Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix
Thanks for adding this perspective, Barry. I think it's realistic. But I also think it might miss an orthogonally connected issue - this isn't just about bandwidth, but about commoditization, consolidation, size etc. It may be that small ISPs just can't compete (at least in the broader market) as the market evolves. Similar to how I was disappointed by the loss of my local bookstore, but still buy all my stuff from Amazon. ... I hear Brett essentially asking for Netflix to do more for him than it does for big ISPs, because his small rural business model can't compete with the big guys. Thoughts? Cheers, -Benson On Jul 13, 2014 3:59 PM, "Barry Shein" <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:
Just an observation:
I've been on the internet since dirt was rocks.
It seems to me that one theme which has come up over and over and over is that some new-ish technology demands more bandwidth than whatever it was people were doing previously and as it popularizes people begin fighting.
In the early 80s it was downloading the host table, "could people please try NOT to all download via a script at exactly midnight!!!"
Then it was free software in the eighties, did WSMR et al really have a RIGHT to become a magnet for such popular program downloads?!
And graphic connection to remote super-computer centers. Could the images please be generated locally and downloaded "off hours" (whatever "off hours" meant on the internet) or even shipped via tape etc rather than all these real-time graphical displays running???!!!
Hey, the BACKBONE was 56kb.
Then Usenet, and images, particularly, oh, explicit images because OMG imagine if our administration found out our link was slow because students (pick a powerless political class to pick on and declare THEIR use wasteful) were downloading...um...you know.
And games OMG games.
I remember sitting in an asst provost's office in the 80s being lectured about how email was a complete and total waste of the university's resources! Computers were for COMPUTING (he had a phd in physics which is where that was coming from.)
And the public getting on the internet (ahem.)
On and on.
Now it's video streaming.
And then the bandwidth catches up and it's no big deal anymore.
And then everyone stops arguing about it and goes on to the next thing to argue about. Probably will be something in the realm of this "Internet of Things" idea, too many people conversing with their toaster-ovens.
My comment has always been the same:
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who try to figure out how bake more bread, and those who herd people into bread lines.
I've always tried to be the sort of person who tries to figure out how to bake more bread. This too shall pass.
-- -Barry Shein
The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Benson, The difference, and its a large one, is that the large operators have no interest in building in the less dense rural (and sometimes suburban) areas. The smaller operators are often the only provider in the area and unlike a bookstore if someone wants broadband in an area they can't drive to a larger town and bring a bagful home the way we can with books. There are a few potential paths forward that I can see and I'm sure there are more that others can identify: 1) Various governmental funding sources like CAF subsidize the market "enough" for smaller operators to continue to get by. 2) CAF and other funding make rural territories profitable enough that the large operators buy many/most/all of the smaller providers. 3) Prices for rural customers increase to cover the increased costs. 4) Content providers contribute $some_amount to help cover the costs of connectivity. 5) Operators in rural markets fall further behind making rural markets even less attractive and that contributes the trend of rural to urban migration here in the US. Of course a combination of these is also possible or local governments could get more involved, but these look to be the most likely in no real order. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Benson Schliesser <bensons@queuefull.net> wrote:
Thanks for adding this perspective, Barry. I think it's realistic. But I also think it might miss an orthogonally connected issue - this isn't just about bandwidth, but about commoditization, consolidation, size etc. It may be that small ISPs just can't compete (at least in the broader market) as the market evolves. Similar to how I was disappointed by the loss of my local bookstore, but still buy all my stuff from Amazon. ... I hear Brett essentially asking for Netflix to do more for him than it does for big ISPs, because his small rural business model can't compete with the big guys.
Thoughts?
Cheers, -Benson On Jul 13, 2014 3:59 PM, "Barry Shein" <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:
Just an observation:
I've been on the internet since dirt was rocks.
It seems to me that one theme which has come up over and over and over is that some new-ish technology demands more bandwidth than whatever it was people were doing previously and as it popularizes people begin fighting.
In the early 80s it was downloading the host table, "could people please try NOT to all download via a script at exactly midnight!!!"
Then it was free software in the eighties, did WSMR et al really have a RIGHT to become a magnet for such popular program downloads?!
And graphic connection to remote super-computer centers. Could the images please be generated locally and downloaded "off hours" (whatever "off hours" meant on the internet) or even shipped via tape etc rather than all these real-time graphical displays running???!!!
Hey, the BACKBONE was 56kb.
Then Usenet, and images, particularly, oh, explicit images because OMG imagine if our administration found out our link was slow because students (pick a powerless political class to pick on and declare THEIR use wasteful) were downloading...um...you know.
And games OMG games.
I remember sitting in an asst provost's office in the 80s being lectured about how email was a complete and total waste of the university's resources! Computers were for COMPUTING (he had a phd in physics which is where that was coming from.)
And the public getting on the internet (ahem.)
On and on.
Now it's video streaming.
And then the bandwidth catches up and it's no big deal anymore.
And then everyone stops arguing about it and goes on to the next thing to argue about. Probably will be something in the realm of this "Internet of Things" idea, too many people conversing with their toaster-ovens.
My comment has always been the same:
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who try to figure out how bake more bread, and those who herd people into bread lines.
I've always tried to be the sort of person who tries to figure out how to bake more bread. This too shall pass.
-- -Barry Shein
The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
Benson,
The difference, and its a large one, is that the large operators have no interest in building in the less dense rural (and sometimes suburban) areas. The smaller operators are often the only provider in the area and unlike a bookstore if someone wants broadband in an area they can't drive to a larger town and bring a bagful home the way we can with books.
But if that's the case, then Brett has no issue. As Benson noted: On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Benson Schliesser <bensons@queuefull.net>
wrote:
Thanks for adding this perspective, Barry. I think it's realistic. But I also think it might miss an orthogonally connected issue - this isn't just about bandwidth, but about commoditization, consolidation, size etc. It may be that small ISPs just can't compete (at least in the broader market) as the market evolves. Similar to how I was disappointed by the loss of my local bookstore, but still buy all my stuff from Amazon. ... I hear Brett essentially asking for Netflix to do more for him than it does for big ISPs, because his small rural business model can't compete with the big guys.
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with. If the big guys don't want to build into the rural area, and aren't competing with Brett, he can charge accordingly (the scenario Scott outlines). If the big guys *have* built into the area where Brett is serving users, then we're outside of Scott's model, and into Benson's model, and it may well be a case of the local bookstore not being able to compete with Amazon anymore. While having no competitors in an area might suck for the *consumers*, I don't think it's the situation that Brett is facing; I think he's talking about trying to compete with large carriers who have indeed built out into his area, and have a large economy of scale on their side. I could be wrong, though; I often am. Thanks! Matt
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet . Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit is unclear. There are bandwidth reseller / BGP / interconnect specialist ISPs out there who live to fix these things, if there's anything like a viable customer base... George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 1:42 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet .
Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit is unclear.
There are bandwidth reseller / BGP / interconnect specialist ISPs out there who live to fix these things, if there's anything like a viable customer base...
Ah--right, that was the genesis of my rant about "if you don't have an ASN, you don't exist". He'd first have to get an ASN before he could engage in getting a different upstream transit, or connect to different exchange points, etc. As much as people insisted you can be an ISP without an AS number, I will note that it's much, MUCH harder, to the point where the ARIN registration fees for the AS number would quickly be recouped by the cost savings of being able to shop for more competitive connectivity options. Matt
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
Matt, While I understand your point _and_ I agree that in most cases an ISP should have an ASN. Having said that, I work with multiple operators around the US that have exactly one somewhat economical choice for connectivity to the rest of the Internet. In that case having a ASN is nice, but serves little to no practical purpose. For clarity's sake all 6 of the ones I am thinking about specifically have more than 5k broadband subs. I continue to vehemently disagree with the notion that ASN = ISP since many/most of the ASNs represent business networks that have nothing to do with Internet access. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 1:42 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet .
Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit
is
unclear.
There are bandwidth reseller / BGP / interconnect specialist ISPs out there who live to fix these things, if there's anything like a viable customer base...
Ah--right, that was the genesis of my rant about "if you don't have an ASN, you don't exist". He'd first have to get an ASN before he could engage in getting a different upstream transit, or connect to different exchange points, etc.
As much as people insisted you can be an ISP without an AS number, I will note that it's much, MUCH harder, to the point where the ARIN registration fees for the AS number would quickly be recouped by the cost savings of being able to shop for more competitive connectivity options.
Matt
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
Matt,
While I understand your point _and_ I agree that in most cases an ISP should have an ASN. Having said that, I work with multiple operators around the US that have exactly one somewhat economical choice for connectivity to the rest of the Internet. In that case having a ASN is nice, but serves little to no practical purpose. For clarity's sake all 6 of the ones I am thinking about specifically have more than 5k broadband subs.
And as long as they're happy with their single upstream connectivity picture, more power to them. But the minute they're less than happy with their connectivity option, it would sure be nice to have their own ASN and their own IP space, so that going to a different upstream provider would be possible. Heck, even just having it as a *bargaining point* would be useful. By not having it, they're essentially locking the slave collar around their own neck, and handing the leash to their upstream, along with their wallet. As a freedom-of-choice loving person, it boggles my mind why anyone would subject their business to that level of slavery. But I do acknowledge your point, that for some category of people, they are happy as clams with that arrangement.
I continue to vehemently disagree with the notion that ASN = ISP since many/most of the ASNs represent business networks that have nothing to do with Internet access.
Oh, yes; totally agreed. It's a one-way relationship in my mind; it's nigh-on impossible to be a competitive ISP without an ASN; but in no way shape or form does having an ASN make you an ISP. Thanks! Matt
On Jul 14, 2014, at 9:47 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Oh, yes; totally agreed. It's a one-way relationship in my mind; it's nigh-on impossible to be a competitive ISP without an ASN; but in no way shape or form does having an ASN make you an ISP.
I think here is where you are wrong. There are many people out there that have cobbled together ISPs and have appliances that will load balance or do failover with multiple DSL or hybrid DSL/Cable/T1 solutions. I do understand the line you have drawn, but some of these people compete against the largest companies in the world and win business because of their uptime and support. I wish they wouldn’t be doing “CGN” or CGN-lite type things but it happens and they don’t need an ASN to be competitive. And having an ASN would drive their costs up significantly. $500 in fees from ARIN represents a large number of subscribers profit. - Jared
Matt, IP address portability isn't really a problem, but I understand your point of view a bit better. One of the things we figured out is that ARIN allows for non-connected operators to reallocate blocks. It does frequently confuse whoever the ISP is getting their tier 1 connectivity from and its even worse if they get connectivity from smaller providers, but it does effectively allow the ISP to have portable space without having an ASN. Frequently the smaller operators are happy to have a /23 of portable space so they can use that for their static IP customers and deal with the change of addressing for everyone else. Please note, this is not a money making operation for us. Its something we started doing in ~2003 to avoid having to constantly renumber networks and disrupt business accounts while allowing the ISPs to shop new bandwidth providers when they became available. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 9:47 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
Matt,
While I understand your point _and_ I agree that in most cases an ISP should have an ASN. Having said that, I work with multiple operators around the US that have exactly one somewhat economical choice for connectivity to the rest of the Internet. In that case having a ASN is nice, but serves little to no practical purpose. For clarity's sake all 6 of the ones I am thinking about specifically have more than 5k broadband subs.
And as long as they're happy with their single upstream connectivity picture, more power to them.
But the minute they're less than happy with their connectivity option, it would sure be nice to have their own ASN and their own IP space, so that going to a different upstream provider would be possible. Heck, even just having it as a *bargaining point* would be useful.
By not having it, they're essentially locking the slave collar around their own neck, and handing the leash to their upstream, along with their wallet. As a freedom-of-choice loving person, it boggles my mind why anyone would subject their business to that level of slavery. But I do acknowledge your point, that for some category of people, they are happy as clams with that arrangement.
I continue to vehemently disagree with the notion that ASN = ISP since many/most of the ASNs represent business networks that have nothing to do with Internet access.
Oh, yes; totally agreed. It's a one-way relationship in my mind; it's nigh-on impossible to be a competitive ISP without an ASN; but in no way shape or form does having an ASN make you an ISP.
Thanks!
Matt
On Jul 14, 2014, at 4:32 PM, Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
I continue to vehemently disagree with the notion that ASN = ISP since many/most of the ASNs represent business networks that have nothing to do with Internet access.
And there are a number of ISPs with multiple ASNs. If you look up the history of the term, "Autonomous System" is used without definition in most of its earlier RFCs, such as 820, 827, and 1105. In short, though, it is a network that connects to other networks using a routing protocol such as EGP or eBGP. The best formal definition I have seen involves "a collection of physical networks under common administration which are reachable from the rest of the Internet by a common route." The quote is from RFC 1000 and refers to the domain of a prefix, but it's pretty close. An "Autonomous System Number" is a creature of EGP or BGP Routing, and identifies such a system. If you look at http://bgp.potaroo.net/as6447/ and search for “AS numbers”, and you happen to be looking at exactly this instant (it changes), you’ll find that AS 6447 sees 47879 individual AS numbers in the Internet, of which 40339 show up *only* as origins (and therefore have to do with the AS a source or destination of traffic), 236 *never* show up as end last AS in an AS Path (and therefore are *always* transit), and 7304 that are sometimes origin and sometimes transit. To my small mind, an AS that functions as an ISP if highly likely to show up as a transit network, and an AS that never shows up as transit is very likely to be multihomed or to have justified its AS number on the basis of plans to multihome. Of course, one will also find that 30134 AS’s are origin AS’s visible through exactly one AS path, which says that at this instant they’re not actually multihomed. No, AS != ISP. An AS is a network that needs to be identifiable in global routing but would be entirely reachable even if it had exactly one link with some other network.
At 02:42 PM 7/14/2014, George Herbert wrote:
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet .
Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit is unclear.
Why don't you simply ask me? There have been a huge number of incorrect, mostly speculative assertions made about my business in this thread, but I simply don't have time to correct all of them (I have a business to run and customers to help). --Brett Glass
Hi Brett,
Why don't you simply ask me?
I can only speak for myself, but I thought that's kind of what I and others were doing in replying to your messages, stating either support or counterpoints, and asking questions (?). With this being a list and your (as of recently) being a member of the list, my assumption (and I'm betting others') is that it's a conversation and in our replies, you may be inclined to respond or you may not.
There have been a huge number of incorrect, mostly speculative assertions made about my business in this thread, but I simply don't have time to correct all of them (I have a business to run and customers to help).
And that's fine; you're under zero obligation to anyone on the list. That said: finding radio silence, chances are the conversation will carry on and we're left to guessing/theorizing/extrapolating. When I said "I really don't understand the line of reasoning..." I wasn't being flippant. I just know how things look from my own experience; I don't know the full details of your business and so I honestly don't know what led to your take on the topic. Your experience dealing with Netflix has obviously been more negative than mine, and I don't fully get why that is. The prevailing trend seems to be that Netflix generally doesn't have trouble getting content to access providers' door steps, with several options for providers on how to receive that content that covers different traffic levels. In the same way as you don't owe them any special treatment, though, I don't see how they owe you (or any of us) special treatment either. But, like I said: I don't know the details of your business or the specifics of how this plays out for you, but I am eager to hear it. More information is helpful, and if we only ever hear from people with the same view/experience, we're not very likely to get the whole picture... -- Hugo On Mon 2014-Jul-14 17:45:56 -0600, Brett Glass <nanog@brettglass.com> wrote:
At 02:42 PM 7/14/2014, George Herbert wrote:
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet .
Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit is unclear.
Why don't you simply ask me? There have been a huge number of incorrect, mostly speculative assertions made about my business in this thread, but I simply don't have time to correct all of them (I have a business to run and customers to help).
--Brett Glass
From: Benson Schliesser <bensons@queuefull.net>
Thanks for adding this perspective, Barry. I think it's realistic. But I also think it might miss an orthogonally connected issue - this isn't just about bandwidth, but about commoditization, consolidation, size etc. It may be that small ISPs just can't compete (at least in the broader market) as the market evolves. Similar to how I was disappointed by the loss of my local bookstore, but still buy all my stuff from Amazon. ... I hear Brett essentially asking for Netflix to do more for him than it does for big ISPs, because his small rural business model can't compete with the big guys.
Thoughts?
But if the marginal cost of carrying netflix and similar approached zero this wouldn't be a problem. A big problem with being a usenet server was that it could take 50GB of disk space, easy. How to monetize all that disk space in a day when a GB disk cost $500? A surcharge for clients using usenet? Charge downstream customers you fed? New protocols with less store and more aggressive forward? Evolve to sites which specialize in usenet service rather than expecting every mom & pop ISP to provide it as a base measure of service? But today I can get key fobs with 64GB for about $50, and of course 4TB disks for under $200. So the apparent urgency of the content business models is directly related to the costs, which tend to drop over time, usually to the point that it becomes non-urgent (or argue that they can't.) More importantly it tends to go through the same basic patterns: Identify who is benefiting. Argue about what "benefiting" means. Try to assess relative benefits and costs proportionately. Improve technology step-wise to mitigate and possibly reallocate costs assessing any effects on benefits. Follow the technology curve. Etc. Video streaming seems challenging. But so did 50GB of disk once. I suppose if I were to make a concrete suggestion it would be to try to develop hypothetical cost curves, thresholds (at what cost does it not matter even to the more vulnerable?), estimate dates (hah!), and not put more energy into the problem than such an analysis merits. In particular soas not to develop potentially disruptive new models whose implementation and cost of implementation one might soon enough come to regret. Also remembering that extrapolations tend to be foiled by discrete events. For example, Apr 1, 2017: Comcast/TW buys Netflix... On Jul 13, 2014 3:59 PM, "Barry Shein" <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:
Just an observation:
I've been on the internet since dirt was rocks.
It seems to me that one theme which has come up over and over and over is that some new-ish technology demands more bandwidth than whatever it was people were doing previously and as it popularizes people begin fighting.
In the early 80s it was downloading the host table, "could people please try NOT to all download via a script at exactly midnight!!!"
Then it was free software in the eighties, did WSMR et al really have a RIGHT to become a magnet for such popular program downloads?!
And graphic connection to remote super-computer centers. Could the images please be generated locally and downloaded "off hours" (whatever "off hours" meant on the internet) or even shipped via tape etc rather than all these real-time graphical displays running???!!!
Hey, the BACKBONE was 56kb.
Then Usenet, and images, particularly, oh, explicit images because OMG imagine if our administration found out our link was slow because students (pick a powerless political class to pick on and declare THEIR use wasteful) were downloading...um...you know.
And games OMG games.
I remember sitting in an asst provost's office in the 80s being lectured about how email was a complete and total waste of the university's resources! Computers were for COMPUTING (he had a phd in physics which is where that was coming from.)
And the public getting on the internet (ahem.)
On and on.
Now it's video streaming.
And then the bandwidth catches up and it's no big deal anymore.
And then everyone stops arguing about it and goes on to the next thing to argue about. Probably will be something in the realm of this "Internet of Things" idea, too many people conversing with their toaster-ovens.
My comment has always been the same:
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who try to figure out how bake more bread, and those who herd people into bread lines.
I've always tried to be the sort of person who tries to figure out how to bake more bread. This too shall pass.
-- -Barry Shein
The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
<p dir=3D"ltr">Thanks for adding this perspective, Barry. I think it's = realistic. But I also think it might miss an orthogonally connected issue -= this isn't just about bandwidth, but about commoditization, consolidat= ion, size etc. It may be that small ISPs just can't compete (at least i= n the broader market) as the market evolves. Similar to how I was disappoin= ted by the loss of my local bookstore, but still buy all my stuff from Amaz= on. ... I hear Brett essentially asking for Netflix to do more for him than= it does for big ISPs, because his small rural business model can't com= pete with the big guys.</p> <p dir=3D"ltr">Thoughts?</p> <p dir=3D"ltr">Cheers,<br> -Benson<br> </p> <div class=3D"gmail_quote">On Jul 13, 2014 3:59 PM, "Barry Shein"= <<a href=3D"mailto:bzs@world.std.com">bzs@world.std.com</a>> wrote:<= br type=3D"attribution"><blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0= 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <br> Just an observation:<br> <br> I've been on the internet since dirt was rocks.<br> <br> It seems to me that one theme which has come up over and over and over<br> is that some new-ish technology demands more bandwidth than whatever<br> it was people were doing previously and as it popularizes people begin<br> fighting.<br> <br> In the early 80s it was downloading the host table, "could people<br> please try NOT to all download via a script at exactly midnight!!!"<br=
<br> Then it was free software in the eighties, did WSMR et al really have<br> a RIGHT to become a magnet for such popular program downloads?!<br> <br> And graphic connection to remote super-computer centers. Could the<br> images please be generated locally and downloaded "off hours"<br> (whatever "off hours" meant on the internet) or even shipped via = tape<br> etc rather than all these real-time graphical displays running???!!!<br> <br> Hey, the BACKBONE was 56kb.<br> <br> Then Usenet, and images, particularly, oh, explicit images because OMG<br> imagine if our administration found out our link was slow because<br> students (pick a powerless political class to pick on and declare<br> THEIR use wasteful) were downloading...um...you know.<br> <br> And games OMG games.<br> <br> I remember sitting in an asst provost's office in the 80s being<br> lectured about how email was a complete and total waste of the<br> university's resources! Computers were for COMPUTING (he had a phd in<b= r> physics which is where that was coming from.)<br> <br> And the public getting on the internet (ahem.)<br> <br> On and on.<br> <br> Now it's video streaming.<br> <br> And then the bandwidth catches up and it's no big deal anymore.<br> <br> And then everyone stops arguing about it and goes on to the next thing<br> to argue about. Probably will be something in the realm of this<br> "Internet of Things" idea, too many people conversing with their<= br> toaster-ovens.<br> <br> My comment has always been the same:<br> <br> =C2=A0 =C2=A0There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who try to<= br> =C2=A0 =C2=A0figure out how bake more bread, and those who herd people into= <br> =C2=A0 =C2=A0bread lines.<br> <br> I've always tried to be the sort of person who tries to figure out how<= br> to bake more bread. This too shall pass.<br> <br> --<br> =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 -Barry Shein<br> <br> The World =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0| bzs@TheWorld.co= m =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 | <a href=3D"http://www.TheWorld.com" = target=3D"_blank">http://www.TheWorld.com</a><br> Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0| D= ial-Up: US, PR, Canada<br> Software Tool & Die =C2=A0 =C2=A0| Public Access Internet =C2=A0 =C2=A0= | SINCE 1989 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 *oo*<br> </blockquote></div>
participants (9)
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Barry Shein -
Benson Schliesser -
Brett Glass -
Fred Baker (fred) -
George Herbert -
Hugo Slabbert -
Jared Mauch -
Matthew Petach -
Scott Helms