Planet Broadband

Joel Natt writes "Planet Broadband is not a Star Trek episode or another Sci-Fi title. It is the title of a new book by Rouzbeh Yassini which answers the question of where the term 'broadband' originated and why is it used when discussing cable internet services." Read on for the rest of Natt's review of Planet Broadband. Planet Broadband author Rouzbeh Yassini pages 140 publisher Cisco Press rating 9 reviewer Joel Natt ISBN 1587200902 summary The birth and growth of High Speed Internet

When I first received the book, my initial thoughts were focused on the cable Internet environment, but the book addresses the DSL side as well. This small book of 140 pages, including index, not only explains how the concept of broadband communication evolved, but also delves into possible directions it may head.

This book is clearly a history of how the concept of broadband was developed and the growth of the Internet that it has led to, not a how-to-guide suited to setting up broadband service. I can foresee future generations of children reading this book in a college course on Information Technology. When one considers that only three to five percent of the American public use any form of broadband services, the growth potential presented is unbelievable.

For me, a detail-oriented reader, it took about eight hours to read Planet Broadband. That may seem slow, but considering the topic and the scope of events occurring within the world of telecommunications, it's better than I expected. As I read this book, I would pause from time to time and comment to myself on how Yassini's predictions and descriptions of possibilities offered by broadband access are already manifesting themselves. Some of the concepts presented include virtual training (which many universities are now offering) and virtual meetings with individuals all around the world. While Yassini does point out that not everything is available on demand in this day and age, in time we will witness more and more bandwidth-heavy services that are.

Yassini points out the concept of being able to check the items in the refrigerator from work, or have the washing machine place a service call to the manufacture before you know there is a problem. These are features of a true broadband planet -- and perhaps time our children and their children will not know a world where analog modems are still used to connect to the internet. But as you read, you realize that while today is the birth of broadband, this book is more the introduction to tomorrow's internet. To prove the point that Planet Broadband is an introduction, my baby-boomer mother (who works in the cable industry in customer service) took the book from me and read it cover to cover one day and told me 'This is where we are going.' If a 50+ year old parent can see it, we know that the world will be there some day.

Near the end of the book, Yassini focuses on telecommuting and a comparison of that to working at the office. While he clearly points out that telecommuting is not for everyone or all the time, it has productivity advantages and will only grow with time. I think one of his best examples is in Chapter 6, where he recalls an MCI commercial depicting a woman working at home and changing a presentation on the fly for clients and co-workers halfway across the country. That image is an example of how the world has changed thanks to the advances of broadband.

This book is not designed for the IT world, but for the general public. Just the same, I would recommend this as an excellent addition to anyone's library and especially to individuals in the information technology community. For management or others it is an excellent resource to justify a telecommuting policy or practice, or a good reason why they should upgrade from the modem and narrow band to the world of high-speed Internet.

You can purchase Planet Broadband from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

There is a confusion

[gustgr]

Here in Brazil there are companies providing 128/64 DSL services and calling it "broadband".

Re:There is a confusion

[WeirdKid]

Covad used to sell DSL at that speed here in Michigan, but they called it "IDSL". This was most likely because of it really being ISDN.

When I was college (back in 1990), the Telecom 101 professor spent a good amount of time talking about BISDN -which stands for Broadband ISDN. I can't remember the data speeds he was talking about, but he did use the term frequently in reference to a lot of the services typically offered by the modern cable provider (i.e. video-on-demand, VOIP, etc.) I always just figured the term Broadband referred to the transfer medium required to provide these types of services.

Re:There is a confusion

[foobsr]

Broadband -A type of transmission that shares the bandwidth of a medium--such as copper or fiber optic cable--to carry more than one signal. Broadband facilities have a bandwidth (capacity) greater than a voice grade line of 3 kHz. Such a broadband facility--typically coaxial cable--may carry numerous voice, video and data channels simultaneously. Each "channel" will take up a different frequency on the cable. "Guardbands" (empty spaces) exist between the channels to make sure that each channel does not interfere with its neighbor. A coaxial CATV cable is the "classic" broadband channel. Simultaneously it carries many TV channels. Broadband cables are used in some office LANs. But more common are the baseband variety, which have the capacity for one channel only. Everything on that cable to be transmitted or received must use that one channel. That one channel is very fast, so each device needs only to use that high speed channel for only a little of the time

CC.

Old information.

[jm92956n]

When one considers that only three to five percent of the American public use any form of broadband services, the growth potential presented is unbelievable.

1996 called. They want their statistics back.

Re:Whole book?

[Davak]

The introduction to the review is silly. The book would be better described as the history, present, and future of various aspects of broadband. Work, miltary, science, family life -- broadbands impact on all of these type of things are explored.

Several of my friends who are in the venture-side of investing are using this book to see where they need to put their money. The author has a good vision.

And yes, it's already a little out dated. It still takes a while to publish these prehistoric things the public calls books. :)

Davak

Re:It comes from...

[AKAImBatman]

Two Greek words: "broad", mneaning "a word", and "band", meaning "that has something to do with the internet."

This is the LAMEST excuse for karma trolling I've ever seen. (Apologies to the parent if he's just trying to be funny.) From dictionary.com:

A specific range of wavelengths or frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.

"Broad"-band means that the "band" of frequencies has been broadened to provide more "in-band" data transfer. In english, the bandwidth problem was solved by simultaneously transmitting multiple bits instead of a more traditional serial transmission with a higher bit-rate.

Everyone catch that? Good.

Re:Obvious?

[bryansj]

It's going to take them awhile to adapt to the idea of plugging the bandwidth as a home utility rather than a feature of your computer. Which is actually a good thing, because the bandwidth doesn't quite yet exist to play true TV or Movies on demand.

That's odd because I've been using Comcast's On Demand feature for months now. It's nice to be able to watch any missing episodes of HBO specials when you wish. Granted, you can only choose what they have to offer at any one time, but the bandwidth to do this is there.

If you aren't sure what this feature is about... it allows you to pick a title and watch it with rewind, ff, pause, play, and stop/resume. They have a list of shows that are available for a few weeks and are replaced with other titles as those expire. For instance Sopranos Eps. 1 through 5 are available now and will be replaced with eps. 6 through 10 when their time is up.

who is Yassini?

[gordona]

It wasn't mentioned in the review or any of the followup postings that I could find, but Yassini could be considered to be the father of the cable modem. He was responsible for leading a team in the development of open standards and certification of the DOCSIS Cablemodem specifications.