Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)?

eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"

Comments

Umm, No Thanks, i like my speed.

[TheCrazyFinn]

So, you want everybody to be restricted by the low-bandwith links common for last-mile today, no fast websites, and non-robust routing?

I don't think you understand the value of redundant OC48 backbones, BGP4 and IS-IS routing, and colocated servers on gigE links.

Your ad-hoc networks would be OK for MAN's (Metropolitan Area Networks), but are simply unusable for anykind of backbone.

2 problems

[jonhuang]

1. freeloader problem--your privately designed cell phones will be replaced with bandwidth suckers that don't do replays. No controlling body, so can't stop it.

2. no "backbone"--hopping accross phones works around the city (maybe), but how many hops will it take to get to.. japan? and don't forget that there's some countable amount of milliseconds per transfer--to get accross the nation is a lot of cell-phone coverage sized hops. Plus, we have to go around the grand canyon.

Re:The tragedy of the commons

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the big problem is that the question is stupid and that it makes no sense.

It's not "the Man" that screws you into paying internet access costs - it costs money to lay wires and run all of the routers on the internet. This is a fact. Wireless infrastructure is stupid on a large area network, as you waste virtually all of your power transmitting to areas where there are no listening machines (or no applicably listening machines).

Why does slashdot continue to let 14-year-olds with dreams of free everything post to Ask Slashdot?

why CS departments teach networking classes

[SuperBanana]

Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating?

Because infrastructure and reliability costs money(no no, trust me, I get more insightful below. Well, maybe not insightful. It's hard to answer this story insightfully, I just point out the facts.) Communications mediums are WORTHLESS if they are unreliable, which is one of the reasons cell phones took decades to "take off"(realize that it's been at least 3 decades since the cell phone was invented, and only in the last 5-6 has there really been a cell phone boom, at least in the US. Realize that the # complaint with cell phones is still how unreliable they are.)

Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices.(snip) What are the technological barriers?

Well, you asked, so here goes:

• Latency- you're multiplying the hop count astronomically.
• Routing- the internet has something of a routing crisis already, with routes being incredibly complex. Now, you've passed the buck to each system or workstation- and it has to know, geographically, where it is and where all the other nodes within range are, so that it knows who to pass a packet to(no sense in passing it to the laptop sitting right next to you, is there?) This might be possible, if the routes were at least semi-permanent, but they're not- they're constantly moving, nodes are going up+down...which brings us to...
• Reliability- systems will crash while handling a packet, or simply never see a packet due to interference- RF or physical(something blocks the signal). That's just on a pure network level. On a higher level, communications are worthless without reliability. You've GOT to be able to pick up the phone and get a dialtone for so many reasons- emergency services, business...
• Speed. Due to extreme unreliability, retransmission will be a severe problem. That means TCP windows won't get very big- and remember how high latency is? That means data transfer rates will be incredibly, incredibly low. Overhead will skyrocket. Even a couple percent packet loss can seriously affect performance.
• Leeching. People will hack their devices to simply refuse to answer routing requests. This is what's happening, basically, on p2p networks...and believe it or not, accounting/policing it is almost impossible without a centralized system.

There are also some hidden consequences, like "everyone's mobile device is no longer idle, it's processing someone else's packets, so its battery life goes into the toilet".

How would you solve problems of geographic isolation?

That's just it- you'd need wires/fiber/something...and that would cost money. But, reliability would be far better- so people would opt for wired connections they had to pay for. Oops, right back where you started.

Also related- the reason high-speed access costs so much money in the US is because of geographic isolation and population density. It's no surprise that several Asian countries have DSL service in the megabyte-per-second range to your door for $10-20/mo; after all, you're probably in a huge apartment complex, in a city.

If the population density isn't high enough to support pricing high speed access low enough, I doubt you'll have enough nodes to even occasionally get any kind of connectivity to anything else- much less guarantee it.

Back to the cell phone example- look at how many billions(if not trillions?) of dollars have been poured into the cellphone network(which in turn is reliant upon a larger wired network.) I don't care what network you're on, soon as you get a little bit beyond the suburbs, off a major highway- forget it, you're screwed.

Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?

Well, for one, if you did telephone calls over this "system", I'd move to another country. When I pick up the phone, I damn well expect a dialtone, because, oh, say, my house could be on fire. There are no doubt thousands of o

Re:No charge?????????

[no_opinion]

Actually, not that surprising. Everyone here thinks music should be free, so why shouldn't communication infrastructure be free too?

Given the number of "when I download music I'm not stealing because I'm not taking anything physical" I understand why there are people who have trouble grasping the costs associated with non-physical goods (like bandwidth).