Actually, the situation is much simpler. The access network that you use is very heavily over-subscribed. It was designed with assumptions with regard to the nature of traffic: mainly that all traffic is equal, that all traffic is best-effort (that is, that any packet can be dropped at any time for any reason), and that hosts can resend traffic if needed. Indeed, the Internet as a whole was designed around the end-to-end principle. This would be great, but now users want more than "best-effort" traffic for certain services such as VoIP, IPTV, and so on. Google has recently entered the fray with its Google video service. In order to better support these applications both network hardware (i.e. routers) and the access and aggregation networks will have to be upgraded. One way to pay for these upgrades would be to raise everyone's rates. But, that would be difficult to accomplish unless the competition also raised rates by the same amount.
Another approach (and the most fair one, IMHO) would be to charge users a premium for better quality treatment for some traffic. This is generally why a 1.5 Mbps T1 dedicated internet access (i.e. business access) costs more than 1.5 Mbps ADSL (i.e. residential) access. Business users are generally given higher QoS and/or non-oversubscribed access links.
The last approach is the one mentioned, where the content provider is charged extra for higher priority. In some ways, this is a kind of "Robin Hood" plan. The end-users get cheaper access, and content providers, who make their money by providing content to the end-users. In some ways, this is like the broadcast TV model where advertisers, in effect subsidize the broadcast TV infrastructure while the views either pay nothing for access (for over-the-air reception) or pay a relatively small amount for cable access. Advocates of this model say that the content provider should pay for an improved experience for their users while allowing end-user subscriber fees to remain low.
In any case, providing basic internet access is not really a very profitable business. The commoditization of the internet does not leave much room for high margins that would be required to attract the additional investors required to fund a round of upgrades.
I mean they put a coax from the box to my house once, like five years ago. Why would [or should] I pay a monthly fee for what amounts to 20 minutes of time and five dollars worth of cable?
Because your access line is not the most expensive part of providing service. In addition, that cable installation probably cost the cable company somewhere between $300 and $800. The aggregation router at the cable head-end costs between $100K-350K plus, say 20% per year in vendor support fees. The core routers, servers and associated shared infrastructure in your city may well run in excess of $10 million. Now add in the cost of the video head-end, VoD servers, etc. Now, add in on-going maintainence and support, repair costs, billing and administrative overhead (you do want to be able to speak to a human when you call customer service, don't you?) and then remember that all of this gear has a useful life of 5 to 10 years.
Why can I send 20 gigs of data ten thousand miles for 30$/month when I can't make a phone call [which is scratchy and all] overseas for anything less than 3 dollars a minute [on my cell].... hmmm 800kbit modem vs. 9.6kbit cell... hmm... which costs more...
Well, someone has to pay for the wireless infrastructure, and remember the $$$ the FCC pulled in from frequency auctions a few years back? Guess who is picking up the tab!
bags can't be checked through from Love Field in Dallas to airports in non-adjacent states due to a local law meant to send out-of-state traffic through DFW
Actually this not a local law, but is a Federal Law (and a rather stupid one) called the Wright Amendement (later modified by the Shellby Amendment to allow service to a few other states with powerful lobbies).
CNN posted an article about this topic a few weeks ago.
First of all, I must congratulate you on your ambitions! It is too bad that more people are not interested in developing and living in intentional communities such as the one in which you are now involved. Having said that, the most important thing for you to do, before you even begin to consider the technology that you will use to deliver various forms of information and telecommunications is to define the requirements that your solution, whatever it is, will be judged against. This will require you to develop consensus with all residents on issues like ownership of the system, maintenance responsibilities, initial capital budget and on going operational expenses. Realize that 30 subscribers is probably too many to be served on an "ad hoc" basis (unless everyone is fairly technically literate and is willing to share "on-call" responsibility) and too few to warrant a dedicated 24x7 network operations center.
Given this situation, you may find it helpful to contract out some or all of the design, build, operate, and maintain phases of the project to an established ISP in the Netherlands(xs4all, as it is owned by KPN, may or may not be interested in such an arrangement, you may have more luck with smaller competitive providers - like Demon, or perhaps even larger players like Versatel or Wanadoo). Another approach may be to "rent a NOC." This is not as far fetched as it sounds, when I lived in the Netherlands a few years back, there were quite a few experienced network engineers who took on part-time or on-call projects for extra cash. If you go this route, it would actually be better to contract with people outside of the community, so that they could monitor the state of your network from an external perspective. You could contact a company like BaseN, for example, if you would like to try this approach.
As far as the design itself, you will probably find that the monthly operating expense will be higher than if each home individually subscribed to a complement of traditional services, at least in their most basic form. Of course, you will be able to offer additional services that are either prohibitively costly for individuals, or even unavailable to consumers. You can craft a set of applications that could be specifically targeted to the needs of your community (rsync'ed gentoo mirrors, community IM and location services, VoIP centrex services, and so on). These services will help form the basis of the requirements document mentioned above.
Next, I would work from the external connectivity to the distribution of those resources. I assume that Internet connectivity is important to you and your community. If this is the case, then the connectivity requirements are probably on the order of at least 4Mbps. If network availability is a major concern then this could be provided by 2 E1 lines, diversely routed from different providers, probably to different locations within your community. It is important to realize here that this implies that your community would become in effect an ISP. If you are really ambitious, you could pull a circuit into the Amsterdam Internet Exchange and attempt to find some providers willing to peer with you.
Now, to answer the question that you originally asked, there are a number of different technologies that you can use to distribute your network. As with everything else, there are tradeoffs involved; that is, there is no right answer (but many "wrong" answers). IMHO, the best tradeoffs would be found in xDSL technology for two reasons. First, it is a relatively proven and mature technology. Second, it works over just about any reasonable twisted pair technology. On the other hand, if you will be distributing television as well, you may find Euro-DOCSIS cable modem technology appealing. This will allow you to make use of the coax infrastructure that you will need to install anyway, but you may find that CMTS (cable modem termination systems) are initially mor
Ok, here are the quick answers, check out the web sites for more info.
Is it possible to have Asterisk to be situated between my incoming (analog) phone line and the (analog) phones in the house?
Yes
What kind of hardware would that require?
For the scenario you describe above, you would need:
an FXO card for your analog phone line and
a 4 port FXS card for your analog phones in your house.
You would need to connect each phone to a separate FSX port. Then setup extensions and a dialing plan and you will be able to call between them and make outgoing calls, setup IVR menus, voice mail, etc.
Does it have a power-failed pass-though mode?
No.
Is it possible to have Asterisk gateway calls to a cell phone, so that if I unplug the local telco, the house phones will still work?
I'm not sure that I understand what you are trying to accomplish here. You can forward calls to an internal extension, or you could "bridge" to an external "dial peer," but you would need to remain connected to the local telco. Of course your internal phones would work (i.e. you could make calls between your local extensions) regardless of whether you were connected to the outside world or not. Any way, please clarify your question.
Yes, but only CLECs can now buy the unbundled elements, not ISPs. It is not as easy to become a CLEC, as they are regulated entities, as it is to start an ISP. I also believe that new CLECS must offer voice service in order to become certified (although, I do not think that they have to offer voice on all of their connections).
Line-sharing (or dialtone) and data encapsulation are two entirely distinct issues. For instance, I used to have an RFC-1483 routed ADSL connection (over my POTS line, ie, with dialtone). I have also had a PPPoA SDSL line without dialtone at another location. In places where ISDN is popular (like Germany) it is also possible for an ADSL connection to line-share with ISDN.
Then again, many countries in Europe treat housing, water, food, and income as social civil rights. Does everyone there have equal paying jobs? No, of course not, but the disparity between the salary of the top executives and the lowest paid employee is much smaller.
If you still think 'free enterprise sucks' then at least be logical and apply that belief to your life
I did this and moved to the Netherlands, a society that combines capitalism (yes, you can buy just about anything in Amsterdam) and socialism. Unfortunatly, foreigners do not have the same social civil rights (or else everyone would move there) so I had to leave when I lost my job. Would I go back if I could. In a minute!
If you think that 'free enterprise is great' then at least be logical and legalize prostitution, drugs, same sex marriage, and so on.
but if he really wanted a job, the first step is to become a potentially useful employee
Been there, done that...
This comment obviously comes from someone who has never actually experienced the joys of unemployment. I actually agree that it is important to become a useful employee. I was unemployed for nine months last year and took the time to go back and actually read through RFCs, play with network equipment, do some volunteer work, take a few classes, and so on. And I did eventually get a job.
On the other hand, it is as though someone else was controling my destiny. Afterall, was it my fault that the upper management of my former employer decided to divert corporate revenue away from the business (and stock holders) and into their own bonuses and golden-parachutes? Is it my fault that the stock holders often see lay offs as "trimming the fat" and reward these same executives for their "bold moves to improve the bottom line" with even larger bonuses?
Capitalism itself may not be to blame, but surely the corrupt cabal that runs most American corporations as well as our political system should be held accountable.
Perhaps if unemployment benefits were paid directly out of executive compensation, the unemployment rate would drop.
the fact is that adbuster presents only a single side
I agree. In fact I do not entirely agree with the opinions expressed on adbuster. I do agree that the list in question is accurate, however. Furthermore, I do not neccessarily think that intervention is inherently bad, in all cases. Still, the fact is that the we (I am proud to be an American) *did* fight a war with Japan. I would agree that we had a good reason (the attack on Pearl Harbor). The point of the adbuster list was to point out that the US has engaged in a far greater number of direct military interventions than is usually acknowledged.
As far as your ad hominem attacks are concerned: if disagreement with you means that I am "pretty ignorant" then I suppose that I must be. On the other hand, I suspect that I may be as knowledgeable on these matters as youself. In addition to my formal education, I have actually lived in other countries and seen other ways of organizing society: some superior in some ways to the American approach, some not. In many cases, it depends on exactly which "truths" you consider "self-evident." Democracy depends on reasoned debate and discussion. It is a pity that there no longer seems to be room for divergent views in our contemporary society.
Stalin? A Hitler who survived.
Again, I agree. I guess that you did not catch my sense of irony. Sorry.
My methods? I've yet to starve the Ukraine.
There is still time:)
Lastly, I would like to point out, that I am *not* your foe, nor do I think that you are "evil" just because I do not agree with you. I would appreciate the same courtesy:)
Adbusters, as part of the left, seeks not to improve America, but to destroy it.
So, basically anyone that does not hold your own personal political views is seeking to destroy America? Truth does not matter if it does not validate your own political agenda? You must consider Stalin a great leader! Oh wait, he only shares your methods, not your political views. He must be evil! Then again, Stalin was hardly a Marxist, but that is another discussion.
When I lived in the Netherlands for three years, I was taxed in that country's highest tax bracket: 60% (it has since be reduced to ~50%). In addition VAT (sales tax) was 19%, not the single digit sales tax that most states charge here.
The funny thing is, at the end of the year every year, somehow I had more money in my bank account than I do here in the US with its "lower" tax rates. And I had the same (or higher) standard of living. In addition, I lived in a country where you can buy (and smoke) just about anything that you want. The government took more of my monthly pay, but basic prices were much lower than they are in the US.
The government also supported the needs of workers: I, like everybody else, had a right to a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation a year. After working one year, I earned a right to keep my job (i.e. my employer would have to go to court or pay me off to fire me). My employer was required to pay for public transportation for me to get to work. Health insurance costs were reasonable, as were health care costs themselves (~$15 to visit a doctor, and yes it was *private* insurance and doctors).
It should be noted, that because of the tax structure, it is very difficult to become rich in the Netherlands, but it is also very difficult to become homeless. Just about everyone would be "middle class" by US economic standards (at least in terms of their family purchasing power). This combined with a socially progessive cultural orientation towards tolerance and a stong cultural bias against violence make the Netherlands a very safe place to live.
The US could certainly learn a lot from the Dutch.
I think that you have missed the point here. While it is certainly true that most people *think* that there is a signifcant difference between the two major political parties in the US based upon some of the issues that you raise, neither side of any of these issues (with the possible exception of abortion versus choice) is in conflict with the notion of a "classical liberal" state. That is, both parties (and most citizens, I suspect) agree with the fundamental principles outlined in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the various subsequent amendments.
Neither political party seriously suggests, say, a return to monarchy, or massive redistribution of wealth. Likewise, very few people argue either for manditory state sponsored religion, the reintroduction of slavery or a return to the prohibition of alcohol. No contemporary US politician is willing to seriously discuss social civil rights (i.e. the right to food and shelter, freedom of movement, medicine and health care, etc.) that are guaranteed by many European states, but not by the US.
Furthermore, it is not clear that either party has a clear "agenda." It is tempting to say that the Republican party, in general, is more concerned about the individual and that the Democratic party is more concerned about the social. But this generalization breaks down pretty quickly when one considers the issues that you raise above. For instance, the desire to maintain a standing army would be a Democratic rather than a Republican concern if this were the case.
However upon closer inspection, it appears that both parties actually have the same agenda. That agenda is to support and protect the moneyed interests. The only difference is *which* vested interest should recieve the most protection. In this light, both parties look very similar.
if he is innocent, then perhaps he has nothing to worry about, afterall, it is up to the prosecution to present its case beyond a reasonable doubt. He certainly is not "acting innocent," however.
Did you consider that the plea bargain could be an attempt to save tax-payer money and preserve some dignigty for the defendant. Afterall, he is just a foolish student, perhaps they just wanted to give him a chance to straighten out and complete his graduate degree.
It also seems a bit odd to me that you treat your english teacher as more authoritative than a federal judge, especially since the judge almost certainly has both completed more education and written far more published works than your teacher.
It's sad when justified cynicism... and this cynicism towards this specific judge is based on what? It seems to me that the judge was going out of his way to be accomodating.
"If you try to kill me, I will defend myself?" threatens you? It depends on who says it and why. If it was said by a paranoid schizophrenic holding a knife, for instance, I might feel somewhat threatened.
There is a place for criticism of the justice system, but an arraignment hearing is almost certainly not the place for an effective critique.
Back to the case at hand, in what way has the judge erred? How has he abused his judicial authority? It seems reasonable that if a defendant does not show respect for the rule of law, or that he can pick and choose which laws apply to him, that he may may well decide that he does not need to show up for his court date.
... the defendant has lost all faith in the justice system perhaps, but which aspect of the justice system does he feel is problematic? Is he attempting to engage in an act of civil disobediance? Or is the defendant just an arrogant fool who thinks of himself as an ubermencsh to whom the normal rules of society do not apply? I suspect the latter, especially given his background. I wonder how many times he was told that he was "special," how many rules were bent to allow him to start college so young. I wonder how many liberal arts classes did he take? Perhaps a few years "unplugged" would do him some good, give him some time to read literature and philosophy, maybe learn to meditate. As it stands now, with his attitude, he does seem like a meanace to society.
This is absurd. I agree that law enforcement officers should be held responsible when they abuse their authority. On the other hand, in order to ensure that both sides get a fair trail, it is essential that all involved respect the authority of the court. Questioning the typographical conventions of the court, making unreasonable demands, and threatening the judge are actions that show lack of respect for the authority of the court. If the prosecution has no case; then let the court make that determination.
You make a point that the onus of responsibility lies with the prosecution. Agreed, just don't confuse the role of the judge with that of the "justice" system.
Cisco released IPv6 IOS images back in June with IOS 12.2(2)T. Note that this was the first commerical release, there was a earlier EFT release about for quite some time that served as a beta. The major features are there: IPv6 routing, support for stateless autoconfig, IPv6 address family support in MBGP, support for RIPng. No other routing protocols yet.
Juniper also has IPv6 available, here how to configure IPv6 on JUNOS 5.1.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world?
on
Bluetooth Bombs
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but how long has token-ring been around? It has had a long life; now perhaps it is dying. But my point is that the possibility of choosing TR also enabled the development of other TR-like techonolgies like FDDI (and CDDI) that were (are still to a certain extent) important techonolgies.
Even Gigabit ethernet is based partially on lessons learned from Fibre-channel and FDDI (albeit in symbol-encoding rather than token-passing).
When discussing Fiber-to-the-home, it is important to realize that this is just a transmission medium. Just having Fiber to your home does not guarantee that you will have dedicated bandwidth for internet access. Or, for that matter, that the metropolitan backbone is not oversubscribed, or that there is adequite capacity at peering points or other connections to external networks.
Anyone with a 100Mbps ethernet connection in a large office knows that the link speed alone is often not the limiting factor!
Furthermore, the assumption that the only, or primary, costs involved are the network termination equipment is simply incorrect. Yes, if we are talking about terminating a 10Gbps (or even 2.5Gbps) SONET or SDH circuits, there will be an expense. But, don't forget that the larger the network (i.e. the greater the number of "end-systems") the more intermediate systems (routers, switches, repeaters, etc) are required. Each one of these network elements then must be monitored and managed.
Now, if we assume that the service will be priced inexpensively enough for consumers to purchase, and that there is enough consumer demand for this sort of service; and if we can assume an inital customer penetration rate of, say between 1-10%, the number of network nodes in a city of 500000 is between 5000 and 50000. This is becoming a fairly expensive network to manage.
One possibility is that a city or other entity could build the fiber infrastructure and then lease "dark fiber" to service providers. This is the model deployed Stockholm, for instance. This approach has the advantage of shifting the expense of active network elements to the service providers, but now additional expense is introduced by separating the operation and repair of the fiber component from the transmission equipment (which still may be separated from the higher-level network-layer elements such as routers and servers).
Futhermore, consider the "peering problem" that will occur if many ISPs and internet users choose to interconnect with multiple IP networks: Through careful address allocation policies, the internet community (by means of regional routing registies like those provided by ARIN, RIPE-NCC, and APNIC) has constructed a hierarchical routing system that limits the growth of the size of routing tables on the core backbone routers in use on the internet. This is important for two reasons.
First, routers have a finite amount of memory. Even if memory is cheap, it still needs to be installed and perhaps increased from time to time. Each upgrade causes downtime as the router is taken out of service and upgraded.
Second, and perhaps more important, each provider advertises its network reachability information to others through a external routing protocol (BGP-4). The BGP process on each router must compute the shortest path to each network and inject that information in the router's fowarding table. The more complex the routing table, the longer BGP takes to update the fowarding table leading to network convergence issues. Also, since BGP-4 is mostly manually configured, an increase in complexity serval of orders of magnitide would require the development of new extensions to the system, this would be futher exasperated by the limitation currently imposed by the use of 16-bit autonomous system (AS) numbers which identify each administrative realm of routing policy. Someone will have to absorb the expense incured in the development and implementation of new rotuing protocols. Then, again, each core router will have to be upgraded.
Inexpensive broadband technology is still a-ways away. It will revolutionize the internet (and probably telecommunications, in general) when it becomes available, but that revolution itself will not be cheap.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world?
on
Bluetooth Bombs
·
· Score: 2
Ok, I'll bite.
IEEE 802.1 describes standards for maintence and internetworking of IEEE 802 networks, i.e. spanning tree, VLAN tagging, access control, etc.
IEEE 802.15 defines Wireless Personal Area Networks based on Bluetooth v1.1. There is a coexistence task group (TG2) that is defining Collaborative and Non-collaborative mechanisms for information interchange between the WPANs and WLANs.
So now the questions is "why do we need both?" The answer is that WPANs and WLANs solve different problems. WPANs need to be cheap, easy to configure, and very short range. WLANs, on the other hand, should be comparable in range and complexity to a traditional wired LAN.
There is room for both approachs, just as there is room for both ethernet (802.3) and token-ring (802.5) LAN technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the situation is much simpler. The access network that you use is very heavily over-subscribed. It was designed with assumptions with regard to the nature of traffic: mainly that all traffic is equal, that all traffic is best-effort (that is, that any packet can be dropped at any time for any reason), and that hosts can resend traffic if needed. Indeed, the Internet as a whole was designed around the end-to-end principle. This would be great, but now users want more than "best-effort" traffic for certain services such as VoIP, IPTV, and so on. Google has recently entered the fray with its Google video service. In order to better support these applications both network hardware (i.e. routers) and the access and aggregation networks will have to be upgraded. One way to pay for these upgrades would be to raise everyone's rates. But, that would be difficult to accomplish unless the competition also raised rates by the same amount.
Another approach (and the most fair one, IMHO) would be to charge users a premium for better quality treatment for some traffic. This is generally why a 1.5 Mbps T1 dedicated internet access (i.e. business access) costs more than 1.5 Mbps ADSL (i.e. residential) access. Business users are generally given higher QoS and/or non-oversubscribed access links.
The last approach is the one mentioned, where the content provider is charged extra for higher priority. In some ways, this is a kind of "Robin Hood" plan. The end-users get cheaper access, and content providers, who make their money by providing content to the end-users. In some ways, this is like the broadcast TV model where advertisers, in effect subsidize the broadcast TV infrastructure while the views either pay nothing for access (for over-the-air reception) or pay a relatively small amount for cable access. Advocates of this model say that the content provider should pay for an improved experience for their users while allowing end-user subscriber fees to remain low.
In any case, providing basic internet access is not really a very profitable business. The commoditization of the internet does not leave much room for high margins that would be required to attract the additional investors required to fund a round of upgrades.
I mean they put a coax from the box to my house once, like five years ago. Why would [or should] I pay a monthly fee for what amounts to 20 minutes of time and five dollars worth of cable?
... hmmm 800kbit modem vs. 9.6kbit cell ... hmm ... which costs more...
Because your access line is not the most expensive part of providing service. In addition, that cable installation probably cost the cable company somewhere between $300 and $800. The aggregation router at the cable head-end costs between $100K-350K plus, say 20% per year in vendor support fees. The core routers, servers and associated shared infrastructure in your city may well run in excess of $10 million. Now add in the cost of the video head-end, VoD servers, etc. Now, add in on-going maintainence and support, repair costs, billing and administrative overhead (you do want to be able to speak to a human when you call customer service, don't you?) and then remember that all of this gear has a useful life of 5 to 10 years.
Why can I send 20 gigs of data ten thousand miles for 30$/month when I can't make a phone call [which is scratchy and all] overseas for anything less than 3 dollars a minute [on my cell].
Well, someone has to pay for the wireless infrastructure, and remember the $$$ the FCC pulled in from frequency auctions a few years back? Guess who is picking up the tab!
bags can't be checked through from Love Field in Dallas to airports in non-adjacent states due to a local law meant to send out-of-state traffic through DFW
Actually this not a local law, but is a Federal Law (and a rather stupid one) called the Wright Amendement (later modified by the Shellby Amendment to allow service to a few other states with powerful lobbies).
CNN posted an article about this topic a few weeks ago.
I should have Previewed first! DOH!
BaseN
Amsterdam Internet Exchange
Juniper SDX
First of all, I must congratulate you on your ambitions! It is too bad that more people are not interested in developing and living in intentional communities such as the one in which you are now involved. Having said that, the most important thing for you to do, before you even begin to consider the technology that you will use to deliver various forms of information and telecommunications is to define the requirements that your solution, whatever it is, will be judged against. This will require you to develop consensus with all residents on issues like ownership of the system, maintenance responsibilities, initial capital budget and on going operational expenses. Realize that 30 subscribers is probably too many to be served on an "ad hoc" basis (unless everyone is fairly technically literate and is willing to share "on-call" responsibility) and too few to warrant a dedicated 24x7 network operations center.
Given this situation, you may find it helpful to contract out some or all of the design, build, operate, and maintain phases of the project to an established ISP in the Netherlands(xs4all, as it is owned by KPN, may or may not be interested in such an arrangement, you may have more luck with smaller competitive providers - like Demon, or perhaps even larger players like Versatel or Wanadoo). Another approach may be to "rent a NOC." This is not as far fetched as it sounds, when I lived in the Netherlands a few years back, there were quite a few experienced network engineers who took on part-time or on-call projects for extra cash. If you go this route, it would actually be better to contract with people outside of the community, so that they could monitor the state of your network from an external perspective. You could contact a company like BaseN, for example, if you would like to try this approach.
As far as the design itself, you will probably find that the monthly operating expense will be higher than if each home individually subscribed to a complement of traditional services, at least in their most basic form. Of course, you will be able to offer additional services that are either prohibitively costly for individuals, or even unavailable to consumers. You can craft a set of applications that could be specifically targeted to the needs of your community (rsync'ed gentoo mirrors, community IM and location services, VoIP centrex services, and so on). These services will help form the basis of the requirements document mentioned above.
Next, I would work from the external connectivity to the distribution of those resources. I assume that Internet connectivity is important to you and your community. If this is the case, then the connectivity requirements are probably on the order of at least 4Mbps. If network availability is a major concern then this could be provided by 2 E1 lines, diversely routed from different providers, probably to different locations within your community. It is important to realize here that this implies that your community would become in effect an ISP. If you are really ambitious, you could pull a circuit into the Amsterdam Internet Exchange and attempt to find some providers willing to peer with you.
Now, to answer the question that you originally asked, there are a number of different technologies that you can use to distribute your network. As with everything else, there are tradeoffs involved; that is, there is no right answer (but many "wrong" answers). IMHO, the best tradeoffs would be found in xDSL technology for two reasons. First, it is a relatively proven and mature technology. Second, it works over just about any reasonable twisted pair technology. On the other hand, if you will be distributing television as well, you may find Euro-DOCSIS cable modem technology appealing. This will allow you to make use of the coax infrastructure that you will need to install anyway, but you may find that CMTS (cable modem termination systems) are initially mor
- For the scenario you describe above, you would need:
- an FXO card for your analog phone line and
- a 4 port FXS card for your analog phones in your house.
You would need to connect each phone to a separate FSX port. Then setup extensions and a dialing plan and you will be able to call between them and make outgoing calls, setup IVR menus, voice mail, etc.Yes, but only CLECs can now buy the unbundled elements, not ISPs. It is not as easy to become a CLEC, as they are regulated entities, as it is to start an ISP. I also believe that new CLECS must offer voice service in order to become certified (although, I do not think that they have to offer voice on all of their connections).
Line-sharing (or dialtone) and data encapsulation are two entirely distinct issues. For instance, I used to have an RFC-1483 routed ADSL connection (over my POTS line, ie, with dialtone). I have also had a PPPoA SDSL line without dialtone at another location. In places where ISDN is popular (like Germany) it is also possible for an ADSL connection to line-share with ISDN.
If that's what you want, MOVE.
Did you read my post? I would gladly move. Get me a work and residence permit, and I'm on the plane tomorrow!
Then again, many countries in Europe treat housing, water, food, and income as social civil rights. Does everyone there have equal paying jobs? No, of course not, but the disparity between the salary of the top executives and the lowest paid employee is much smaller.
If you still think 'free enterprise sucks' then at least be logical and apply that belief to your life
I did this and moved to the Netherlands, a society that combines capitalism (yes, you can buy just about anything in Amsterdam) and socialism. Unfortunatly, foreigners do not have the same social civil rights (or else everyone would move there) so I had to leave when I lost my job. Would I go back if I could. In a minute!
If you think that 'free enterprise is great' then at least be logical and legalize prostitution, drugs, same sex marriage, and so on.
but if he really wanted a job, the first step is to become a potentially useful employee
Been there, done that...
This comment obviously comes from someone who has never actually experienced the joys of unemployment. I actually agree that it is important to become a useful employee. I was unemployed for nine months last year and took the time to go back and actually read through RFCs, play with network equipment, do some volunteer work, take a few classes, and so on. And I did eventually get a job.
On the other hand, it is as though someone else was controling my destiny. Afterall, was it my fault that the upper management of my former employer decided to divert corporate revenue away from the business (and stock holders) and into their own bonuses and golden-parachutes? Is it my fault that the stock holders often see lay offs as "trimming the fat" and reward these same executives for their "bold moves to improve the bottom line" with even larger bonuses?
Capitalism itself may not be to blame, but surely the corrupt cabal that runs most American corporations as well as our political system should be held accountable.
Perhaps if unemployment benefits were paid directly out of executive compensation, the unemployment rate would drop.
the demonstrated leftist way is to murder the dissenters in pursuit of the higher aim.
This is not limited to "leftist" by any means. Franco and Mussolini can hardly be considered "leftists" yet they each engaged in the same tactics.
I'm perfectly willing to argue on the facts
:)
:)
Ok.
the fact is that adbuster presents only a single side
I agree. In fact I do not entirely agree with the opinions expressed on adbuster. I do agree that the list in question is accurate, however. Furthermore, I do not neccessarily think that intervention is inherently bad, in all cases. Still, the fact is that the we (I am proud to be an American) *did* fight a war with Japan. I would agree that we had a good reason (the attack on Pearl Harbor). The point of the adbuster list was to point out that the US has engaged in a far greater number of direct military interventions than is usually acknowledged.
As far as your ad hominem attacks are concerned: if disagreement with you means that I am "pretty ignorant" then I suppose that I must be. On the other hand, I suspect that I may be as knowledgeable on these matters as youself. In addition to my formal education, I have actually lived in other countries and seen other ways of organizing society: some superior in some ways to the American approach, some not. In many cases, it depends on exactly which "truths" you consider "self-evident." Democracy depends on reasoned debate and discussion. It is a pity that there no longer seems to be room for divergent views in our contemporary society.
Stalin? A Hitler who survived.
Again, I agree. I guess that you did not catch my sense of irony. Sorry.
My methods? I've yet to starve the Ukraine.
There is still time
Lastly, I would like to point out, that I am *not* your foe, nor do I think that you are "evil" just because I do not agree with you. I would appreciate the same courtesy
Adbusters, as part of the left, seeks not to improve America, but to destroy it.
So, basically anyone that does not hold your own personal political views is seeking to destroy America? Truth does not matter if it does not validate your own political agenda? You must consider Stalin a great leader! Oh wait, he only shares your methods, not your political views. He must be evil! Then again, Stalin was hardly a Marxist, but that is another discussion.
When I lived in the Netherlands for three years, I was taxed in that country's highest tax bracket: 60% (it has since be reduced to ~50%). In addition VAT (sales tax) was 19%, not the single digit sales tax that most states charge here.
The funny thing is, at the end of the year every year, somehow I had more money in my bank account than I do here in the US with its "lower" tax rates. And I had the same (or higher) standard of living. In addition, I lived in a country where you can buy (and smoke) just about anything that you want. The government took more of my monthly pay, but basic prices were much lower than they are in the US.
The government also supported the needs of workers: I, like everybody else, had a right to a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation a year. After working one year, I earned a right to keep my job (i.e. my employer would have to go to court or pay me off to fire me). My employer was required to pay for public transportation for me to get to work. Health insurance costs were reasonable, as were health care costs themselves (~$15 to visit a doctor, and yes it was *private* insurance and doctors).
It should be noted, that because of the tax structure, it is very difficult to become rich in the Netherlands, but it is also very difficult to become homeless. Just about everyone would be "middle class" by US economic standards (at least in terms of their family purchasing power). This combined with a socially progessive cultural orientation towards tolerance and a stong cultural bias against violence make the Netherlands a very safe place to live.
The US could certainly learn a lot from the Dutch.
I think that you have missed the point here. While it is certainly true that most people *think* that there is a signifcant difference between the two major political parties in the US based upon some of the issues that you raise, neither side of any of these issues (with the possible exception of abortion versus choice) is in conflict with the notion of a "classical liberal" state. That is, both parties (and most citizens, I suspect) agree with the fundamental principles outlined in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the various subsequent amendments.
Neither political party seriously suggests, say, a return to monarchy, or massive redistribution of wealth. Likewise, very few people argue either for manditory state sponsored religion, the reintroduction of slavery or a return to the prohibition of alcohol. No contemporary US politician is willing to seriously discuss social civil rights (i.e. the right to food and shelter, freedom of movement, medicine and health care, etc.) that are guaranteed by many European states, but not by the US.
Furthermore, it is not clear that either party has a clear "agenda." It is tempting to say that the Republican party, in general, is more concerned about the individual and that the Democratic party is more concerned about the social. But this generalization breaks down pretty quickly when one considers the issues that you raise above. For instance, the desire to maintain a standing army would be a Democratic rather than a Republican concern if this were the case.
However upon closer inspection, it appears that both parties actually have the same agenda. That agenda is to support and protect the moneyed interests. The only difference is *which* vested interest should recieve the most protection. In this light, both parties look very similar.
Did you consider that the plea bargain could be an attempt to save tax-payer money and preserve some dignigty for the defendant. Afterall, he is just a foolish student, perhaps they just wanted to give him a chance to straighten out and complete his graduate degree.
Ok, try the Blue Book.
It also seems a bit odd to me that you treat your english teacher as more authoritative than a federal judge, especially since the judge almost certainly has both completed more education and written far more published works than your teacher.
"If you try to kill me, I will defend myself?" threatens you? It depends on who says it and why. If it was said by a paranoid schizophrenic holding a knife, for instance, I might feel somewhat threatened.
There is a place for criticism of the justice system, but an arraignment hearing is almost certainly not the place for an effective critique.
Back to the case at hand, in what way has the judge erred? How has he abused his judicial authority? It seems reasonable that if a defendant does not show respect for the rule of law, or that he can pick and choose which laws apply to him, that he may may well decide that he does not need to show up for his court date.
You make a point that the onus of responsibility lies with the prosecution. Agreed, just don't confuse the role of the judge with that of the "justice" system.
Umm no! IPv6 does not require new hardware, just a software upgrade. IOS 12.2 supports IPv6, as does JUNOS.
Cisco released IPv6 IOS images back in June with IOS 12.2(2)T. Note that this was the first commerical release, there was a earlier EFT release about for quite some time that served as a beta. The major features are there: IPv6 routing, support for stateless autoconfig, IPv6 address family support in MBGP, support for RIPng. No other routing protocols yet.
You can check out Cisco's IPv6 page for more information.
Juniper also has IPv6 available, here how to configure IPv6 on JUNOS 5.1.
Even Gigabit ethernet is based partially on lessons learned from Fibre-channel and FDDI (albeit in symbol-encoding rather than token-passing).
Anyone with a 100Mbps ethernet connection in a large office knows that the link speed alone is often not the limiting factor!
Furthermore, the assumption that the only, or primary, costs involved are the network termination equipment is simply incorrect. Yes, if we are talking about terminating a 10Gbps (or even 2.5Gbps) SONET or SDH circuits, there will be an expense. But, don't forget that the larger the network (i.e. the greater the number of "end-systems") the more intermediate systems (routers, switches, repeaters, etc) are required. Each one of these network elements then must be monitored and managed.
Now, if we assume that the service will be priced inexpensively enough for consumers to purchase, and that there is enough consumer demand for this sort of service; and if we can assume an inital customer penetration rate of, say between 1-10%, the number of network nodes in a city of 500000 is between 5000 and 50000. This is becoming a fairly expensive network to manage.
One possibility is that a city or other entity could build the fiber infrastructure and then lease "dark fiber" to service providers. This is the model deployed Stockholm, for instance. This approach has the advantage of shifting the expense of active network elements to the service providers, but now additional expense is introduced by separating the operation and repair of the fiber component from the transmission equipment (which still may be separated from the higher-level network-layer elements such as routers and servers).
Futhermore, consider the "peering problem" that will occur if many ISPs and internet users choose to interconnect with multiple IP networks: Through careful address allocation policies, the internet community (by means of regional routing registies like those provided by ARIN, RIPE-NCC, and APNIC) has constructed a hierarchical routing system that limits the growth of the size of routing tables on the core backbone routers in use on the internet. This is important for two reasons.
First, routers have a finite amount of memory. Even if memory is cheap, it still needs to be installed and perhaps increased from time to time. Each upgrade causes downtime as the router is taken out of service and upgraded.
Second, and perhaps more important, each provider advertises its network reachability information to others through a external routing protocol (BGP-4). The BGP process on each router must compute the shortest path to each network and inject that information in the router's fowarding table. The more complex the routing table, the longer BGP takes to update the fowarding table leading to network convergence issues. Also, since BGP-4 is mostly manually configured, an increase in complexity serval of orders of magnitide would require the development of new extensions to the system, this would be futher exasperated by the limitation currently imposed by the use of 16-bit autonomous system (AS) numbers which identify each administrative realm of routing policy. Someone will have to absorb the expense incured in the development and implementation of new rotuing protocols. Then, again, each core router will have to be upgraded.
Inexpensive broadband technology is still a-ways away. It will revolutionize the internet (and probably telecommunications, in general) when it becomes available, but that revolution itself will not be cheap.
IEEE 802.1 describes standards for maintence and internetworking of IEEE 802 networks, i.e. spanning tree, VLAN tagging, access control, etc.
IEEE 802.11 describes Wireless LAN standards.
IEEE 802.15 defines Wireless Personal Area Networks based on Bluetooth v1.1. There is a coexistence task group (TG2) that is defining Collaborative and Non-collaborative mechanisms for information interchange between the WPANs and WLANs.
So now the questions is "why do we need both?" The answer is that WPANs and WLANs solve different problems. WPANs need to be cheap, easy to configure, and very short range. WLANs, on the other hand, should be comparable in range and complexity to a traditional wired LAN.
There is room for both approachs, just as there is room for both ethernet (802.3) and token-ring (802.5) LAN technologies.
Well, actually, the DMT version of aDSL is broadband. It uses FDM with multiple carriers.