On Tuesday 29 December 2009 22:22:05 Randy Bush wrote:
None of us knows precisely what we're going to absolutely require, or merely want/prefer, tomorrow or the next day, much less a year or two from now. Unless, of course, we choose to optimize (constrain) functionality so tightly around what we want/need today that the prospect of getting anything different is effectively eliminated.
this is the telco solution to the nasty disruptive technologies spawned by the internet
randy
It surely is. Also, when was the last time you had a customer ring up and ask for a product "like the Internet but with bits missing"? Nobody wants it, and the evidence of this is that nobody asks for it, and further that nobody's started an ISP that provides it, although people have been talking about it for years. The support for "the Internet but not quite" is usually from either: 1) Telcos who secretly wish the Internet would go away 2) Security/morals bureaucrats (who secretly wish it would go away) 3) Engineers noodling on the idea, who don't have a business model for it Note that this list doesn't include "users" or "customers" or anyone willing to offer "money" for it. Also, I don't think it's at all clear that Internet-minus service would be cheaper to provide. Basically, if you have an IP network you can provide all the applications over it by default. Therefore, if you want to get rid of some, you've got to make an effort, which implies cost. There is no such thing as a Web DSL modem or a Web router. In terms of traffic, as over 50% of the total is WWW these days, and a sizable chunk of the rest is Web-video streaming, once you've chucked in the e-mail, it's far from clear that you'd save significant amounts of bandwidth. Obviously, if you were intending to offer proper Internet service as an extra- cost option, you wouldn't have two lots of access lines, backhaul, transit - you'd filter more ports for some subset of your addressing scheme, or put the less-than-Internet customers on a different layer 2 vlan. So you'd still need the extra bandwidth for the other customers. Where is the saving? Fewer support calls due to...what exactly? aren't the biggest malware vectors now web-based drive by download, sql injection and the like? Of course, there'll be a fair few wanting to know why slingbox, skype, IM protocol of choice, work vpns etc don't work. The exercise is pointless.