Are We Ready For Broadband Internet Access?

barkode asks: "A friend recently asked a mailing list for some comments on a technology his company is introducing, a FTTC (Fiber To The Curb)-like product known as FTTH (Fiber To The Home). FTTC, which has been around for a while in certain areas, is modified from a hybrid of fiber-terminated-at-curb -> coax-to-the-home, to skipping step 2 altogether and providing 100mbit switched and dedicated Internet bandwidth directly to the NIU on the side of the house, providing dialtone, television, and Internet. This generated quite the debate, ending up with a discussion of both why the Internet isn't ready for this, and why Joe User isn't ready for this either. The DoS attack potential is obvious, 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 has to happen before FTTH/FTTC is feasible, and what are the implications of implementing such technology too early?" Interesting thought, although the percentage of people who have access to broadband Internet in the home (much less Internet access, altogether) is not that high at the moment it is probably wise to ask these questions now, rather than suffer the dismal performance of an overloaded global network later.

"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?"

Comments

The Arrogance of the Techno-Elite (Moderate Down!)

[Anonymous Coward]

"...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.

You're wrong.

[mfh]

I'm a senior in High School. You might be in high school too, judging from the age of your mother, but let me tell you how things are in my town, Thousand Oaks, in Southern California, where a large percentage of the students at my school have cable or DSL.

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

Re:Indeed.

[FFFish]

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!]


--

Disagree.

[joshv]

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

Re:Disagree.

[mbyte]

Never ever underestimate the demand for porn ;)
Samba Information HQ

Indeed.

[periscope]

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...

Arrogance

[Robert S Gormley]

Exactly. How do you decide that you, as a self-described "power user", has even 1% more right to bandwidth that anyone else willing to pay for it has?

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.

Bigger backbone

[AdamHaun]

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?

Two Words...

[TrevorB]

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...

What about Akamai?

[phutureboy]

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?

--

Nothing Special about this problem ...

[The Code Hog]

"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!

The more important question is . .

[Money__]

Re:"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."

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.

There's no better way to find out than to find out

[xant]

Hand-waving about the crisis the Internet will face when all these AOL users get fat pipes is irrelevant. The fact is, the average home user WILL get fat bandwidth, and we should give it to them as soon as possible to find out what the impact will be. We can't predict the impact of all new economic or technological changes without some hard data as to what they actually do.

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.

Ask 733+d0+

[Bitter Cup O Joe]

"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.

Gnutella

[LaNMaN2000]

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...

Steeper requirements on car ownership

[skoda]

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

One potential problem is telephone access

[Vassily Overveight]

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 ...