On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Fred Baker<fred@cisco.com> wrote:
On Aug 24, 2009, at 9:17 AM, Luke Marrott wrote:
What are your thoughts on what the definition of Broadband should be going forward? I would assume this will be the standard definition for a number of years to come.
Historically, narrowband was circuit switched (ISDN etc) and broadband was packet switched. Narrowband was therefore tied to the digital signaling hierarchy and was in some way a multiple of 64 KBPS. As the term was used then, broadband delivery options of course included virtual circuits bearing packets, like Frame Relay and ATM.
Fred, Historically there was no such thing as a "narrowband" Internet connection. We used "bandwidth" as slang for the speed of an Internet connection, possibly because in communications in general you can send more information in a wide frequency band than you can in a narrow frequency band and we knew that a phone line used a 4khz frequency band while a T1 used a 1.5mhz frequency band. When we started selling residential Internet connections that were significantly faster than a modem (i.e. DSL, cable modems) some marketing guru somewhere came up with the idea that if Internet speed is bandwidth then fast internet must be -broad- bandwidth. The same marketing gurus wouldn't be particularly guruish if they had then started referring to their modem products as "narrowband." So the choice was "dialup or broadband" not "narrowband or broadband." As the term caught on, it was the expanded by various marketing and salesfolk to encompass any kind of commodity Internet connection (commodity = not custom, that is not doing anything uncommon like dynamic routing or multiplexing) which was better than a dialup modem. When you start assigning CIDR blocks and what not, that's generally a business service rather than "broadband." So historically speaking, broadband is anything faster than POTS dialup. What it -should- mean for stimulus purposes is another matter... But I'd personally prefer to see the stimulus money only used for delivering rural high speed. The telcos and cable companies are in a race to deliver fast residential Internet access in any densely packed area where the governing authority isn't making it a costly PIA to install. Where they need the swift kick in the tail is in the low density areas. Really where they need the swift kick in the tail is in the product tying where you can't buy a high speed connection to J. Random ISP, you can only buy a high speed connection to monopoly provider's in-house ISP. Which means you can only get commodity service since monopoly provider isn't in the business of providing low-dollar custom solutions. But it sounds like that's outside the scope of what Congress has approved. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004