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Anti-Technology Technologies?
shanen writes "A story from the NYTimes about metering internet traffic caught my eye. I thought the exchange of information over the Internet was supposed to be a good thing? Couldn't we use technology more constructively? For example, if there is too much network traffic for video and radio channels, why don't we offset with the increased use of P2P technologies like BitTorrent? Why don't we use wireless networks to reduce the traffic on the wired infrastructure? Such technologies often have highly desirable properties. For example, BitTorrent is excellent for rapidly increasing the availability of popular files while automatically balancing the network traffic, since the faster and closer connections will automatically wind up being favored. Instead, we have an increasing trend for anti-technology technologies and twisted narrow economic solutions such as those discussed in the NYTimes article, and attempts to restrict the disruptive communications technologies. You may remember how FM radio was delayed for years; part of the security requirements of a major company includes anti-P2P software, as well as locking down the wireless communications extremely tightly — but there are still gaps for the bad guys, while the main victims are the legitimate users of these technologies. Can you think of other examples? Do you have constructive solutions?"
It's a matter of balancing control against efficiency.
Understanding the workings of an entire swarm is is not easy.
With a swarm it is harder to differentiate for "elite" customers who pay to get that extra bandwidth.
Where you are in the swarm will matter just as much as which connection you're paying for.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
In reference to the bandwidth limiting efforts in particular, just because there may be a way to offset technical problems with good technology (e.g. Bittorrent for video/audio) doesn't mean it makes business sense. For an ISP, it may be more economical to simply limit the bandwidth of users (which is easy) than figure out what is really a fairly difficult problem. If:
What we're making now - Cost to implement bandwidth controls - Loss of customers that get ticked off
is greater than
What we're making now - Cost to implement good technology that handles bandwidth more efficiently
most companies are going to choose the former. It makes more business sense.
I'm reminded of a passage in "Becoming a Technical Leader" (great book btw - a commenter on Slashdot mentioned it). Anyway, it's about making the transition from techie to management, and analyzing the differences in thought processes. The author tells a story where a company was designing a system, and the requirements were "Make sure it can recover from one error per day" (or something similar). Anyway, the technical people involved with the project thought it would be better if they could get it to "Make sure it can recover from any error, ever, immediately", as they thought it was a more interesting technical problems. Turns out it cost the company something like $4 million, and in the end they had something that a) the customer didn't really need and b) they basically couldn't sell to anyone else. The moral of the story is that just because there are interesting technical problems, doesn't mean that solving them makes good business sense.
It is a case of technology being held back by non-technical reasons, but please look beyond popular technologies when you make an assessment about desirable technologies.
Bittorrent is a major part of the problem because it attempts to utalise 100% of the available bandwidth (and the client end). If every user used bittorrent, then the ISPs would have to supply 1:1 bandwidth (instead of overselling as they do at the moment), thus dramaticly forcing the price up for every user.
Zil:
I take it you're new to the internet. USENET is still a point-to-point protocol from A to B, and this is where the problem comes in. You have a significant amount of traffic going over that single point.
With torrent and peer-to-peer distribution, you have smaller amounts of traffic coming from many different points.
Load Balancing, Clustering, P2P--are all technologies favored by the IT industry. If your distribution node goes down, nobody cares because you have others. There's no single point of failure in a peer-to-peer distribution system.
P2P should be used in pretty much every scenario requiring high bandwidth of highly popular media. (Which is actually fairly common on the internet). This drastically will reduce bandwidth costs for the people paying and improve end-user experience.
If we had Torrent before FilePlanet went pay, they probably would have never gone in that direction.
Follow the money. The ones with (power|control|money) want to stay on top and it's only the ones with better agility that corner the market and then become the top dog. So you're looking for a technical solution for the wrong problem.
:p
What's the problem ?
IMHO, it's the "last mile". Legislated limited monopoly controlling access with an interest in keeping that position. so there's a high barrier to access put in place.
Some of the other problems is what may work in a high density area will probably not work in a low density area. A wireless mesh may work in cities and towns but completely fails in rural. Another issue - making data retrieval a crime. "you're" responsible for someone else's actions and that kills any open public access. Some one has to pay to connect to the backbone.
If I had a solution that would work in all cases - I'd be rich
Here's a lynchpin that needs to be remove - the last mile monopoly and its bundling with "providers". Here in the Northeast (US) the power line is a separate charge on your power bill than the generation. Break that up. Internet access "line" charge $0.02 per month. ISP charge $x. Anyone should be able to send data over the lines without the big guys restricting access - for the same cost. NO AT&T ISP should be able to send data cheaper than another ISP.
It may be time for $TOWNs to own the lines, bid repair out to another party and anyone to sign up to an ISP.
BUT it won't work. See any telcom endevor.
The Duck
couldn't figure out why the darn thing kept blowing itself up....
I hereby revoke the shanen's geek credentials for failing to understand that single source versus multiple sources doesn't matter if the problem is the total volume.
The problem is not that on server or site is overloading. The problem is that the provider's network, including things like routers and gateways, have a finite bandwidth and these applications, regardless of source, are using up most of it.
Ever hear the phrase "You can't put 10lbs of shit in a 5lbs bag"? Ever wonder why they put in new water mains and increase the size of water mains when the build more housing developments? Or why the widen roads with more housing? It is because the total volume has increased.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
BTW, is Microsoft paying for the constant annoying updates of its OS, as well as Apple for the annoying connections of Quicktime (and iTunes) and Acrobat for their automated downloads too?
Bittorrent is *not* more bandwidth efficient. It is merely more efficient for the distributor. It uses at a minimum the same amount - normally more in fact, due to its forcing of uploads (many torrents throttle based on upload and few will let you block uploads completely) but it's spread across the users. It's also far slower than other methods.. so is only better if your time is worth nothing.
BT is a major problem the ISPs need to deal with - if you download something over usenet or FTP once it's done it's done. On BT unless you actively kill the connection it'll continue sucking bandwidth... that contributes to something like 60% of average ISP traffic being P2P, and why it's increasingly being blocked.
I read an article by a high-ranking Toyota exec in the New Yorker about how, in contrast to American companies, Japanese companies *do* think ten or twenty years in advance. He made the point that they didn't introduce hybrid cars in order to sell to hippies in ca. 2000; they introduced them because, come 2010 or 2015, gas is going to be expensive enough that lots of people are going to want them... and they wanted a mature product -- both from an engineering and from a brand standpoint -- ready to go.
Now, in 2008, Priuses (and Corollas and Yarises) are common on the road in my city, while many of the short-sighted US manufacturers are trying to retool from building 18 mpg SUV's.
The interview mentioned a Japanese business term that has no translation in English; I forget the word, but it meant something like "the faith that building products that people need and selling them for a fair price, long-term, will be profitable, long-term." That might be less true now than it once was, but it's interesting to note that Japanese companies do tend more toward the "Build useful stuff; sell it for cost + profit" model, and American ones toward "Make whatever we can market and sell it for whatever we can convince people to pay".
The main exception to this that comes to mind immediately is Sony, who can go die in a fire. They've got their hands in lots of markets and are thus successful in that regard, but they don't seem to be market leader in any of them. I follow the camera market fairly closely, and Sony's main market in the US seems to be
1) people buying point-and-shoot cameras that didn't do their research, and wind up paying >$100 more than the equivalent Canon or Panasonic that performs better;
2) digital SLR's, which aren't really Sony's; they're rebranded Konica-Minolta stuff who Sony bought out.
As an example of Sony's failing, their top-end bridge camera still doesn't offer any sort of processing controls: you're stuck with a JPG with one compression setting, one saturation setting, one contrast setting, one (excessive) noise reduction setting, etc. There's no RAW mode. The lens is *very* prone to chromatic aberration.
Canon and Panasonic's competitors are cheaper, use superior optics, and offer control over the processing; Panasonic's versions have RAW, and Canon's
But, as a marketing matter, you can't sell stuff like this to Joe Sixpack by saying "Look! Good optics! Controllable processing! RAW mode!", so Sony didn't even bother trying to do this stuff.
"The interview mentioned a Japanese business term that has no translation in English; I forget the word, but it meant something like "the faith that building products that people need and selling them for a fair price, long-term, will be profitable, long-term."
The translation is "Fast Bucks vs. Slow Dimes". America likes This Quarter's Sales. Japan does likes Next Decade's sales.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine