontinuity intentional)
"...but should the privledge of 100mbit Internet connectivity be given to someone who hasn't 'earned' the privilege of having that type of influence on a public network?"
How freakin' arrogant! No wonder the White House, Judicial System, and Courts are kickin' your asses. Geeks think too much about their precious tehcnology. You think you can control it. Man, wake up!
And your question is misguided anyway. The idea of "privelege" in a networked, capitalistic economy is nonsense, and generally foolish. It is a non-question. If you have the money, you can buy what you want. If you have rich friends and the right influence, geek and non-geek, you can get what you want. If it is for sale, then no privilege is required.
I don't give a shit if this is moderated down. I mean, hell it is starting at zero. But for those geeks here reading this, you know that the writing is on the wall. The mainstream power is getting pissed at your arrogance. You can be controlled by them, much more easily than you can control your own technology.
When the day comes in the coming years, or centuries, when your technology is kicking your ass, you'll wish that you worked more with the rest of the world. When technology controls you, and it will someday because it is one of your goals to perfect it, you will wonder why your elite beliefs can not help you.
You control nothing. You control less than nothing. Giving "privilege" to those poor, ignorant souls who aren't as smart as you, is a notion that will be your demise. Many people are not technically savvy, but they have money and control. They will find ways to kick your ass. They will learn the technology enough to get by, and they will laugh as they crush you underfoot. Shit, they already employ you during the day. They are already 1/2 way there...
Put that "privilege" in your pipe and smoke it.
Stop trying to be clever.
- Mike Hughes
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
First off: everyone (even the jocks) uses Napster.
Second: everyone (yes... even the jocks) uses AIM or ICQ. This means files are being shared and tons of information is being exchanged.
Before GTE and Pac bell came in and "saved the day" with DSL and Cable net access, I'd say that maybe 5% of the people who use the net in a bandwidth-intensive manner now were using it in the same way.
Time and the advancement of technology (synonymous?) is making everyone a geek. Maybe not culturally, but at least in the way that they use the internet so bandwidth-intensively and to their advantage. They know HOW TO already.
- Mike Hughes
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I defy anyone to show me how the average home user can constantly keep 100 megabits per second saturated, let alone how 10 such users can swamp a gigabit connection 24/7.
Also, the comment about "earning" the "rights" to have a lot of bandwidth struck me as arrogant. It's the same type of B.S. I see here about "earning" the "right" to use a computer by learning every single command line tool, as if Linux users are the only "real" computer users on the planet. Comments like that make me sick to my stomach.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Where does all of this pent-up resentment come from? It seems like half the stories are seen as an opportunity (or excuse) to bash on some group, often the Slashdot readership. Does the relative anonyminity of online forums (having an account doesn't mean that anyone actually knows who you are) free people from their usual inhibitions?
To the posters: Before you accuse a group of a particular attitude, please think about your source of information. Is it one poster who has identified themself with a group? Do you have a good reason to suspect that most of the group shares this attitude? Generalization isn't bad, but over-generalization is.
Please be careful.
Posted by PartA:
It seems like no remembers about amateur radio, in order to use it, you need to pass an examination, use a call sign, and abide by certain
rules, what's wrong with that?
More bandwidth == more users == more demand for people like me to keep the servers from falling to their knees.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Wire 'em up first and let the routers sort 'em out.
The real Threed's
--Threed
Hell, there are still ISPs that can't even saturate 56k lines at peak hours.
Since I work at an ISP, we have to consider these issues, moreso than the end user. Rather than explain this every single time, I just wrote a paper and give out the URL: http://netgraft.com/?item=3
should these people be given the privilage of having this kind of access to a public network?
Agreed 100%! Supposedly, the internet is supposed to be all about lowering barriers and leveling the playing field.
I remember in the '80s using PC Pursuit to BBS around, wondering why the only way to get internet access was to enroll in a university.
I'm sure that universal 100Mb access will cause a few problems. That's when the 31337 geeks get to prove their worthiness by solving the problems.
A few notes on the problems: DOS attacks with slave machines wouldn't be as big a problem if there weren't so many poorly configured routers out there. Inside router ports should NEVER accept packets with outside source addresses. That would seriously limit spoofing, and make attackers a lot easier to track down.
ISPs should offer users a choice between firewalled and unfirewalled access, and explain that if you don't know what firewalled means, you REALLY want it.
Internet access is not a right. It's a privelege. Like driving.
Compared to a dial-up user, the effects of a cracked broadband pipe is like comparing the damage a moped will do compared to a small car. And 100BT just exacerbates the difference. If a box with double the bandwidth of a T3 is cracked, there's a *LOT* that can be done with it in a very short amount of time.
That said, the notion of "earning the right" is kinda scary in and of itself. But comparing the a doctor to someone who knows how to keep his bandwitdh from being used to do other nasty deeds is plainly stupid. And to think you're the one telling people to climb back under holes.
Over on IWETHEY (my usual hangout), someone floated the notion of charging extra for raw bandwidth as opposed to filtered/firewalled bandwidth, and after giving it some thought, most people agreed with him. It makes a lot of sense. It keeps Joe User from getting in over his head and should make those who think they want raw bandwidth really give it some honest thought. I'd say nearly 100 percent of the people who want a big fat raw pipe to their house don't need anything other than a big fat firewalled pipe. Yeah, they might *WANT* a raw pipe, but they don't *NEED* a raw pipe. A firewall preventing internal connections wouldn't hurt them one bit, because they initiate an outbound connection to get into work. Those that do, really, truely need a bidirectional pipe pay for the privelege.
I'm willing to do that.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
That last one is also a reminder that we DO have a multicast-capable Internet, where most of the backbone is already multicast-enabled. This allows information to be distributed on a per-object, rather than per-request basis.
IMHO, a greater adoption of proxy caching and multicasting will greatly reduce the stress on the network.
There again, let's also look at these "big corp" networks. Optic Fibre now supports up to 3 Tbit links. If the customers and demand was there, you don't imagine that Big Corp, Inc. is going to just miss out on Big Money, do you?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Um... yes? I work at a college, and most of the cracking/DoSing attempts on our network come from the dorms. Most of the ones that don't come from the dorms come from OTHER schools' dorms.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Why sell 100M/sec for ~$20 a month into the home when you can sell it for ~$200 a month to a business.
Simple. There are many, many more people than businesses.
Let's say you have two buildings of roughly equal size. One is an apartment complex with, say, 200 apartments. The other is a corporation with 200 offices.
You can sell access to the corporation and get about $200/month at the standard business rate. Or you can sell it to the complex. Assuming only a fifth of the tenants sign up, you have about $800/month (40 people * $20). Furthermore, in reality more than a fifth will sign up; it'll be more like a third at least (that's 67 people, give or take) which nets you $1340/month.
Which looks like a better investment to you?
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"Now let's say that all those people have 100 meg connections at their house. Instead of looking at a few pages over a 10 minute session, the user can view a few pages in a 1 or 2 minute session."
No user is sitting at their PC 24/7 or 12/7 or even 4/7 downloading web pages at the rate of ...a few pages in a 1 or 2 minute session..." non-stop.
Nuts. Remember, most computers spend all of their time sitting twiddling wait for us to figure out what we want them to do next. This is particularily true for anyone surfing.
And how big are the pages, anyway? Web page size *may* grow as broadband becomes more wide-spread, but who thinks *one* web page will ever be, say, a meg in size? Not me.
So how is this getting even close to saturating a 100mb connection?
Beats the hell out of me.
So it doesn't matter whether they're viewing, or serving, the volume's just not there.
And:
"The DoS attack potential is obvious, [Wait! Stop! You just went right past the problem!] but should the privledge of 100mbit Internet connectivity be given to someone who hasn't 'earned' the privilege of having that type of influence on a public network?"
"Earned the privilege"? Excuse me? While you're deciding on privileges, can I please go to the bathroom? Puhh-leeezze?
"What has to happen before FTTH/FTTC is feasible, and what are the implications of implementing such technology too early?"
hmm..
Methinks somebody's just trying to stir up a buzz and -- OH! Looky! -- get a New Product® mentioned at the same time..
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Do you give out morphine, demerol, or AZT to anyone who has the money to pay for it?
When was the last time you saw J. Random User operating a backhoe or a drilling rig?
The same logic should apply to broadband internet. It's one of the tools of the IT trade. It's powerful, and in unskilled or malicious hands, can be hazardous, just like the powerful drugs and heavy equipment that are tied to their respective jobs.
I'll bite at this. Actually, they DID take it seriously. Problem is, the internet community as a whole does _NOT_ take it seriously. I'll bet that 90% of the people posting to slashdot could (if they knew how) spoof their IP and slip it past the (crappy) packet filters of their upstreams. In fact, as an ISP I'm guilty as well to a limited extent: a user can forge the IP of another user on the same dialup unit. One of these days I'll fix that for modems. It is fixed for *DSL at least.
Until our core backbones take DoS attacks seriously (as in, tracing them back) why the hell should the FBI care? What can they do? Arrest the guy at 192.168.10.10? (Yes, I've gotten hit by UNROUTABLE DOS attacks. Hell, I've seen 127.0.0.x! That's SERIOUSLY misconfigured)
Sure, my routers drop that crap but my bandwidth is still toasted.
Wake me up when there's accountability on the internet. Until then it's nothing but a skript kiddy playground.
--Dan
Akamai is awesome, but it would be nice to have an open-source, open-network way to implement this at the ISP level. Does anyone know of any such effort underway already?
IIRC, freenet handles localized caching..
Your Working Boy,
I trust you're talking that "there will come a time in the __UK__ where a customer... can self-install."
'cause over here in the colonies (ie. Canada), we're already doing it. Two hundred bucks gets you a DSL modem and a handful of socket splitters/bypass filters. Thirty-five bucks a money gets you the ADSL service.
But, then, Canada has always had pretty much leading telecommunications technology: first microwave transmission systems, first digital switchs, first fiber-to-home.
Er, yes, that's right: we do fiber-to-home already. The telco's are savvy enough to have realized a half-dozen years ago that it was cheaper to be laying dark fiber than to have to try to retrofit.
Na-na-a-boo-boo. [grin!]
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
OFFTOPIC? The crack must be especially strong today.
Fuck Slashdot
Even sillier/more ironic/more disgusting, given that the whole free software movement and the cooperative, voluntary growth of the Internet itself. Younger people growing up with free software who have little sense of history end up being just as elitist and asinine as "THA MAN" they rail against.
Fuck Slashdot
The founder(s) of Akamai were some of the original coders of squid... so in essense squid is a slimmed down (although increadibly functional) version of akamai..
just a piece of knowledge...
... in his book An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking that the answer to this problem is ultimately economic: flat-rate pricing has got to go.
I'm not sure yet if I agree with him, but intuitively his argument makes sense to me, and it's certainly a thought-provoking assertion.
If I had the book handy, I'd quote him verbatim, and at more length. It's a terrific book, and I encourage anyone interested in networks to take a look at it.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
And perhaps bytes will cost more at peak times than at off-peak times.
Perhaps even we'll be able to request the type of performance we want out of the network, and tell it how much we're willing to pay, and get service based on that -- after all, I might not care how long it takes my FTP session to complete, while I want my stock trade to go through as fast as possible, and my streaming audio to arrive with any reasonable delay so long as the jitter is bounded.
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
End-to-end bandwidth across the Internet is already often inadequate to saturate links at the edges of the network. When I was working for an ISP, I regularly fielded calls from customers who thought there was something wrong with their T1s because they were only getting 15K/second or whatever from their favorite site.
Ciscos report a per-interface five-minute input/output rate. So I would usually get the customer's permission to ping-flood them, and then I'd do so from the router on our end of the link. Meanwhile, I'd have the customer do a "show int" on the router on their side of the link. After five minutes, the rate would creep up to about 1.5 megabits, and the customer would go away satisfied.
I almost did this for the NYPD once, but they believed me when I explained about net congestion, so I didn't have to.
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Yes.
Check out Bellovin and Cheswick's Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker if you don't believe me.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
There are laws about redundancy and availability being built in to emergency services. I wouldn't worry about this, at least not if you're in the USA.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Bandwith, like ram or processor power, gains new uses when it increases in power.
300 baud was fine for all text bbs'. Now with DSL, listening to the radio over the internet, and maybe some low quality tv- is fine. When people have much larger bandwith, they will find new uses for it. TV, videoconferencing, 3D, etc... Don't expect current bandwith usage to reflect opon future usage- users and creators will always, like a sponge, absorb all power they can.
An interesting article about fiber to the home is in this technology review article.
First of all - what is this concept of 'Earning' that type of connection?
Second, yes, broadband users do download more, but there is a limit. I seriously doubt that connecting to slashdot at 100mb/s version 1mb/s (as I now do) is going to seriously increase the amount of data I download from slashdot.
Most likely users with extremely high bandwidth connections will never utilize even a tiny fraction of the bandwidth, and when they do they will be connection to services (video on demand) that are specifically designed to handle the load.
-josh
Like you said, i wouldn't ever expect to see DSL out your way. GL
-earl
offtopic but... akamai is really hip.. usually I pull ~ 20 - 60K/s over resnet (150K/s when the leeches are out drinking), but the other day I went to download Eudora and got it off an akamai server @ 877K/s. Daaaaamn...
So what if people have 100Mbps connections? By the time that becomes at all common, the backbone will be running at multi-terabit speeds. They're already running a terabit on a single fibre in the labs; it shouldn't be too long before that becomes normal for backbone fibres.
Web sites will be just like they are today: low volume stuff can be served out of someone's home with a broadband connection, and high volume stuff uses an expensive high-speed link.
So Yahoo, CNN, and Amazon have to upgrade to faster links. So what?
Actually, the real issue here is what the impact of increased bandwidth will be. Back when I created my first web page in 1994, most people surfed with image loading off. Professional web sites were created by a single person in a day or two. Now professional web sites are full of graphics, animations, and whatnot. There's a much larger gap between commercial web sites and personal ones. The investment to create a serious web site is higher. This gap between amateur and professional web sites will increase. Multimedia will increase.
Umm, this isn't going to change anything. If it's available and people want it, they'll pay for it. I doubt it's going to come to signing a waiver and taking an aptitude test before you can get high speed access.
But don't mind me, I'll be sitting in my corner with my two cans and a string. Haven't been DoS'd by script kiddies yet...
That's a good point: let the market moderate demand. If people were held financially accountable for the volume of traffic they generate, they would voluntarily adjust their traffic on their own. Then again, metered network access is long advocated by Ethernet inventor, Bob "Open Sores" Metcalfe, who is not exactly the most popular guy here. Would Slashdot readers be willing to admit that he is right on this point?
Exactly. AOL is a germ, virus, or envation of harmful substances onto the net. Do those people really know how the net works? NO.
I think we should also look into stopping people from using MS Word and Excel. And don't forget Outlook. Since so many users don't know how to protect themselves from e-mail viruses, we've had major problems recently. Those stupid people don't "deserve" a word processor. They haven't earned the priviledge. Hell, they shouldn't even have a modem. They'd just cause more problems. geccoman
I'm on a chair.
And what would they do with that T1, eh? What things could they do that would not be proscribed by the administration? No MP3s for sure...no porn of course. Would they stream audio/video? Do all the PCs have speakers to listen to audio? Download warez onto the drives?
I can understand their bordom.
Blar.
Let me start by saying a work for a company that is currently putting 6-billion, note the 'b", into improving the last mile-experience of customers. The idea is simple, get glass closer to the customer.
The idea of glass to the curb, or glass to the home is great, but it ignores the simple fact of all the copper that is currently in place, not to mention a few minor details - like how do I provide power over glass?
In case you weren't aware, the phone company is required by law to provide power to phones within a building so that in the event of a power failure the occupants can still call 911 for help. To put glass up to the house, or even the curb, requires that a device be in place at that point to povide 48v DC to the telephone equipment.
So, what is my company doing? We're putting glass into the remote terminals, which are the large cabinet-looking devices you see along the roads that service a few blocks, or a buisness park. These are powered already and have elecrtronics in them currently. Thus the only thing realy needed is a DSLAM in the cabinet, and glass pulled from there back to the CO. Very clean, very effective. Once that happens, nearly anyone in a Metro-service area is within 3000 cable-feet of the DSLAM, making even VDSL possible.
As far as some of the other issues flying around here, like who deserves fast access, and how will it be controlled - Is this the same community that wants to abolish all controls by anyone? Is this the same community that goes on forever about the evil FBI, and corporate security outfits that snoop lines and emails? Why is it that you folks want no fetters on YOUR activity but want all the non-techy Joe/Jane Users out there to be hammered? Out we being just a little bit hipocritical here?
I think the question of 'whether society is ready for this technology' is almost always a pointless question. No offense to the person who asked it, but the correct answer to the question rarely has any effect on that technology. Are people ready for that much bandwidth? Who cares, it's coming anyway.
Now that I've generalized the heck out of things, is all that bandwidth going to destroy the Internet? No. I remember only a few short years ago about how the Internet was going to 'grind to a halt' because of the explosive growth in the number of users. Did that happen? No... instead AOL, Sun, and Cisco made boatloads of cash by providing the equipment to support all those new users.
The Internet is a dynamic environment... it will adjust, even if the changes are as drastic as 100Mb to the home.
--Mid
Hand-waving about the crisis the PC will face when all of these AOL users get a 32 bit OS is irrelevant. The fact is that the average user WILL get a 32 bit OS, and we should darn well give it to them before Apple or IBM. We can't predict the impact of all new economic or technological changes without some hard cover book sales @ the speed of thought.
I say, roll out the pretty blue boxes and let the support calls roll in. Sure, our downstream partners may be bogged down in the short term, but at least they'll be calling the vendor instead of us. Then they'd pay to get everything fixed and we can start the cycle again. That's the way technology rollouts work. Release, charge, patch, charge, charge.....
Sure, it's irresponsible to use your customers to do QA (which is what would happen if we rolled it out tomorrow), but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen gradually, and gradually, technology will rise to meet the demand.
William Setag
CEO Microsift Corp.
Internal memo on the release of Bimbos'95
This is a very valid point and one which should be considered carefully.
In this country, BT are currently beginning the ADSL rollout and, since they haven't been able to successfully resolve the security implications, access will now be totally non-firewalled for home users by "default". They are expected to use the "correct" firewalling software. Tell me, who honestly thinks that John Doe (or rather, John Smith over here...) is going to have a clue about security.
Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
There will come a time when a customer can walk in to PC world and pick up an "ADSL kit" which they can self-install to "convert" their home access to ADSL. New homes will have ADSL as standard within 5-10 years - are the majority of people really ready for the day that a cracker can h4x0r their ADSL based TV and transmit crap into someone's home. Are people really prepared for the time bomb that is now ticking?
I recently wrote an article for a Linux magazine targetted to business in which I addressed some of these issues. I'll check some issues with my editor, but I can see no reason why we cannot get the article put up on our website and the URL sent in...
http://www.jonmasters.org/
It isn't just the power, telephone company equipment is generally engineered and tested to higher standards of reliability than network equipment. The voice network has more redundancy and reliability than most data networks.
With the telephone system, the variable costs of running the system are mostly dependent on peak usage, not the total number or length of calls. Off-peak usage just uses otherwise idle capacity.
With a data network, the optimal solution would be to charge full rate for usage that occurs during peak usage periods, and charge low rates during other times. The idea being that the people whose usage patterns force the network provider to buy more upstream bandwidth should be the ones who get the large bills.
these lowly users whom you seem to fear for their ravenous appetite for bandwidth will quickly point out that They don't care what connectivity the corporations have, because they want to share things with their neighbors and friends. Besides, Cisco et. al. will drive this into being whatever the elitist concerns, because while their hardware may be the backbone of the internet, once everyone has the bandwidth they need, the hardware doesn't break fast enough to keep them in business. The only way for them to sell more and more hardware is if there's a reason to upgrade.
Dear sweet Jesus, you can't possibly be serious. By that argument, the truckers would be the only people allowed on the Interstate highway system. Your average hurtling-down-the-interstate-at-80mph car is the single most dangerous implement that we (the general public) encounter in our lifetimes. Before you ask, no I don't think the drivers' license test does anything at all to improve safety on the highway. That's an argument for another day.
Neither access to broadband internet nor the highway system are God given inalienable rights. However, that doesn't mean that you should restrict access to the IT professionals (or truck drivers) who use those resources for their livelihoods.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Having fast access to EVERYONE could be a bad thing. Think about this. Joe User has really fast access, and knows a little about internet access, not only can he now DoS anyone, but he is now also prone to being DoSed and should he have some sort of virus or java applet opening his file sharing up to the world, he is more likely going to be a target.. eeek what about B.O.? Think about that in a Broadband community! WOAH!
Its not 100 MB - its 100 Mbps.
Fast Ethernet over copper is 100 Megabit per second. Full duplex would be better, but its not likely that each house would have a switched connection, at least early on. So shared topology means that one connection with a single good hard drive (say an ATA-100 or Ultra160/m) could still download at the full speed of the entire shared connection. With TCP/IP overhead figured in, that's only 10.6 MB/sec capacity - not much.
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What is the oversell ration for business versus home usage? I'd bet that its different by a factor of 10, if not more. Of course the ISP doesn't have 100mbps of capacity for each user - they probably have around 10 kbps allocated per home, at best. If your business's 1.54 Mbps T1 line (at $700/month) was oversold at a factor of 100, you would sever the contract and change providers immediately. (by oversold, I mean the amount of capacity of their OC-3 lines versus the combined sold capacity of their residential and commerical customers. But there's no QOS (quality of service) for even commercial DSL, let alone residential.
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The Internet provider of 100mb connections should bundle a device such as a 5 port 10/100 switch that is capable of NAT/packet filtering and configure it as part of the installation.
Now, I'm not saying *require* it, just provide it as the default option. If the user has a *nix box for a firewall (Linux, *BSD, LRP), they should know that the ISP will be scanning the users machines for known vulnerabilities (@Home does this). If you have services running beyond the acceptable use policy du jour, you risk termination.
Also, I assume that this would be an asymmetric connection. What home would *NEED* 100mb upload capacity? I can see wanting to serve your videos to friends and family - but that's going to be on a protocol that wouldn't be directed at some company on the net. In other words, set limits on certain protocols, like ICMP, that are used in DoS attacks.
I posted too late for anyone to read this anyway.
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What the F*ck does ILOVEYOU have to do with broadband???
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I don't think it's them who are arrogant.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I need to get to work in the morning. Therefore I have more right to the road than a bus full of tourists. Bzzt. Wrong.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Simple answer is you don't. If I can afford to have FDDI to my house, tell me by what means you (or any other arbitrary body) is going to determine my "worthiness"? Portscan and try to r00tkit me to make sure I have no security holes in my OS? Demand a login to my system to make sure I'm not planning any DoS attacks? I think not.
What exactly is meant by "the Internet isn't ready for broadband yet"? If you ask me, it's screaming for as much bandwidth as it can lay its hands on, at all points, be they last-mile or backbone, rural, city or transoceanic.
And why shouldn't individuals who wish, want, or are willing to pay for, have the "X/2 bandwidth of a corporation"? Give me just one realistic reason, because I'm curious.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
it should have these wrapping the bit about the potato...
<silly distro bashing>
...
</silly distro bashing>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
How do you "Earn" broadband? If they can pay for it, whats the problem? That it isn't 'fair'? Well, the fibre providers have to pay for the bandwidth the are selling to the houses, so what is the problem?
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
THis just forces everyone to lock down the OSs as tight as they always should have been. Of course, early adopters face exagerated risks, but they always have, in all technologies. Just because we cann't do it perfectly now, doesn't mean we should wait until we can. That would just mean that nothing ever gets released, and everyone moans about how slow everything is in improving.
:)
like certain potatoes that one could mention...
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
[Snip] And that's why the current incarnation, or perhaps all, of capitalism sucks - wealth is granted unproportionately to merit, or even ability, and thus the way society operates is distorted beyond what the people who make up the society themselves regard as 'just'. But then, I can't think of a better way to run a country that will work with us humans as we are (greedy, selfish, ...). Ah well ;-(
--
Jon Chatow
James F.
> This is the problem the AtHome folks are
... Speaking as someone who works in a large european ISP it's what we do now with modem/ISDN dial-up users and it's what we're planning on "inflicting" ;-) on the ADSL users that we should be getting soon(ish).
> running into -- they spent all that money on
> caching servers for web content and everyone
> unconfigures (is that a word?) the proxies
> immediately.
@HOME should've used policy routing to transparently redirect the HTTP traffic to the proxies anyway
> Akamai is awesome ...
... but it ain't "optimal"! ;-)
/Proceedings/S4/S4-1.pdf
Yeah, well maybe
http://www.terena.nl/conf/wcw
Wow, that's some service availability! How much do they charge you for the extra 3 hours a day? :-)
Can you say peer-to-peer? (napster, gnutella, etc) Who needs servers when you can grab the info from the network defined by all your high-bandwidth neighbours?
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view), the home's internet feed will be what's limiting their access, just like cable modems. Yes, you have 10mbit connection (depending on the provider), but that's just to your cable company's backbone. Then you have to fight tooth and nail to get a chunk of their connection to the rest of the world.
The world won't end because of this technology for the simple fact that the provider has to pay for the subscriber's bandwidth used.
Not if we build flesh eating robots to kill and eat the powerful! Then we will see who controls who! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Denying people anything on the premise that it could be used for harmful activities was the way Hitler conducted government.
D'oh! You were doing sooo well until you invoked Godwin's Law. Better luck next time.
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
things often are available on the net before the infrastructure is ready for them, and then technology backfills the new need.
Yes, I've seen this happen already...
When ISP's started offering dial-up access, the cry was "but the Internet won't be able to handle all those users - the bandwidth just isn't there"
Then, when Cable and DSL was first introduced, we heard the same thing...
And now, we're hearing it again - some people just don't remember the past...
Yes, when these events happened in the past, there was three months of lag, but it eventually sorted itself out.
For example, there would be classes and classifications. Levels A1-A5 would be a residential, and B1-B5 would be business, C1-C5 would be like a school, university, govt branch, etc. You could purchase the licenses as well as having to pass tests on your knowledge and assert long-term trust with such ability as 100Mb/sec. A1's wouldn't need anything more than a good ISDN or cable connect, while A5's may run a little hobby site that gets a few thousand visitors a month and needs the bandwidth. The bigger the business the better the bandwitdth. It's all ratio'd out as he explained in the article.
I agree that there shouldn't be broadband of that magnitude in the home unless you are trusted and approved with that kind of access.
Any other ideas?
Do you give out morphine, demerol, or AZT to anyone who has the money to pay for it?
When was the last time you saw J. Random User operating a backhoe or a drilling rig?
No, but trained doctors do give morphine to people if they need it, and J. Random User can hire a certified backhoe operator to make a swimming pool in his back yard or whatever.
You don't have to earn it.
I believe Bitter Cup O Joe hit bullseye in his post. As long as security issues are resolved, I'm all for broadband to the masses.
My company is currently working on a Fiber to the Home project, that does not make me an expert, I am just putting my money where my mouth is...
/8bits/byte = 270,000 MB per month, thats 3 orders of magnitude more bandwidth than your typical internet user.
Adding more bandwidth does not make users read more e-mail or read more web pages, however it does facilitate sending or downloading bigger files.
The most ready use that users have for more bandwidth are audio an video, lets use an example: an average home inernet user probably downloads less than 600 MB from the internet per month, digital video of cable/DTH quality is broadcast today using MPEG-2 with a bandwidth of betweeen 3Mbps and 9 Mbps, a home watching TV form a satelite/DTH source for 5 hours per day actually uses an average of 4Mbps x 3600 sec/hour x 5 hours/day x 30 day/month
That is a lot of bandwidth for the current(and future) internet backbone, yet digital cables already deliver that kind of bandwidth to the home today (hundreds of channels, 24 hours per day), so a fiber to the home project, is nothing more than a two-way cable TV system but redisigned using 100% fiber and getting rid of the legacy coaxial cable.
A fiber to the home project (today), will thus look very much like a Cable TV system, with most of the video content being "broadcast" (using IP multicast)form a local headend, and a few video servers for video on demand. It will take many internet backbone upgrades (and many years) before a fiber to the home user in let's say Dallas can download video on demand content (with MPEG-2 quality) from a server in New York, what most likely will happen is that there will be caching server (of the Akamai type) located at the fiber to the home "headend" that will serve the content locally.
Hybrid fiber/coaxial systems must grow fiber and reduce coaxial whenever they want to provide more bandwithd (or video on demand) to the indivudual users, the same principle applies to DSL systems, if you want faster speeds, you must reduce the length of copper and increase the amount of fiber. Taking this to an extreme, why not go all the way with fiber to the home?
More bandwidth to the users creates more opportunities, and also new challenges, the internet is a big real-time experiment anyway!!!
I thought the equation X/500 home user bandwith compared to the X/2 that may be possible... I seriously doubt that this will 'blow up' the Internet. Truth be, I think that this will be the direction the Internet will take. Most companies are only thinking in the Client/Server method, and have been thinking that way since the 1970s. Microsoft has had shifts in both directions. Linux is firmly rooted ('scuse the pun) in Client/Server. I think the future can be seen in how successful, powerful, and useful Napster, Gnutella, SETI, Distributed.net, and clones have been. Why not distribute?? It cuts costs, saves money, and gives us home users the incentive to catch up in our computer technology versus the hosting department at Yahoo! or other web host. It is load balancing at the best it can be. Why load balance only internally when you can theoretically have an unlimited supply of load balancing?
Of course, distributing the whole Internet would require a rewrite and rethinking of everything from Apache to Internet Explorer to TCP/IP itself. But think about... most users already have a cache of recently visited links. Imagine searching through Explorertella for 'yahoo.com' and heading to your brothers computer which has the latest cache and lowest latency. Next you click on a category... your brother doesn't have that particular page cached, but a quick search turns up that his buddy accross the street has it. Certainly, you may eventually end up on Yahoo's main server, but with a well built system with a decent cache system and certificate (expirations) system, the user will also get the fastest possible link, and the servers will have much less bandwith.
Of course, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
WorldMaker
I see your point, and it's an excellent one, because I know that if, say, my 50 yr-old mother suddenly had a 100 mbps connection, she's not going to suddenly start dl stuff like crazy, because she doesn't know how. And the thing is, some will argue that people will get smarter and will use their connections more. Well, yes. Of course. We got smarter too. The thing is, by the time they all figure things out - while they are figuring things out - the technology and speed driving the internet will increase and very likely be able to handle them, no? If not, well j.... we've made it this far, who's to stop us from making in farther still?
Insert mind here.
I'd like to see that power your telephone :)
Maybe we'll have to get UPS's for our telephones...
Oops. Guess I didn't read that as closely as I thought :).
Visit the
With the development of DWDM, terabit switches, and other high-end networking technology, who's to say that by the time we all have 100Mbit connections, the backbone won't be up in the terabit+ range? It's not like technology is just sitting still for everyone else. Remember, the whole Net used to run at 56k.
As for what happens in the meantime, you can see this already. I'm sitting on a 10Mbit network connected to an OC-3. Sometimes I get 500kbps+, but usually I get closer to DSL speed - 100kpbs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but having a 100Mbit link merely means that you *can* get that kind of bandwidth - not that you *will*. What's to keep the routers from just dividing the available bandwidth evenly among all users?
Visit the
As much as I would love a 100mbit connection at home so I could run mail, web, ftp and other useful stuff from home, how will we provide enough IP addresses for people to go around?
I read a report rcently, not sure where from, that said that the ERIN (sp?) are no longer giving out IP address for IP based virtual servers. Doesn't this mean a shortage of IP addresse.
OK so you could have a firewall to do address translation but that still requires 1 IP if not 2 - 1 for the router and 1 for the firewall box. But how many systems have problems with people sitting behind firewalls and not giving out a direct IP for that machine.
Ex: I work as a web developer, the company I work for out source quite a bit of work to a company. I communicate with the programmer via ICQ. Occasionally as the need arises we have tried to get voice to voice going. Simple enough you may say, but try connecting to machines both sitting behind proxy without an IP using something simple like buddyPhone! At least one side needs to have an external IP address to form the connection!
Then your grandmother should hire someone to insure her system isn't contributing to DoS attacks.
The car analolgy should be that the bandwidth is like the accelerator pedel, and firewalling is like a brake. If they can only go 1 or 2 MPH they don't need to know what a brake is. But when they buy a car that will do 100 MPH they damn well *have* to know what a brake is.
more fiber being laid
Over half the fiber already out there is *dark*, i.e., it is laying there unused.
Sometimes I find it quite amazing that driving is an earned privledge (NOT right), and parenting (which can cause just as much damage to the human race) is somehow a right.
I think that it is quite possible that we should have to take a simple test (it doenst have to be too complex at all) to be able to use something like a 100Mbps connection.
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
Ever heard of HAM radio? To get an operating license you have to understand the technology well, know morse code, agree to quite a few regulations, and generally "earn the privelege" to use it. The reason is that radio frequencies are a limited resource and nobody can afford to have it used irresponsibly. That's why HAM hasn't gone the way of the internet.
With a car, if you fail to maintain it or "appreciate" it, the only person suffering a loss is yourself. With broadband, if you are irresponsible about making your box secure, you could contribute to DoS attacks, virus transmission, etc. It is, to a lesser degree, like buying a semi-automatic and then putting it on the sidewalk for some kid to find and shoot themselves with.
The author's point was that people who don't understand the responsibilities that come with the technology shouldn't be permitted to use it. If necessary, they can educate themselves and earn the privelege. Seems reasonable to me.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
I think something along the lines of a combined modem(or whatever would be used) and basic packet filtering whould take care of this. You don't have the ability to screw with other peoples phone lines from you phone, why should this be different. This kind of firewall will become cheaper, no reason it should not spread.
Spencer Ogden
And if every Jethro and Mary had an SMTP server running in their house, it would be a spammers dream come true.
If Microsoft wrote good software, at least 90% of those problems would disappear.
Linux distributions are bad, too, because services don't have to be explicitly enabled.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
I looked at your satellite internet access site. One thing, though: it takes around 600ms for a round-trip ping to a satellite, at the speed of light (or something like that). Try playing Quake on a satellite.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
MB - megabytes
mb - millibits
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
FTTC and FTTH is going to be niche, broadband wireless, cable and DSL will be the vehicles that will carry people off modems.
Having FTTC only means great speed to your telco CO, where things return rapidly to internet speeds (39.95 a month does not pay for your own OC12 to the actual internet, even if the line from your garden to the CO is capable of that): Users of Verizon 7mbit ADSL lines report that they can rarely download at more than a megabit or so.. what a surprise, about what cable modem customers are doing.
See fastest providers chart on my website for some interesting stats on who has the bandwidth.
Most servers do not deliver more than 100k/sec to any one user anyway, even the more famous ones, the internet average is probably more like 50k/sec.
The stuff that will make use of any national high speed to the home (and FTTH/FTTC is far far from national) is going to get pushed to the edge of the network, it isnt economical to have it any other way.. when Blockbuster starts offering movies for rent that can be downloaded into your TIVO, or whatever, they are not going to build a huge plant in exodus somewhere and let the whole of the US fight a path to it, they'll have to make deals with providers to store the content close to the consumer.
Finally, better subscriber management systems will implement quality of service and traffic shaping, and this will simply limit or charge those that want to really suck down (or upload) immense amounts of data. Your office VPN will get priority over someone elses game demo downloads, and if the Bad Guy starts to harness residential bandwidth for evil purposes, equipment will recognize track unusual traffic patterns better, and simply log and shut down ports.
Whose afraid of the big bad fiber user, even with poor security? nobody really..
You're leaving money on the table, and that's a bad business model.
Clearly you need to go back and read the chapter on Microsoft...
I consider myself a geek, and I too am dismayed at the high level of arrogance displayed here. The notion of having a "privilege" for a connection is absurd!
Travel back to '92. "Imagine that someday we might have 56k links to every home. This would obviously saturate the network. Forget the possability of DoS attacks against those poor 1200 baud modem users --- should these people be given the privilage of having this kind of access to a public network?"
This is EXACTLY what this is, and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been around long enough to see the progression of technolgy.
Some ISPs (cough) with policy routing to the caching HTTP proxies have such bad routing that news sites like Slashdot have day-old headlines.
Not to say that having 24 hour old documents by default is the best thing to do, but if slashdot used the Expires header the age of the document in the AOL proxy could be controlled. mod_expires can be quite useful in setting the expiration of a document.
Most webservers don't have massive amounts of info to be transfered in a single http request, other than the typical 20-100K of data per page, and most of data is divided into smaller graphics and such. Each one transfered 2 at a time (default in IE).
The larger files say, from a ftp, are almost bandwidth capped on the server, I never see a full 1.5mbps connection to most ftps, except the very large overseas servers.
Now getting to the meat of the matter, audio/video file sharing/serving, this is going to be the biggest impact of all, that can potentially put a strain on certain bootlenecks of the net. In this case the situation is reversed, the 100mbps bandwidth would far exceed even the fastest cable modem user.
The penetration of broadband is slowly growing and will most likely be the dominate way to connect to the internet in say 5 years (gross esitmate of course) by that time I am sure the infrastructure will be more robust than it now, staying ahead of Joe Six Packs hunger for metallica mp3s.
I'm not worried at all, as the net strains, it gets stronger with upgrades and more fiber being laid, the more we (end users) throw at it, the stronger it will eventually become.
bpd
---
You Have No True Enemies
--
AOL Broadband
Welcome to AOL 2000! Now easy AND fast!
Send messages to friends again and again and again and again and again and again...
Yes. When you are driving or flying a plane, you can very easily kill others if you don't know what you are doing. Quoting a 100-line article and adding "Me too" is not going to destroy the Internet.
is a majority in broadband worth not ensuring that those who will use it have some sense of responsibility?
How are you going to test this? A malicious cracker would easily past the test, as he knows the correct answers. My grandparents probably would not, as they neither have nor need to have "core knowledge of the technology".
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Check out Yipes!, they are estimating prices of about $1200 a month for a 100BaseT connection...
(of course, only in cities where they have a POP)
You dont need QoS to do that, TCP does it automaticly.
QoS is what you make of it. Although for the moment, your options on most IP hardware consist of:
Pass it
Drop it
Queue it
Ass-umming the PR/Marketing people are allowed to make the priceing schemes, I think you will see more of a 'we give you the access or means to get access, but you have to use our services' model, similar to what the phone company used to do with Voice services. (ie, they would LEASE you the telephone, and you would pay them for the hardware as well as the service)
Please do a little more research into what the 'State-of-The-Art' technology for IP traffic is before you go trawling for opinions.
There are only TWO things that keep you from haveing 100BaseT to your house to the backbone: 1) Money and 2)Corporate Vision.
The technology is certainly there, and has been for some time. Do a little traffic study on how the traffic flows, and you would notice that Akamai, I-Beam and others are doing wonders to help large backbones NOT have to transit a ton of traffic.
Look at some of the newer access control systems like Nortel's Shasta 5000 (32k firewalls, all at broadband speed!) Or Lucent's Springtide box. These have been SHIPPING all this year (and in some cases even the middle of last year)
Look at what is SHIPPING now for Core IP switching technologies: Every 'next-gen' terrabit switch/router is offering 16 X OC-192 (Thats 160 GIGS) speeds accross multiple optical connections (obviously designed for use with DWDM to cut fiber costs)
Next Gen Optical gear is pushing toward several dozen OC-192s per STRAND!
Williams,Enron,Level 3, and Qwest are ALL laying 96 strand fiber trunks (in some cases 3 or 4 of them) in the ground as fast as the trenchers can get out there.
Do the math. All it takes is for these companies to have a little bit of vision.
of Course, I notice we missed the HUGE downside to more bandwidth. Something I have been moaning about for the last 2 year I call 'Protocol Bloat' If you think it sounds like code bloat, you are RIGHT, just as more Drive Space and Memory have become available (causing code to loose efficiency), so too will haveing a glut of bandwidth cause the applications and protocols used on that system to become foolishly (and perhaps wrecklessly) unwieldly.
I can see 5 and 6 Meg 'Jave Applets' just to view a certain sites content... IP 'tunneled' to the point of insanity for the sake of 'copy protection'
It's depressing, but based on the way things have been going...
Someday, you will need a license for a high speed broadband connection. A maximum connection speed for home use will be established, and if you need more then you will need to show just cause and comply with license terms handed down to you from the government or else face heavy fines.
There are two competing interests here, audio and video delivery. One problem is that audio requires so much less bandwidth than video but maybe that will be circumvented by required all music to be transmitted with it's music video. Your home will only need so much bandwidth to deliver video. Maybe this will be based on the number of receivers--TVs, digital recorders--you have, with your connection actually being able to achieve 1GB/s but it's throttled back to only give you what you need.
The problem is, if you have too much bandwidth, then it's easy for you to act as a broadcaster, sending illegally copied material from your home computer network to anyone on the Internet 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Now, if you only have enough bandwidth to watch a TV stream (TV over Internet will supplant cable just as voice of IP will supplant the telephone) then you'll have to decide whether you want to watch TV or share a TV stream with someone else over that same bandwidth.
Or course the upstream/downstream speeds could be varied to contol this as well. Or your available bandwidth could be based on what you are doing, ie if you are just surfing, you only have 1Mbs of bandwidth. But if you go to a site that has a video stream, suddenly your available bandwidth jumps up to accomodate the stream.
Now if you want a really fat pipe you have got to have a reason for it right? It had better not be to deliver audio/video streams the best way of doing that is to require a government license, strict laws, periodic unscheduled inspections of your streams (hey, were back in high school having our lockers checked) and stiff penalties for violations.
Lest anyone thing I am joking, think about this: part of the underlying economic shift that is happening is a dramatic reduction in scarcity. Isn't the next step introducting scarcity to broadcast licenses, which have previously been limited by broadcast airwaves for radio and television (and to those who could afford the capital investment).
Why should all the little people suddenly have unlimited, unrestricted access to their own "press"? The founding fathers surely never intended for that to happen!
Freedom of speech? Whatzat? Freedom of the press? Whatzat?
The Internet is going to be taken over by old-line corporate interests bent on using it to deliver their mind numbing content to the masses.
Get ready for this!
"Just because the enduser has more bandwidth doesn't mean they are going to suck up more bandwidth from servers than they do now."
When I was on a phone line I used to order my linux software from cheapbytes. Now that I am
on cable I just download it.
That is just one of many examples I can give...
AdFuel
If 100MB/s is available to the average home user at a price they can afford, then obviously the bandwidth required to sustain a bunch of these folks at a dotcom will be available for a relative cost. The pipe size of the internet itself, not the pipes going to individual web servers is what concerns me. If it takes 50 Gigabit connections to host a web server, then companies will get 50 Gigabit connections. But the cost of upgrading the infrastructure will astronomical.
On a side note, my gawd what I wouldn't give for a 100MBit connection to the Net.
XeoMage
hmmm you mean something where each bit of data is given a sequence number and sends acks back and forth and resends data that is not acked? oh wait thats what transfer control protocol is!
Need a Catering Connection
The real issue is that this replaces cable TV, which is going to drive the cable and broadcast industries nuts. It may even kill broadcast HTDV before HDTV really gets going. The existing broadcast/cable industry is going to want to keep users from receiving from any streaming source anywhere. Then again, it's not clear which side AOL/Time Warner or AT&T/Viacom will be on. Expect huge political battles.
I agree. We may see MPAA/RIAA style attacks against this, though I don't know what they'll use as a basis, it's probably not too hard for them to buy a congresscritter or two and have some law railroaded through...
I can't even begin to see where this will lead, but better to go there than to have a "NO ENTRANCE" sign at the start of the trail...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
BS!
I suppose that Joe User deserves to have his valuables taken away because he didn't lock his door. I suppose Jane User deserved to be sexually assulted because she dressed in a provocative way. I suppose that Joe User deserves to lose his driver(1) liscence because he got carjacked. I don't think so!
You are advocating punishing someone for the actions of someone else. How should you be punished if I cut you off in traffic?
Here is a cluestick. Beat yourself.
--Joe Goldmeer
(1)I have gotten ~10 free beers at bars by challenging a new friend to produce a drivers liscence. You see, in my state (Arizona) it says DRIVER liscence, not driverS liscence. It's a sucker bet, but I'm not above that.
Well, I can't figure out your druggie question, but...
Open your yelow pages.
Look under Equipment Rental.
Rent a backhoe.
Operate said backhoe.
Easy as pie!
No, it is more like while you are at work, someone steals your car and commits a robbery. You are unaware that your car was taken and used to commit an offense.
If you are going to be owned with the intent of DDOS, the Script Kiddie will likely not be very noticable to the average Joe User.
Not all broadband connections have the blinking light visual notification. My DSL is an internal PCI card. (I would have bought the external router, but My wife ordered it as a suprise) (Love ya sweetie)
Joe User should not have to monitor his computer's connection 24x7 to ensure that someone else isn't gaining illegal access. You don't punish the cracked, punish the cracker.
Joe Goldmeer
If you think about it, this would be the best possible thing to happen to the net! Right now, we have the bandwidth of the world centralized in major, huge fat pipes. Those then trickle down, through 5-10 steps til it is at your desktop.
If everyone had 100mbps, (and this is assuming that something beyond 2gbps doesnt IMMEDIATELY come to market -- which it would..), then the pipes would indeed be saturated.
The big pipes that is.
And thats horrible, right? Wrong! It would lean us more towards a round-robin approach. The InterNet wasn't originally MEANT to be server-client! It was meant to be Peer-to-Peer.
Even now we see the awesome power of p2p, in things like napster and gnutella. Not because you can get illegal software, but because it allows the net to route around errors like LAW.
If everyone had 100mbs to their house, the net would DEFINITELY change. I just happen to think it would TOTALLY be for the best.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
The 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act contained a loophole exempting some rural carriers from competition.
I just moved from such an area... The phone service was horrible, I got about 22K, and got disconnected constantly. No DSL, no ISDN, no cable modem service, no Teledesic coverage. It was quite frustrating.
I moved across the state border (a few miles away) to an area whose ILEC is not under the rural exemption. Now I have 1.5M cable access for $40/mo, and DSL is currently being rolled out by several local providers. I may switch to DSL at some point.
Your only hope is probably cable, since it isn't subject to the same distance limitations as DSL.
Also, DirecPC might be better than dialup... There's a company called Helius that makes a $99 software router package for Linux that allows you to a) use DirecPC on Linux and b) share the connection among up to 4 computers.
--
True, but the trust relationship is different. If I understand freenet correctly, you have to trust that the content you're getting from your closest peer is genuine, even if you don't know them. With something like Akamai (or squid, which is similar but, um, different) you have to trust your ISP, and I think most people do.
I hope I made any sense whatsoever. My caffeine buzz is wearing off and I'm starting to slur my speech and become incoherent.
--
My cable ISP runs Squid... It doesn't bother me most of the time, but it does seem to add a little delay when loading dynamic/personalized pages. Also, they must have some sort of maintenance that runs on that server in the wee hours, because it grinds to a complete halt every morning around 4:00 a.m. I think that's an indication that I shouldn't stay up that late.
I wish they would just get rid of the thing and let me hit the servers directly, but I can understand why they run it.
--
What we need is smarter protocols that distribute the content closer to the edge of the network. The commercial Akamai service does this by placing content caching servers at several thousand ISPs. These caching servers hold frequently-requested images, video clips, and other large files from major content providers. When Joe ISP user downloads a video clip it comes from his ISP's Akamai server instead of going out onto the Internet, crossing peering points, etc.
Worthy of note is that Helix Code is an Akamai customer. So, when you install Helix GNOME, it's not coming from some arbitrary mirror site, but automagically from the closest upstream Akamai server.
Akamai is awesome, but it would be nice to have an open-source, open-network way to implement this at the ISP level. Does anyone know of any such effort underway already?
--
New homes will have ADSL as standard within 5-10 years
... in fact, it will be common in new communities (and the homes in those communities) sooner than 5-10 years. It's probably closer to 3 years before it's standard in new developments. There are already several communities in the US offering 100mbit residential access.
:)
.sig
*Real* high-speed internet to the home is coming a lot faster than this! I work with a residential development company, and can tell you from what's going on in the market/industry that this type of bandwidth to the home is coming on FAST
Certainly EVERY new home in the US won't have this much bandwidth -- but I can tell you that MANY new "communities" (both master-planned and apartment complexes) that are just now starting construction will be providing similar services. I personally have about ~10000 new homes (over the next five years) for which I intend to provide 10mbit internet access STANDARD -- with the ability for the resident to upgrade to 100mbit (or maybe even more.) Many of the communities will be running on gigabit backbones.
As someone (?) stated in another comment here, not everyone in the community can use that kind of bandwidth simultaneousely, but there will be a tremendous amount of bandwidth available. I've seen some communities that are bringing in an OC-12(655mbit) per 250 homes for upstream. The routers at the Head-End should have no trouble balancing traffic to allow all homes equal access.
I am not alone in setting up these types of systems in communities either. Every "residental land-developer" with a clue is currently in the process of putting deals like this together. While many developers are going the route of working with a traditional phone/cable company to offer xDSL or CableModems, a great deal of others are working with smaller startups (and sometimes the incumbents) to offer REAL ethernet at 10mbit as the BASE internet access, with upgradeability to 100mbit for an extra $20-30/month. (Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 100,000 unbuilt homes across the US that are already lined up (or in negotiations) to offer this speed of service.)
I saw another comment that you shouldn't "give" away this type of bandwidth for $20/mo when you can sell it for $200/mo to businesses. But, the point of these networks is to drive people to the new communities. The developer really makes their money off the land sales. If the developer can make a little recurring revenue from phone/cable/internet *and* make people want to live in the community because they offer incredible services at a cheap price, then it's a good deal for everyone. I know very few people who wouldn't be ecstatic about paying $65/mo for phone/cable/10mbit internet. Since the financials work (without charging "business prices"), there's no point in trying to gouge people.
Of course these systems provide a tremendous number of new services too... *Real* video on demand, videoconferencing, etc.
Oh well -- just rambling here.
... but if anyone is interested in moving into one of these communities I can help you out.
E
ewr@nospam.erols.com
I don't have a
I could have an OC-192 to my home. If my upstream provider only has a T1 to the next peer, that's all the damage that can be done to the network upstream.
Does anyone know of a service provider that *doesn't* oversubscribe it's available bandwidth? Does the proposed service expect to have overwhelming long-haul bandwidth with peers?
The debate is pointless and appearantly not technically clued.
It seems not too long ago everyone had a 28.8/33.6 or defunct 56k connection, and most businesses ran their sites of either a single or double T1. So they are supporting a load of 150kB to 300kB per second. Then along came cable modems and DSL, and now with my cable, I can take 300kB to 400kB per second off certain sites. That's more than enough to completely hog an entire T1's bandwidth. So are T1 bandwidth companies suffering from Cable and DSL users ? Did cable modems and DSL ruin the internet by giving people the power to send out a 500kb/50kB per second DoS ? It allows a cable modem user to easily packet off modems and even lesser DSLs. A few cable modems could easily take a T1. So did this broadband revolution cause mass DoSing can chaos. Well, perhaps at first. @Home cable modem users are banned from most EfNet servers, which shows how, in the beginning, there was a problem. But the internet grew up around it and now it's not that big of a problem. Most of the major DoS attacks don't come from Home Broadband Solutions. They come from rooted servers colocated in big places, like an Exodus IDS. It only takes a 14.4 modem connection to the internet to use a commonly available expoit on a huge ass server, and once you have root, you can start a 100 megabit+ ICMP flood, STILL using your 14.4 modem. The point is, most people don't DoS from home anymore. You get caught, people press charges, everything gets nasty. All of the major DoSing you are talking about is due to Trino and TFN setups on rooted servers. So your whole argument that 100mbit home connections would result in major site takedowns just doesn't hold water. I would certainly not packet off a 100mbit line going straight into my house. If I did, I would sit there and wait for the FBI to show up at my door. Give me a break. Things are going to move faster and faster. But an internet line isn't like Karate, where you have to "earn" the skills. You don't "earn" an internet connection, you buy it. I know plenty of companies that buy big internet connections and use them to spam the fuck out of everyone. Did they "earn" their connection, or did they buy it with cash ? Get a clue.
As a network engineer for a major broadband ISP, I can speak firsthand of the problems when "Joe User" connects. Granted, 99.99% have (and cause) no problems. However, that .01% are the cause of 99% of the security problems that we deal with. It's gotten to the point where I track new RedHat releases by when certain markets go offline due to misconfigured boxes, hax0rd machines, and the mass launching of DoS attacks from compromised machines. Just like any powerful tool (e.g. - a firearm) a certain amount of responsibility is required to use it safely. Just like you shouldn't buy a gun without making sure that it can be stored safely in a secure location (making it as difficult as possible for it to be used maliciously or irresponsibly), buying a broadband connection should require the consumer to think about how to secure and properly configure _any_ computer (Linux, Win[$num], Solaris, BeOS, whatever) that they will be hooking up.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Squid is a great web proxy cache that many ISP's use to get the same result. It also has hooks built into it to easily join cache heirarchies and NLANR. Its 100% open source too.
Coming back to the topic, squid, akamai, freenet, or any other heirarchal cache structure could make these incredibly high bandwidth home connections work without destroying the servers those customers want to get to. Even when I was using a 56 k connection, I ran squid in my house to save bandwidth. If you applied the same idea to 100 people with 100 mbit connections in their homes, all hooking into a cache-mother at their ISP's office, I think everyone would be happy.
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WWGD? (What Would Goku Do?)
"Only" 56K access? I'm sure if you wanted to you could get a T1 or ISDN line run out to your apt/house, no matter where you live.
This is all a matter of cost, of course. How much is this FTTH service going to cost? I can't imagine it'll be less than $200/mo.
Email me.
Don't trust anyone over 90000.
+++ATH0
Optical backbones belong in space anyway.
Fiber to the curb? Who needs it?
Seastead this.
Sometimes I find it quite amazing that driving is an earned privledge (NOT right), and parenting (which can cause just as much damage to the human race) is somehow a right.
Actually, utilizing a motor vehicle to travel is NOT an earned privilidge. It's an inherent right of a free citizen to use public roadways to exercise his freedom of movement. You can choose to give up your "right" to drive in order to gain the "privilidge" of having a state issued driver license, but you cannot be compelled to by law, since your freedom to move about the country (if you're a US citizen) is protected by the Supreme Court.
(For more detailed info, click this link to a legal brief on the subject.)
(I promise it's not goat sex.)
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
"The ratio is out of whack. If the Big Scary Internet Business Dot Com has X Bandwidth, and the Home User has X / 2 Bandwidth (not X / 500) as it should be), there is a BIG problem."
Er, why? Yes it will snarl up current network topology for a bit, but it will get worked out. Evolutionarily speaking, things often are available on the net before the infrastructure is ready for them, and then technology backfills the new need.
Remember when all those AOLers hit the newsgroups? The sky was falling for news culture? Servers would never handle the bandwidth? It settled itself out.
But a bigger problem is that if you start thinking about how to "manage" broadband access this way, you are throwing away potential new uses for the net. Joe User deserves as much bandwidth as he can afford, and he deserves to use it in any (nonmalicious) way he wants. Peer-to-peer, website hosting, Unreal, Internet radio station broadcasting, whatever.
This is the problem the AtHome folks are running into -- they spent all that money on caching servers for web content and everyone unconfigures (is that a word?) the proxies immediately.
And the idea that Big Scary Dot Com Company X should have more bandwidth than me is lotek scarcity thinking. We are rapidly moving toward bandwidth as a commodity. I mean a REAL commodity, where 100mbit access is a given for 5 bucks a month. All those students coming out of college these days sure think it should be and one or more of them will work to make it happen.
Don't be afraid of the posibilities. Make it possible for us to explore them!
-- "Vote Democrat. Because the current crop of conservatives are just bugnut crazy."
Most access providers who can provision your home with broadband today will *not* provision you with a static IP address. More egalitarian companies exist - please give them your business. If you can get it.
This is at least as big a deal as domain name or bandwidth shortages.
By artificially eliminating IP addresses from your market basket, telepolies and large ISPs force consumers to purchase services they could provide themselves - for free and with higher quality. Like domain name services, SMTP mail service, web + CGI services. You must rely on your ISP to provide virtually ALL IMAGINABLE INTERNET SERVICES.
Basically, the incumbents are terrified that consumers will start running their own servers, thereby diminishing demand for their anemic substitutes. They *should* be afraid.
In the same way the telecommunication act requires telepolies to provide access to their cable plant and central switching equipment, legislation is needed to outlaw IP address squatting.
This may seem a bit off the topic of broadband to the home. Quite the contrary. One of the primary reasons you'd *want* dedicated broadband access is to allow you do *more* with your connection than simply download MP3's faster.
Until this situation is resolved - DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH ISP'S THAT WILL NOT GIVE YOU A STATIC IP ADDRESS. At least not if you have a choice.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
We are all ready. I want to be able to host my own porn site from home on my 100mbit connection, and I want it now!
Well I have a few things to say on this before I go reading others comments. First I'll tell you all I'm still on a 56k modem and have no potential broadband access where I live (about 20 miles out from a large city, with ~3000 other people in thsi town).
Ok, People are not going to fill a 100 Mbit dedicated line. As is all thsi would do is let you download something and then try to figure out what to do next. It doens't matter if your surfing the net, looking for music on napster, etc. all those applications simply use as much bandwith as the other side can send and then it's over and you go to figure out what next to download (net surfing btw is downloading). You would constantly have gaps unless you were doing somehting malicous (like DoS attacks) or massive pinging, so the use of the full 100 Mbits would be low (you'll spend more time finding the data then downloading the data the faster your conenction gets).
Second well I'd love to have that nice FTTH coming into my house or any other broadband option (DSL, Cable, T1+, etc.). I dont't think it woudl actually change my web habits much though... Other than wandering what else I can find after everything would load in seconds not minutes...
Well 'nuff said.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Just because the enduser has more bandwidth doesn't mean they are going to suck up more bandwidth from servers than they do now. For most data it will just mean the enduser is downloading quickly for a shorter timespan, instead of downloading slowly for a much longer timespan. Also, shouldn't a TCP/IP stack be able to distribute the bandwidth over available connections? I mean, its not like someone with a 100mbps connection is going to be the only person able to access a server with 100mpbs bandwidth, it will just be slower when the next person comes along. Of course this doesn't address DoS attacks, but the ISP could simply put a cap on the maximum upload speed that an enduser could send at or something similar to this.
Why sell 100M/sec for ~$20 a month into the home when you can sell it for ~$200 a month to a business.
You're leaving money on the table, and that's a bad business model. If you consider that Arpanet had ~56k truck lines (costing thousands) to connect computers in the late 70s and 80s, and today businesses are giving away 56k conectivity for "free", things move on.
Processor power and bandwidth make incrimental increaces in the marketplace, and have for 3 decades now, and I don't forsee a "leapfrogging" technology that makes it worth the investment. Remember, it's not just the speed of the fibre, it's the router/load ballance/server that has to keep up as well. By definition, internetoworking means "we're all in this together" so what good does paying through the nose for 100x jump in bandwidth if nothing else it's connected too can keep up.
The past 30+ years of computing has shown that Bandwidth and proccessor power are incrimental, and any jump in either has a limited life, before it's obsolete.
If anyone has seen startrek(prolly everyone reading this) they will know that the borg are connected to everyother borg. Each borg must have terabit of bandwidth, because they communicate their every thought and reaction to every other borg. In their society everyone gets nearly unlimited bandwidth. Sure, the individual lacks any real unqiue thought, but at least they all have a really kick ass connection to the borgnet.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
This is the best post in the whole damn discussion.
Think about it. When broadband became more popular, people began to find larger files acceptable. MP3 bit rate standards moved from 128kpbs to 160kpbs to 192kbps. Look at the demo sizes of most games. Compare the demo of Quake 2 to the demo of Soldier of Fortune, which uses the Quake 2 engine. Hell, compare the Quake 2 Full to the Soldier of Fortune demo.
Why is mp3 encoding and divx encoding so powerful? Because they can fit shrink large amounts of data into managable sizes for today's bandwidth. If we give everyone broadband, nobody will have incentive to optimize programs or write better codecs to minimize software.
Rangers Lead the Way!
To misquote a line from Jeff Goldblum, "Capitalism finds a way"...if there is demand, there will be supply, I guarantee it. It may not happen immediately, but it will happen.
I think it's important that we push for this kind of accelerated growth of bandwidth...the new economy is starting to show signs of stagnation, and there's still a long ways to go. We haven't even begun to realize how broadband access will impact homes and businesses, and the applications for it can't be written until it's widely available.
No, but I did have to earn my right to, for example, drive a car. I had to take a test to prove that I knew how to operate one safely, and was aware of the basic rules and regulations of the jurisdiction in which I mostly drive.
I'm not saying that we should necessarily require a test before people are allowed broadband access, I'm just pointing out that it's not intrinsically as ridiculous as you are implying. The idea that for some human activities we choose to restrict those permitted to engage in them seems very reasonable. Even voting (your example) is restricted by age, because society considers that people need to be a certain age before they are able to make a reasonable and informed decision about who to vote for.
Earning broadband access? In capitalist societies, people purchase things that will give them satisfaction. (Remeber your Economics and Marketing classes?) Internet access is a product, marketed by various providers with various levels of quality and service. It is not a "right to be earned". Surely everyone knows this, already. So, why was the article posted?
The ratio is out of whack. If the Big Scary Internet Business Dot Com has X Bandwidth, and the Home User has X / 2 Bandwidth (not X / 500) as it should be), there is a BIG problem.
This is a problem for client-server networks but an advantage for peer-to-peer networks like Gnutella.
Hold onto your hats boys and girls, we're going for a ride!!! I'm a lurker in the IPng Working Group mailing list and let me tell you this a "COOL THING" that IPv6 will be able to deliver. I'm talking about a new class of address called an ANYCAST address. Basicly you will be able to specify where you want to go and the anycast address will be used to find the "closest" address that is referenced by the ANYCAST address. This means that if I type in http://foo.bar/monkeypron.html my DNS will return an ANYCAST address that can be used to connect to the most available iteration of foo.bar and then I can get my monkeypron at blazing speeds. Now all we have to do is hope the IETF gets IPv6 out before we KILL the internet with those 100Mbit connections (where can I get one, DROOL!!!!!)
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IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Will there be growing pains? Almost certainly. Can you unilaterally restrict the growth for the convienience of the existing entities? You will be able to do so to a certain extent, but it will most likely grow past your barriers along paths that you don't block.
The ratio is out of whack. If the Big Scary Internet Business Dot Com has X Bandwidth, and the Home User has X / 2 Bandwidth (not X / 500) as it should be), there is a BIG problem.
If you are the Scary Dot Com that sees this shockwave of high demand headed your way, then it seems you have several choices:
1) Bail out now. Sell your business for what you can get out of it. Sit on the beach laughing at the fools who bought your swamped and dying business.
2) Upgrade your business's infrastructure to handle the increased load. Restructure your business plan so that you can make even more money off of the increased demand.
3) Keep a weather eye on what is developing and how fast. Make contingency plans. Set aside some assets so that you can compensate fast if there is a need to increase your capacity. Don't assume that your, or anyone elses assessment that "wonder tech X" will come online when/where/how/ you think it will.
Since we obviously are going to have serious broadband dispersion in the near future, what must be done, legally, technologically, and otherwise in preparation to support such a network?"
Legally? Nothing, unless you mean that you are going to need legal help with your new contracts and business arrangements.
Technologically? Good question. See my points 1, 2, & 3 above.
Otherwise? Keep informed. Watch your market. Talk to your customers. Talk to your associates. Call your congresscritter. Pray. Do whatever floats your boat and you think helps you prepare for the coming flood.
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
So I say, roll out that fiber, and let the chips fall where they may. If somehow everyone had this tech tomorrow, the 'net might bog down in the short term, but at least we'd have some real world testing and know what the problem areas were. Then we'd pay to fix them, and everything would be smooth again. That's the way technology rollouts work. Release, test, release, test, release . . .
Sure, it's irresponsible to use your customers to do QA (which is what would happen if we rolled it out tomorrow), but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen gradually, and gradually, technology will rise to meet the demand.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
There may be access in your area via Cable (perhaps only one way) but contact your Local Cable Co. I know that my ISP has access in many of the more rural areas of PA. Heck, if you are in Commonwealth Telco or BufVal Telco area there may even be xDSL for you. Ask them. I say this only because I know that PTD.net has access in many places you would think they do not. As for the Urban Snob, having personally vacated your blighted, impersonal "Urban" area for a much "Kinder, Gentler" area, that has high speed cable access...and being extremely computer saavy, your narrow minded thought offers only a reminder as to why I left a city like yours to begin with. Modern Celt "The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all." St. Oran
"The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all." St. Oran
Isn't it a bit more like, Joe User deserves not to be allowed to own a gun if he leaves his hunting rifle on the hood of his car while he's eating at Burger king?
Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
And your bandwidth usage will probably be monitored too. But it isn't really a problem, since the important part for home usage is the peak bandwidth. On average you don't use much more than a modem. But you have good latency and peak bandwidth.
I have this situation right now at home, and so does many others where I live (Umeå, Sweden). Even my grandmother has ethernet at home, and she doesn't even have a computer.
That is perhaps 20000-30000 households with cable or (fast) ethernet. All sharing approx 50Mbit/s. And it isn't a problem.
There is some monitoring, so if you start downloading/sending several gigabytes every day, you are probably doing something wrong. And you risk getting cut off if you don't do something about it.
This is how it is solved here. And it works. And has worked for several years. This isn't something new, this is something that is quickly becoming standard. I can't imagine living in an appartment without ethernet connection.
I'm probably wrong, but this seems like a good excuse/reason to tax or otherwise charge more for DSL/Cable/high speed connections and divert these fees to the end user carriers (I.e. Sprint, QWest, Worldcom, etc..) to lower prices to the companies buying the T1's etc..
:/
Not that I'm in favor of this by any stretch of the imagination, but seems like its just around the corner.
...is not a new concept. My dad was talking about it when he worked for the phone company 12 years ago. The whole idea is to have just one line running to your house and the phone company wants to provide you with everything. This has been their plan all along.
As far as the implications of this, I really don't think they will be anything serious. Today you can already buy a DSL-modem/hardware-firewall/switch unit for a reasonable price. If you've got all your services coming in on a single network connection, this is probably what will have to go into place. The technology is already there.
And as far as "earning" the right to use the net? It's like those that argue that email should have priority over streaming media on the internet because it's an efficient use of bandwidth. It's just silly. It's like limiting who can use the airlines. If you can afford an airline ticket, your take a plane; if not, you take the bus - not "if your name is Joe, you get to ride the plane, otherwise you take the bus."
--
47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
-Brian Peace
Editor Drum N Bass Massive
Drum N Bass Massive
Lets do a quick check. How many of us only need a 33.6 modem, a small program and a bunch of poorly setup networks to take down your grandma's home page, Hackerz-R-kewlio.net and CNN.com? I bet a lot of people can do it. The bandwidth isn't the real issue now is it?
Remember the following three things.
1. Last mile bandwidth doesn't not mean "Internet Bandwidth"
2. A smart, capable network engineer can minimize abuses of high bandwidth connectivity. (How is the subject of another post if you really doubt it can be accomplished :)
3. The more performance drops on any network connectivity the more likely users will go to another form of connectivity that "feels faster".
(I see cable modem users defecting to DSL here, but cable modems have more bandwidth)
The more important questions to ask are?
How many smart network admins are there really?
How many users don't use a personal firewall?
How elitist can you get?
Bring and the bandwidth baby, I want to watch bootleg DVDs from borneo!
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Remind me not to move to your neighbourhood :)
I would assume it is not more power consuming to operate the light emitter than the electrical equivalent in copper wiring. Anyone?
ProcessTree - Isn't it time your computers started paying for itsel
For pics of the wiring
Anyhow, the price is great, only a bit more than cable for a static IP and 1500K down / 256K up. Of course as people have mentioned in other posts, I am HUGE target for the opportunity hacker. I made a hasty reinstall of Slackware after a HDD crash and was owned within 3 days. The one time I got lazy it bit me in the ass.
I can hardly blame the script kiddie. At the time, we were all 'beta testing' full 1.5M/1.5M speeds (for free then) with a static IP. Luckily I discovered this within a week and put an end to his fun.
With 100mbps internet access, I think that we'll see a huge inflation in the size of content, and a much lesser focus on efficient web design, similar to how Windows (and Gnome/KDE, mind you) require fairly fast processors, whereas the Amiga or MacOS 6 or 7 required almost nothing and do nearly everything that today's interfaces do. It encourages waste.
Another likely effect will be the increased use of hosted applications, whether for good or bad. Myself, I think that hosted applications are just a good way of squeezing more money out of people, but that's just me.
Finally, if everybody ends up with 100mbps access at home, then it'll pretty much spell doom for wireless internet access, as content providers scale up their bandwidth requirements to meet the home customers, and wireless connections that seem obscenely fast (2mbps) by current standards become outdated before they're even introduced.
Between the new ID packet every 20000 packets, and source IP filtering at the entry router, we'll be able to tell where it's coming from, and probably get the provider to turn that connection off. Of course, it's going to be some security-free Microsoft OS client that's been captured by a script kiddie, but maybe class action suits against Microsoft... A practical approach might be to have a scheme in place by which a complaint about a node cuts their uplink bandwidth to 100Kb/s, sends them a message telling why, and bills the complainer for bogus complaints.
I have to admit, as one of the original workers on Internet congestion in the early '80s, I never expected the backbone to be able to carry as much as it does now with as little congestion control as it has. But as it turns out, there's so much fibre in the ground now that long-haul capacity probably won't be a problem. Much of that fibre, after all, can be upgraded to faster tranceivers. Switch capacity will be more of a problem. I suspect most users will get 100Mb/s only when receiving multicasts.
The real issue is that this replaces cable TV, which is going to drive the cable and broadcast industries nuts. It may even kill broadcast HTDV before HDTV really gets going. The existing broadcast/cable industry is going to want to keep users from receiving from any streaming source anywhere. Then again, it's not clear which side AOL/Time Warner or AT&T/Viacom will be on. Expect huge political battles.
ISPs are NOT happy to do filtering, because it means more resources and more hardware costs to them.
That's BS. ISPs would just charge the customers those costs and then turn around and use that security as a marketing ploy. "AOL: 25% more secure than other ISPs!"
--
I already get various "check out this kewl movie clip" e-mails from my ADSL and Cable-modem friends, who don't seem to grasp the idea that the top I get over my phone line is 33kbps on a happy day. What's going to happen when they get 100Mbps? Oh, the humanity!
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
If the regulators say you need a license to surf, they'll will probably require you to be an adult before you can get on, negating any need for Web content filtering software.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Some ISPs (cough) with policy routing to the caching HTTP proxies have such bad routing that news sites like Slashdot have day-old headlines.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Federal Express truck carrying DVD-ROM discs. Sure, it's 24-hour latency (next day delivery), but it's a heck of a lot more bandwidth than you get.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ummm.... Not really. Actually, the only rights I have (at least in America) are as follows (quoted directly from the Bill of Rights)
And so on and so forth throughout the Constitution. In short: The only right's I've got are those that I was garaunteed in the Constitution. Now, the electric company has the right to sell electricity, and I've got the right to buy electricity, so long as the electric company doesn't mind. If, however the electric company decides they don't want to sell electricity to me, then I find another electric company that will sell me electricity, or I live without it. I do not have a right to the electric company's electricity any more than I have a right to your car.
--
"Dude, pounds are so metric, fuck that." - Noah
There's been a lot of talk in the mass media about peer-to-peer file sharing, and it's impact on the future of the internet. Perhaps it isn't the end-user having bandwidth that is theproblem, but rather a single server, and it's bandwith constrictions. The server is the choke point. But with peer to peer server type stuff you could do everything a server can do and more. With a little refinement, and the elimination of the RIAA, peer-to-peer file sharing replace the need for servers. The potential is there, all you need is a catalyst (IE everyone having lots of bandwith and crashing servers, forcing peer-to-peer). In the end, i say give everyone bandwidth and figure out how to fix the problems as you go along. Huddling in the corner worring about "potential" problems isn't gonna solve anything. Don't wonder if it'll work, make it work. So there's my random, incoherent thoughts, enjoy
You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution
It just pisses me off that joe luser can get a 100mbit connection that he doesn't know what to do with while others who actually need fast connections are stuck with 56k. Kind of like AOL users polluting the real internet, they have no clue what its really like.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well if your job invloved working from home over a VPN or PPTP you would need a fast connection.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It will happen. Out of the Box firewalls will be the virus software of the next Decade.
And as for those Geeks who think we 'earn' the right to more bandwidth or computers are becoming 'too easy', remember we are nothing more than the car mechanics of the 21st century. Some of us will work for Ferrari most of us will restore old C64s in our garage.
I've been using computers for 15 years and the constant arrogance of my friends and colleagues is something I've grown use to.
It seems that more and more of us are becoming uneasy with this arogance lately because the days of my friends boasting about their latest Amiga demo or kicking people off IRC has turned into calls for retricted access to both computing and the Internet until 'they' are 'ready for it'
We already earn more than others, enjoy our jobs and bask in the glow of our percieved importance to society. What more do we want? What do we think we are entitled to? Super citizen status?
Perhaps Mr Katz can start a topic that will really throw the cat amongst the pigeons "Is our power corrupting us?"
However you spell it, 'elite' is a shitty word.
Normally a server or commercial ISP will have a lot more bandwidth than a home user.....would this give everyone the same bandwidth, or would it bring an bandwidth increase in all areas?
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
The keyword (or better buzzword :-) is QoS - Quality of Service.
Most people think of assured _high_ bandwith when hearing about QoS (for example for video conferencing). But you can also negotiate an artificial low bandwith to avoid a total saturation of your line. So when the client and the server both use QoS, the server can tell the client only to use 5% of his total maximum bandwidth he has available. This allows 20 clients to connect despite one client alone would be able to saturate connection (when using best effort).
Pooh. You underestimate how good we are at making it easy for them to waste bandwidth. They'll all be videoconferencing and filesharing movies in no time.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
On the other hand, the state of security is deplorable, and crypto is employed only by the very few. Life can get a lot worse if every PC is an attack platform with a very zippy connection.
Forget the silly "make 'em earn their bandwidth" attitude. Cheap out-of-the-box firewalls, which are easy (or at least easier) to configure, and IPSec are needed.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I can configure a router, and operate construction equipment safely. I'm not sure about the spleen, but I'd be willing to try if it'd speed up my connection. :-)
Let's see... got my safety razor... bottle of scotch... roll of gauze...
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
One of my previous IT profs posed the question of licensing for various computer related fields, as it would help ensure some sort of reputative standard for those in that field. I think that this may apply in this case as well. With the advent of cable, DSL, and other high speed services, it won't be too far off when a majority of the users of the 'net will have access to some sort of broadband. Right now we require licenses to drive, fly, operate radio stations, get married, etc. Would it be too much to expect (or even want) some sort of core knowlegde of the technology, with those that have proven themselves worthy, allowed to jump on the fastlane of the superhighway? Yes, I know this sounds like another restriction on the internet, and I know information wants to be free, but is a majority in broadband worth not ensuring that those who will use it have some sense of responsibility?
How does one earn the privilege? Once earned, can they then lose it?
I have been using computers back when 64k (yes, k) was considered lots of ram. Does that earn me the privilege? What about being able to spell 'C'?
The problem with high speed home access is that it would allow people to be sloppy with their sites. Just the way that having gb size hard drives and 64mb ram as a 'standard' allowed software developers to become lazy and sloppy, 100mb line speed would allow people to have fat websites just because they have fast home access.
Fight Spammers!
Same goes for audio and video.
Setting some sort of "speed limit" on the end use would be a *very* dangerous precedent to set. Would it then be "illegal" to have a faster connection? Throw someone in prison or take away their "Internet rights" because they were surfing too fast?
Free markets, people! Evolution does work.
A choice of masters is not freedom
"but should the privledge of 100mbit Internet connectivity be given to someone who hasn't 'earned' the privilege of having that type of influence on a public network? "
What a pile of shit. Tell me, oh barkode, what you have done to "earn" broadband access. For that matter, what criteria would you use to determine that? Beyond that, who gets to decide criteria for that?
I'll tell you. NO ONE. You don't get to. I don't get to. The government or the corporations might get to, but god help us if they do.
To put it another way, have you earned your right to vote? How bout your right to a trial? What about making a living wage?
I am so goddamned sick of this "aren't geeks great, we're so much better than everyone else" bullshit that gets bandied about on slashdot and other net forums. Just because you can program or set up a router or administer a server doesn't mean that you've "earned" the right to have broadband. The fact that you are alive, and that it is a technological feasability, and that it is an economic one = it should be possible for anyone to utilize it.
Let's put it another way. Have you earned the use of electricity generated by a power station? Did you have anything to do with any of the technological innovations that make it possible to run a modern power grid? No? But I'd bet you say that it is still your right to have access to it, as long as you're willing to pay for the electricity. Same thing with broadband. I'm not saying that everyone should be given broadband for free (although that would be pretty cool) but it should be available, if it is technologically feasible.
Which brings us back to the original point. One of the questions that you asked was whether it would be technologically feasible to give everyone broadband. The answer is "probably not." However, when it is, I suggest you step the fuck out of the way and let anyone who wants it have it. You are no more 733+ than anyone else. You might be able to configure a router. Can you remove someone's spleen without killing them? Can you operate construction equipment safely? No? Then shut the hell up about "earning" broadband. Let's see how far you get without doctors or construction workers, even those that don't know thing one about how their computers work.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Let's look at this in a serious light. If you start handing out 100mbit connections to home users there will be an eventual degredation of the system that has already been saturated with 'broadband' users. With only 2 million or so users with high speed home access the net has already started slowing down. You square their connection speed and the system will slow down even more. How much is too much? With around 50 million connected users in the united states there is already the technology divide. Those who have it and those who don't. Once you start it gets worse. People w/out access will remain that way while the people who have will have more (see greed). What we should be doing is educating more people to the online resources of the internet first and then, once we have the majority connected, speed the connections. If we had everyone in this country connected properly there would be no bandwith. Backbones are not capable of handling that much traffic. If you want to set up a rich get richer scheme then by all means. I myself have RCN fiber. And the connection speeds are fantastic. But you add users and it gets slower. But the problem is that here is not enough people using the technology. Like the phone when it first came out the rich had 'em and most everyone else had to use rural phones, usually one guy in town would have a phone and the connection was terrible. Of course we see that that has changed significantly since the turn of the century (the previous one). Remember, technology can only grow as fast as public acceptance. Does anyone here still have a grandparent or great grandparent that has a 'phone closet'? I bet you don't. How many people here have a computer in a seperate room than the kitchen or living room?
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Who cares about DoS attacks? I don't suppose you have been severely damaged by them then? What you may or may not realize is that the script kiddies sit there trojaning all these clueless home users who now have at least 1Mbit/s of bandwidth a piece. They have HUGE networks over > 200-400 cable modems that all do DoS attacks against a single target at the same time. That adds up to a -LOT- of bandwidth.
Ever tried reporting a DoS attack from one cable company at roughly 200 hosts of theirs doing it? You get absolutely no where. Believe me, I know and have done it on several occasions. At BEST you get "Our customer was not doing thisintentionally, their computer was compromised." - Who cares? They are still being an (unknowing) part in a federal offense that is costing people thousands of dollars per second/minute/hour (depends on scale).
These home users who have no clue what is going on, are causing HUGE amounts of damages to business around the Internet, and not a single thing is being done to stop it. It's time that home users are held accountable within the responsibilities involved in running a high bandwidth computer on a public network.
Until that is done, I'm going to pray that this does not happen anytime soon, the last thing we businesses need are script kiddies with 400 trojaned Windows machines all on 100Mbit connections. I firmly believe that one should need basic training and a license to handle high bandwidth computers. It IS a weapon, and it can do loads of damage to businesses. Why does everyone seem to ignore that?
Regards,
Matt
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
In principle, I agree with you totally. But there has to be a line drawn with how much we will take from these people. If _reasonable_ laws, that were _enforced fairly_ and not _abused_ were in place and stopped all the crack attempts and dos attacks, I'd be a happy man. Unfortunately, reasonable laws that are enforced fairly and not abused seem to be quite rare and subject to media hype and associated public backlash and fright.
Matt
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
And you're telling me this is not the case right now? I'm sorry, but you, sir, are wrong. Little Jimmy has had his FTP server going for at least a year by now on his cable or DSL.
The internet was originally designed to be peer to peer but large corporations have pretty much forced it into a starlike formation where end users have tiny little pipes and upstream there are vast backbones.
;)
The problem with giving end users 100mbit connections is that large corporations would need terabit ones and they just plain dont exist (not over any long distance).
Also think how chunky a server you'd need to serve out DVD quality video to a few hundred users.
However the peer-to-peer model decentralises file distribution which is exactly what's needed.
However in an attempt to block this you 100mbit connection will probably still have a 128kbit upstream (since that's all anyone needs).
Anyway web surfing will not be that fast down a 100mbit line since the protocol is inherantly latent. I've surfed the web from a machine on a 100mbit connection to the UK's academic network and it's still no faster than my 512kbit cable modem.
However you haven't traded mp3s until you've shifted an album in under a minute to someone on the otherside of the country
Of course if AT&T, Time Warner, @Home, AOL come along, they'll cap it at 2.5mbit!
:-)
How fun!
Ok, so maybe I am pampered with my Cable modem and fast computer compared to those out in the sticks who cant have it, but I think that this would be a great idea. when phone's became the thing im sure that only some people had them, mostly in big cities, but now its commonplace, now if only the 100 mbps became a standard with a walljack in every house, then were sittin pretty, its the way things should go, the internet being such a part of life and all, sure, people can dos and mess with things a lot easier, but by the time this becomes commonplace they can get a little better prepared for it, we still got a long wait, so I think a DoS attack is the least of our problems with this setup.
"They saw a medium where a dolt like me could post commentary that thousands of people can read, as opposed to TV/Radio/Newpapers where I'd never be given the opportunity to speak." I think this free speech is one the beauties of the Net . We are not restricted by the intellect of the 'Editors' who throw out what they don't understand.
Anil Bhattacharji , anilbhx@sancharnet.in, Meerut Cantt. INDIA 91-121-642166
Ok first, 1000x bigger pipe doesn't mean we will be accessing 1000x more web pages. That's the first thing. The user just can't handle that many web pages.
Secondly, at the moment people are making direct independent connections from desktop to the web server. That isn't necessary- it's only necessary to construct a tree of the machines who have/need the info and go to the nearest machine with a copy. That's definitely been used for web pages, but it becomes essential for video on demand, which is presumably what these fat pipes are mostly for.
In any case, the internet has always had congestion problems. And it has some fixes for some congestion problems already:
- slow start (this tries to stop new connections crashing the internet)
- exponential backoff (this tries to share out the bandwidth fairly between connections)
and a few other things: basically if there are 100 people connected they each get 1/100 of the available resources; it doesn't matter if they each have 1 Gb connections- they only get 5kbs if that's their share.
Which isn't to say there aren't problems. One problem on the internet at present is the loss of the messages to open connections for web pages. There is apparently no protocol to check that they make it through- if they don't make it, you just have to retry. For web pages this means the users have to press the reload button, and it messes up caching.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"If your web server is getting hammered; that usually means you are doing business. If you are doing N times more business, you can probably afford N times more servers... load sharing of web servers isn't exactly rocket science. Bandwidth in the core network? Don't make me laugh. 6.4 Terabits/second on a single fiber is already demoed, 640Gb/s systems are deployed already. Basically bandwidth is doubling every NINE months and has been for decades. Moores law eat your heart out.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"much like you need for a phone line on the analogue port of an ISDN modem? :) Power goes out, your modem shuts off, you're phoneless.
Once again, drive choice down to the consumer and let the market decide - and stop once and for all this disturbingly elitist trend of "deciding" for us what we do and do not want or need.
Of course, the obvious reply is that realistic approaches to security will never get the investment capital needed until broadband is marketed to the general public.
Slashdot is clinging to the false notion that technology can or should be controlled by an elite.
This type of bandwidth can't functionaly be used by a home user. If someone needs this much bandwidth they should have to pay.
Nobody needs more bandwidth in there home than most universities have. This is a bad idea from every point.
The companies supplying this service cant be making much $$$. There just cant be the profit here that breaking it down (even into T1 sized pipes) into smaller increments can generate. Many ISPs dont have the bandwidth required to make even DSL feasable. Even if you put the POPs for this at a phone company C.O. it still wouldnt generate much profit.
What kind of HOME user can even use this much bandwidth. You would have to have one hell of a home network to use even a small part, even if you television and phone were going over it as well.
This seems to be a very pointless idea. Not profitable to the company setting it up, and useless to any concevable home user.
First of all, some of us are still on dialup and have NO hope of anything faster than around 40k (and that is if i am lucky) in our houses. I live in Trout Run Pennsylvania, and there is NOTHING here...analog phonelines, sucky cable...and pretty much nothing...I don't think we should be worrying about superfast access until we can at least get dsl or some sort of 24/7 connection to those of us who live in the sticks....some people don't even have the internet yet...I continually hear about all these nice fast connections...but then i realize that only ppl in dallas or san fran or some such place are going to get it. I think we should concentrate on getting the average hick a decent connection before worrying about getting these super fast connections...
:)
just my 3.14 cents.
If anyone is interested in Trout Run as a place to run a T1 or something...i can gurantee at least 10 customers.
The anti-salmon
but think of all the users that think they know how to....and think of all the script kiddies out there....this could be dangerous...i forsee a large increase in DoS attacks...and a large increase in kiddies going to jail because they think they can do things they can't....i still agree...it can't suck too much bandwidth...but still...tis a scary thought...
The anti-salmon
nope...nothing...i checked it all out...the nearest thing to cable here is suscom, but that is located in williamsport, about 15 miles or so from me, and they don't extend their cable this far...and the local cable company (retel) has no intention of ever upgrading in my area or offer internet access....i checked every possibility...I called a nearby isp..and they offer a partial T1 but the installation is nearly 8000 and the price tag would be more than 500 a month..and i can't afford that...and chances are..they wouldn't run cable all the way to my house.................Is there ANY hope for us hicks? i have a dedicated phoneline that i max out around 39 or so...and that is the closest thing i have to broadband. :)
:)
check out awmlive.com and see my own in house network.
The anti-salmon
As it "should be?" Hm. Seems the only people who are losing here are the big time sites (your Amazons of the world, if you will). I honestly have a hard time feeling sorry for them. We seem to have gotten ourselves in a position where Joe User views the internet as a broadcast/receive medium, like TV or radio, when the real strength of the internet is that has the potential to be a more broadcast/broadcast medium like CB radio. Give everyone massive bandwidth and the big broadcasters get sunk. Who replaces them? The smaller, more disperesed broadcasters... the users themselves. The result is greater diversity online, greater narrowcasting and less content-dictation by select broadcasters. A gentleman's anarchy, if you will.
And I like that idea.
2 1337 4 u!
Actually MOST of us are stuck on dialup... Here in Mexico the phone company announced "broadband access to the internet", but what they really give you is a sucky ISDN connection that hardly ever works... (Plus they force you to contract a second phone line and the conversion to digital ISDN)
And I am in North America... God knows what I would do if I had to pay by-the-minute charges like in Europe and parts of Africa...
No sig for the moment.
Back in the 1960's certain car magazines actually editorialized that we should build and 'elite' speed limitless road system for those elite drivers that could pass a rigorous test (that included mechanics, etc.).
Basically, because they owned a porsche and knew how to change their oil filter, they thought they deserved 'better' than the Ford-driving masses. Kinda similar to the attitude here.
So, what happened? Now, in CA, every salesman, middle aged housewife, and sorority girl drives a BMW, the road system hasn't been significantly expanded since the 1960s, and nobody can drive worth a shit anyway. Democracy in action!
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Oh, the subject is "Gnutella," so somebody obviously moderated it "offtopic" without reading the content of the message--ignorant, but not stupid, moderation.
/. should implement a similar system rather than limiting the number of allowable Karma. BTW, what is the "magic number"--if this keeps up any longer, I'll lose my +1 bonus.
This Karma limit really sucks! I have a post that gets moderated to 4 and I LOSE Karma because of it; go figure. The moderation system on Kuro5hin sounds interesting because it is based on averaging the score assigned to the user's messages instead of allowing Karma whores to rake up points and then SPAM or troll the board at +1.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
This is NBC reporting yet another Internet slowdown that is affecting e-businesses around the world; here is regional correspondant John Doe.
Doe: It seems that over 100,000 people with 1Mbps or above Internet connections are connected to GnutellaNET at this time. The sheer volume of packets being routed across the public Internet has saturated the American backbone and is preventing web surfers from being able to visit their favorite web sites. Over $1billion is lost revenue is expected by the time that those *&%*& log off. The NASDAQ has finally crossed the 1000 limit as shareholders are flocking to their brokers to sell off any remaining stock that they hold in e-businesses. This is the third Internet slowdown in as many days that has resulted from widespread use of the Gnutella file-sharing software and it could easily happen again. Governors of all fifty states have enacted a state of emergency and are asking that users conserve Internet bandwidth until the Internet can be expanded to accept more users. Gnutella users will be fined $100 for each unauthorized use of the software during this crisis. More news later as NBC continues its 24-hour a day crisis watch. Back to NBC New York...
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I have a big problem with broadband in every house. See the folks on AOL and even on their local ISP's who simply get on the net to check mail and maybe surf a few pages? Possibly get on IRC, go to DALnet, get a few trojans.... now they are under someone elses control? Yeah, just what we need.... every person and their brother with broadband. Gives a new definition to smurf and DDoS attacks!
Well, you mean 100Mbit/s, right? I'm being picky, but then, the difference is important.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It seems to me that the good old ISDN connection that my parents have now, which is usually at 64kbits/s is usually as fast at loading web pages as my connection, the reason is of course that it is almost always a bottleneck somewhere else.
What I do not understand is why this going to change when connections in the homes get faster, the same mechanisms is still in place to give everybody their part of the bandwidth? For a while, it's just going to be the same bottlenecks, won't it? If someone care to explain, it'll be great.
I don't expect my parents to notice much of a difference with their ethernet connection, just that they won't have to dial up, and that I can grab Dads old computer and run a webserver on it.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Wtf, i can't believe this was even on /. As self described techno geeks you should know that a 100Mbps (fat pipe) on your end doesn't mean shit if there is a 1Mbps (small pipe) on the other end. I and even if it was 100Mbps to 100Mbps it still wouldn't matter because it would pass through a 1Mbps along the way. The packets would pass through exchanges that aren't gonna even approach that speed. And cisco switches have a function load balance or whatever, It basically prevents one node with a fat pipe from stealing all the throughput from all the others.
Besides The cost of laying backbone that fast would be outrageous, and At&t/MCI/Sprint would happily pass the cost to the ISP that tried to rent such lines.
So don't get your panites in a bind. It's the bottleneck, stupid.
As to the who-gets-to-decide-who-gets-it-bullshit. Money decides everything.
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
It's evolution, baby!
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
that'd almost be worth it.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
The only problem that needs to be dealt with is ensuring nobody hogs the pipes. This is a technological problem that can be solved, and which will be solved quite rapidly if fiber to the home goes mainstream.
Hey nobody will ever need more than 128k memory!
That's insane!!!
I live on a college campus's multipul OC-3 Lines, connected though 10MB eithernet. I get scanned probed, traced, probably 40 times a day. If one community moved ahead of everyone and implemented this sort of speed, they would be super aggressivly attacked.
You make some interesting points.
> In this country, BT are currently beginning the ADSL rollout and, since they haven't been able to successfully resolve the security implications, access will now be totally non-firewalled for home users by "default". They are expected to use the "correct" firewalling software. Tell me, who honestly thinks that John Doe (or rather, John Smith over here...) is going to have a clue about security.
If Joe Smith is going to drive without a seatbelt, that's his problem. The driving public has been educated about seatbelts, and so should the internet using public. Sure, some people don't use seatbelts, and they get killed, but they deserved it.
> Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
So some people will be arrogant. Rationing bandwidth won't change that.
> Are people really prepared for the time bomb that is now ticking?
Sometimes, we have to learn the lesson before we can benefit from the wisdom. Like with nuclear bombs, now that we know the effects, only a madman would ever do that again.
We are going to pay for the bytes in the future, not for the bandwidth.
It makes a lot of sense. The more you surf, the more you pay. Potential bandwidth for an individual surfer, however, should be virtually limitless. There even might not be any monthly fees in the future, you just pay for the bytes transferred.
- Janne
By reasoning like this, we should limit car ownership to those who truly appreciate automobiles, roads, and understand what driving is really about. You must also be able to assemble your car from parts to possess one.
Perhaps we should also require people to 'earn' their first home by building it themselves...
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
One concern I have with integrating all of these services is that power failures will be more than just an annoyance. Right now, the telephone central offices have giant batteries that keep landline phone service running even during a power outage. If we start running everything thru optical fibers (or cable tv for that matter), I'm concerned that a power outage will mean that we're totally cut off from emergency services. Maybe not even a power outage: if these services are as unreliable as my cable tv, that ain't so good. Not being able to dial 911 when your neighbors are looting your house, or your garage is on fire might be more than a tad inconvenient ...
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Well, you kind of did when you applied to Virginia Tech.
Remember, that 100MB is only to the ISP, from there who knows what the topology is?
We have a fibre link into our office and, although I can occasionally get incredible transfer rates across it, by and large the bandwidth limitations hit downstream of our ISP. When we set this up we actually visited the ISP and they showed us their bandwidth ceiling and usage patterns before we signed - incredibly open policy which we appreciated. Their upstream bandwidth certainly is not 100MB, yet.
When many [home] users are on 100MB then the ISP will have increased their bandwidth to meet the statistical demand already.
Yeah, I always find it hard to type a lowercase b after an uppercase M for some reason.
Switching technology costs have fallen enormously over the last couple of years and I actually seriously doubt that this sort of shit will happen too often over hubbed networks.
Certainly LANs seem to have transitioned pretty much from 10Mb hubs through to 100Mb switches. I see the occasional site that stepped into either 10Mb switched (very rare) or 100Mb hubbed (less rare), but by and large that seems to have been leapfrogged.
Come Gb ethernet being commonly installed on office LANs I don't expect to see any hubbed topologies really.
Its like putting a new road in some large urban area, by the moment its finally there, there are more than enough cars to fill it up.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Marconi has some pretty advanced products in this field.. Check out their webpage.
"should the privledge of 100mbit Internet connectivity be given to someone who hasn't 'earned' the privilege of having that type of influence on a public network? " What a bunch of of eletist crap. If you can afford it. You can certnainly get it. Asshole.
I think that we should go, and take away everyone's TV that can't expline the principals of how a tv works... And food too. While were at it, lets form a political party, and we'll round up everyone that doesn't "deserve" the right to live on our country. Hell we can just shove them in an oven or somthing.
www.enthea.org
Precisely the elitist atitude I was referring to. The real drivers of computing are the users. Whatever gives them the ability to do more and to do it more easily is what changes the world.
As an analogy, the car is the changer of society. The CAT D-9 is not although almost every road out there that the cars drive on was built with one. This article (and the previous one) are saying the equivalent of "Let's make sure that cars are at least as hard to use as a CAT D-9" or "Let's only let people who are capable of using a CAT D-9 use highways since car users can't be trusted"
I'd say that Linux is actually useful (so is FreeBSD) but the real reason for picking Modula2 is that it is a nice, useful, well thought through language that ended up having virtually no significance. It was (and if things don't get better, Linux will be) a technological dead end. This doesn't mean it is a bad design or a good one. There are plenty of good and bad designs that never amounted to anything after their 15 minutes of fame.
Compare this to "A computer on every desk and in every home" (the old Microsoft motto) or "A computer for the rest of us" (The old Macintosh motto) and you start understanding why Microsoft and Apple have been successful at changing the world and why *ix systems basically been irrelevant outside of niche markets and the most ivory tower variety of academia.
Much as this sounds like flamebait, it really isn't meant to be. It is a problem that Linux will have to solve it it doesn't end up being the Modula2 of operating systems.
does not mean that the ips has the capacity to support it....
Say we have a community with 2000 homes all with their own switched 100Base-T connection to the net. Before the end users even see the load, the isp servicing these homes would be toast. They would need a 25Gb connection to the net to allow all of these users to go all out.
Given the cost of that sort of connection, chances are that the cable company/isp/whatever would get one or two OC-3's (155Mb if I remember correctly) which would result in a 1:1290 over subscription of the bandwidth. They would still have a 0 CIR for their connection.
they are selling them potential (much like 10Mb cable modems today) Not reality.
I have to agree with you about there not being many people with superior technical knowledge in schools. I am 24 and have recently taken up volunteering at my old high school just to have something to do until I go back to college next spring. The current computer teacher is just a Spanish teacher with an extra period so they stuck her in the computer lab and called her a computer teacher. And I, having a great deal more experience with computers than she, lent my knowledge to the school to get a network set up and get ready to connect to the Internet. I had high hopes of filling young minds with excitement over their upcoming broadband connection (they are about to receive a donated T-1 line at the school) and all the things that can be done with that kind of bandwidth. But all I got was mostly bored kids that had no interest in it whatsoever. I would have been drooling at the thought, but most of them didn't seem to care.
You're right, in capable hands it IS a weapon. And those hands don't have to be all that capable with the programs you can find on warez sites. What I don't want to see is government get involved in the Internet any more than it already is. Politicians make lousy sysadmins. I don't want people to lose the freedom to start a radio station from their dorm room on the Internet. I could rig up a tower outside my house and start broadcasting but the FCC would be on me pretty quick. But on the 'net I can do basically that without breaking any laws, right now but I might not be able to if hackers, err excuse me, crackers get their exploits on the news a couple of times a month and really start scaring people. If that happens then the policing would really start and then the 'net turns more commercial and restricted than it already is.
I uh, I am laughing my ass off. That is a great post and it is more or less true. I truly don't know if you are joking or not, but what you said true, except for Cox and Torvalds not being 'l33t'. The post reminded me of last years ALS (Atlanta Linux Showcase) where there were companies like IBM, Sun, and Compaq and fuck AOL is going to be there this year! Anyway most people were jumping all over the Linux bandwagon and there was this one lonely guy in the corner in an OpenBSD booth. His was one of few booths that didn't have people crowded around it trying to make everyone else know how cool or smart they were. I hung around him for a while and he was honestly one of the best parts of the whole thing.
Of course, you're talking about just one school. Mike Hughes' comments about his high school clearly reflect a different reality. I suspect that there are plenty of schools where the students would be thrilled to death to be getting highspeed Internet access.
It's the nongeek, nontechnical users who will ultimately drive bandwidth consumption. As the Internet becomes even more commercial, the general population will begin latching onto it more and more, using bandwidth without any regard to whether they've "earned" the right, or whether they're saturating the link. Those concepts won't even make any sense to most them, and most won't care. It'll be one more service they purchase, like cable or telephone. Bandwidth will be someone else's problem to manage. Sure, there'll be geeks who want to know the inner workings, just like there have always been guys who want to take apart radios and TVs. But most people just won't care.
In this context, I can't help thinking of my wife's 11yearold niece. About a month ago, her family finally bought a computer. My wife and I stopped by for a visit one evening, and I was promptly enlisted to set it up and get it going. It came with a free year's subscription to AOL, which I also set up for them. The very first thing my niece wanted to know how to use was AIM; it seems that all her friends use it. Within a week, she was sending my wife email greeting cards, and bugging my wife and me to get on AIM so she could chat with us. She jumped into the interactive medium with both feet, and without the slightest bit of fear.
She's integrated the technology into her life very quickly; it's already as much a part of her daily experience as the TV, the microwave, and the telephone. Does she have "superior technical knowledge?" No. But she has something far more important, IMO: Unquestioning acceptance. In 1995, when the Internet was really starting to go mainstream, this little girl was just entering grade school. To her, the commercial Internet has always been around. Checking her email, or chatting with friends via AIM, just seems natural and normal to her. And it's all socially reinforced: She's at an age where her peers' opinions matter a lot to her, and almost all of her peers are online.
Chat and email certainly aren't enough to saturate a highspeed link, of course; she's not even close to feeling cramped by her 56K modem connection yet. However, she and her preadolescent peers are all popculture junkies. In a few years, they'll be downloading videos of their favorite pop music stars, pulling down music clips to burn their own CDs, etc. To them, it won't seem any more unnatural or difficult than popping a rented movie into the DVD player or cooking popcorn in the microwave. And you can bet every one of them will be clamoring for faster Internet access (in addition to money for the mall).
We want fags like this...to come back and bite us all in the ass...
Thay, give that man a blowjob! Tee hee!
NAMBLA. Because Scouting can only take you so far.
I don't know, but the way I see it is: the internet is built on the principle of free and equal access to information. If we discriminate in allowing access to bandwidth, we choose who can better access information. Who cares about DoS attacks and the rest. We are talking about home users. It is a little better to fix a DoS attack that takes down my grandma's cookie recipie website than a DoS attack that takes down e-bay. Free, fast access to all is what I say. Andy
Andy
"1 2 3 4 5 - unbelievable, that is my luggage combination!"
Any site with more than 100Mb/sec uplink should (or does) have the capability to throttle sessions. This is not new technology. If not at the webserver level, there are many options at the infrastructure level to accomplish this (firewalls, webswitches, etc.).
DOS attacks are a real concern, considering most firewalls cannot handle 200Mb/sec of real world data. As processor technology improves (and prices drop), this will change...
Patrick
There is no destiny, happiness can arrive from the most unsuspected direction at any point in time.
Yep, 56k is just TOO FAST for people to use. The routers will NEVER handle it! I mean, think, they'd have to add new routers and such! Nobody would ever do that! The internet will collapse! Stick with good old 14.4k.... Maybe we can force people to get licenses to surf, kind of like driver's licenses only much more difficult to get. Then we can really be elite! Oh wait... we're talking about broadband... well, just do a search and replace on my cogent and worthwhile comments ;)
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
Here's a company that is bringing Fiber to the Curb in Longmont, CO. Its a small 35,000 city by Denver. Here's the press release from Longmont Power and Communications explaining its development phase.
This is a great example that big cities aren't the only ones getting FTTC.
LPC/Adesta Communications Partnership