Category Archives: Internet Access

Virtual Web, Real World

raphael.raph.koster.jpg Muddying the web:
Raph Koster makes the point that virtual worlds are becoming more and more intertwined with (and perhaps indistinguishable from) the web. Anything with an avatar, a way to have both real-time and not-real-time communication, and some spatial metaphors is both a virtual world and… Facebook.

So here’s a downloadable manuscript called The Web: Hidden Games. It’s not the deepest piece of writing, but it’s an implementation of the Raph idea. The author cheerfully suggests that Facebook, YouTube, and Digg are addictive because they’re really games. They’ve got set rules, they’re fun, and you can try to beat the other guy.

— Are you winning at Digg? Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford Blog, 10 Jan 2008

I think this is right, and it’s just an extension of how Mosaic, the original web browser came to be: Marc Andreesen decided to mix computer game interfaces with Internet access.

I don’t think Raph or Susan goes far enough. Continue reading →

Duopoly Helping Net Neutrality: By Obviously Subverting It

grinch.png With enemies like these…
Until recently, net neutrality was a difficult issue to explain at a dinner party. It was even more of a struggle to get anybody worked up about it. Now, thanks to the major Internet service providers (ISPs) Comcast and Bell-Sympatico, the stakes are crystal clear and the acrid scent of a smoking gun hangs in the room.

— How the Grinches Stole ‘Net Neutrality’ Internet service providers play favourites with video, large files and political sites. By Wayne MacPhail, the Tyee, Published: December 27, 2007

…it may seem we don’t even need friends, but we do.

A pretty good pro-net neutrality writeup follows. This is the gist:

Is it in the carriers’ best interest to allow upstart cheap phone companies like Skype or Vonage to suck up bandwidth with its inexpensive and excellent service? Nope, but in a free market and a neutral Internet, upstarts happen. The traditional players just don’t like it much and want the nonsense to stop.
You want upstarts? You want net neutrality.

That plus the duopoly wants to control content: Continue reading →

Consolidation Flood: What Will Really Stifle Internet Innovation

monopolist.jpg Advocates of the “exabyte flood” political campaign against net neutrality claim they are for innovation and that the coming flood of Internet usage will stifle innovation unless they get their way.

What will really stifle innovation on the Internet is this:

The Federal Communications Commission, at the urging of Chair Kevin Martin, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to relax longstanding rules that block corporations from owning a broadcast TV station and a newspaper in the same city.

— Uproar Over FCC Vote on Media-Ownership Rules, By Frederick Lane, Top Tech News, December 19, 2007 10:14AM

No, not specifically newspaper and television consolidation. Further consolidation of media and information distribution in the hands of a tiny number of companies. This December the FCC lets newspapers and TV stations consolidate. Last December it let SBC buy Bellsouth. Internet access is already in the hands of a tiny number of companies (typically at most two in any given area) that are increasingly moving to control the information they carry on behalf of a small number of companies including themselves and movie and music content producers.

The exaflood politics isn’t really about how much infrastructure the duopoly has to build out. It’s about maintaining the duopoly and extending its control of information, to the duopoly’s short-term profit and the long-term detriment of of us all, including the duopoly.

-jsq

Copowi: an ISP Based on Net Neutrality

copowi net neutrality guarantee Here’s an ISP that centers around net neutrality:
Within and subject to the constraints of the law and our Terms of Service, we guarantee:
  • We will not block, degrade or modify data users send or receive over the Internet.
  • We will not discriminate between network traffic on the basis of who it came from or where it is going to for some commercial advantage.
  • Where possible we will only deal with wholesale service providers who support keeping the Internet open and fair, in the same way.

—www.copowi.com, accessed 11 Dec 2007

That third point is a bit difficult to implement, given that Copowi provides its DSL as a reseller for AT&T, Quest, and Verizon, but at least their heart’s in the right place: they’re for equal access, innovation, participation, and lower cost.

Now if they can also deliver reliable and inexpensive service with good marketing….

-jsq

PlusNet: Honest Prioritization

plusnetusage.gif Unlike Comcast and Cox, PlusNet in the U.K. says what it is doing:
The principles of PlusNet’s network management policies
  • To make sure that time-critical applications like VoIP and gaming are always prioritised
  • To protect interactive applications like web-browsing and VPN from non-time sensitive download traffic
  • To flex the network under demand to cope with normal peaks and troughs from day to day and month to month
  • To flex the network more gracefully than other ISPs in the event of unusual demands in traffic or disaster situations such as a network failure
  • To provide a service relative to the amount each customer pays in terms of usage and experience
  • Provides a ‘quality of service’ effect, meaning multiple applications running on the same line interact with each other effectively, and use of high demand protocols like Peer-to-Peer doesn’t swamp time-sensitive traffic such as online gaming or a VoIP call.
— Traffic Prioritisation, PlusNet, accessed 26 Nov 2007
Interestingly, this list does not cite video as the most-favored application, instead it lists VoIP and gaming, which are participatory services. However, scan down to their table of types of traffic, and VoIP and gaming are Titanium, while video-on-demand is the highest level, Platinum. Continue reading →

Clogged: Internet Demise Predicted, Again

nur03006.jpg I predict this prediction will be misused by the duopoly to lobby for more favoratism for the duopoly:
User demand for the Internet could outpace network capacity by 2010, according to a study released today by Nemertes Research. The study found that corporate and consumer Internet usage could surpass the Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, but also worldwide, within the next three to five years.

…

As Internet capabilities continue to expand and users strive to be constantly connected, usage of the Internet via the mobile phone, set-top boxes and gaming devices has exponentially increased thus limiting bandwidth capacity. This is due in large part to voice and bandwidth-intensive applications, including streaming and interactive video, peer-to-peer file transfer and music downloads and file sharing. According to ComScore, nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video in one month alone and viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams.

— Internet could clog networks by 2010, study says, By Sarah Reedy, TelephoneOnline, Nov 19, 2007 1:03 PM

If I had a nickle for every time imminent demise of the Internet has been predicted. This has been going on since before the Internet even existed, and the results have been different than in this prediction. Continue reading →

U.S. Broadband Competitiveness: Let’s Study It To Death

countries.gif Let’s study it to death:
The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.

What’s less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that’s seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.

In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services — including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers — available to households and businesses across the nation.

— U.S. sees some countries overtake it in broadband speeds, but is there a problem? Associated Press, 30 Oct 2007

On the one hand, this sounds like a popular approach to global warming by its deniers: now let’s ask some scientists to study it. After all, the Okefenokee and surrounds burned more acres than in living memory, western wildfires have increased fourfold since 1970, 30 million people in half a dozen southwest states may run out of water in the next decade or so, and 12 million people in the Atlanta metro area are less than 3 months from having no water. And hundreds of climate scientists have already turned in their verdict. But, hey, now let’s ask some scientists to study it.

On the other hand, this is Ed Markey’s committee, and he has seemed serious about doing something, so maybe he’s just cojmpiling a case. Sure, he’s probably reacting to people like this who are taking the same tack as outlined above: Continue reading →

FiOS: Sort of Fast 20Mbps Symmetric

2020.jpg Verizon is starting to sell sort of fast symmetrical access, that is, 20Mbps in both directions. The price is $64.99/month, which is only about twice what you pay in Japan for more than twice the bandwidth. Also only in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.

In an apparent reference to the ongoing Comcast stifling or perhaps even to Verizon’s own admission of deceptive marketing of “unlimited” wireless telephone access:

Many FTTH providers also cap their symmetrical service, and whether the 20/20 tier would be capped was the first question fired at Verizon on the conference call.

“We don’t impose caps upon our subscribers,” insisted Susan Retta, Vice President of broadband solutions for Verizon. “We expect customers who order this 20/20 service will want to use it frequently, and we intend to give them the bandwidth that they ordered and they expect.”

— Verizon Unveils Symmetrical 20Mbps FiOS, So far only in NY, NJ and CT… by Karl, BroadbandReports.com, 02:34PM Tuesday Oct 23 2007

Well, the bandwidth people expect in Japan is 50 to 100 Mbps, and only 30Mbps and above is considered actually fast, as in ultra-highspeed broadband. Here in the U.S., where the media don’t report on other countries much, perhaps expectations are lower.

Interesting admission here: Continue reading →

Japanese Broadband Growth: FTTH Pulls Up

jpgrowth.gif Japanese broadband uptake as of March 2007:
14.013 millionaDSL
8.803 millionFTTH
3.609 millionCable
11 thousandWireless
More impressive than raw numbers is the graph, which shows aDSL growing rapidly from 2001 to 2003, after which FTTH suddenly becomes the new growth broadband connection.

As of March 2007, merely 95% of all Japanese households had broadband, and 84% had ultra-highspeed broadband. Japanese government goals for 2010 are 100% and 90%, respectively. Ultra-highspeed seems to be defined as both up and down over 30Mbps.

Until now, FTTH has been the mainstream in terms of ultra-highspeed broadband, with upload and download speeds of over 30Mbps, but other wired and wireless technologies are aiming for technologies that will match if not overtake FTTH, and there will be a need for ongoing developments in broadband technology in terms of higher speed and larger volume to meet user needs.

— Study Group Report: Moving towards Establishing a Usage Environment for Next-Generation Broadband Technology, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), MIC Communications News, Vol. 18, No.13, 12 October 2007

Higher speed services in testing now include speeds faster than 1 Gbps, which would be around 300 times faster than what passes for broadband in the U.S. Continue reading →