[BellStar]

100 megabits per second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[knews_hound]

My entire home is wired for 100MB connections (category 5 wiring).

Being in the business, it was easy for me but the average person will find it not only expensive, but nearly impossible to achieve due to lack of access, construction methods ect.

Wireless offers solutions for some, but paranoids like myself will never feel comfortable with it.

On the plus side, it is sure nice to be able to move files from PC to PC with the only limit being the access speed of the respective hard drives!

Cheers,

knews hound

[ecomcon]

We used to have the Space Program driving technology. Now it's the Porn Program.

[billorites]

I can't believe that I'm only 50 miles from Boston and still cannot get anything better than dialup access.

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12356.html
[ Caltech computer scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds.

The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The researchers have achieved a speed of 8,609 megabits per second (Mbps) by using 10 simultaneous flows of data over routed paths, the largest aggregate throughput ever accomplished in such a configuration. More importantly, the FAST protocol sustained this speed using standard packet size, stably over an extended period on shared networks in the presence of background traffic, making it adaptable for deployment on the world's high-speed production networks. ]

[DeFault User]

only about one-third -- some 40 million Internet users -- connect via broadband.

Is this correct? I had no idea there were 40 million using broadband.

[roaddog727]

Forget 100Mbps... Gig-e over fiber to the homestead!

WooHoo!

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your GBIC's!

[11th Earl of Mar]

Critics say there is no proof more broadband will make people more productive.

But we at Free Republic will be able to argue much faster.

[dfwgator]

"We need to take the next step," said Ed Knightly, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice.

Yep, so that people can download their porn even quicker.

[Redcloak]

100 megabits per second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup... That's one big heap o' porn.

[frithguild]

Four Scenarios for the Future of the Internet
Thursday, August 21, 2003
David S. Isenberg
Is the US going to get the Internet we want? Or the Internet we deserve?

I was invited to the Intel Capital CEO Summit to be on a panel on "The Internet Five Years Out," with David Farber and Vint Cerf, moderated by Intel's Director of Research, David Tennenhouse, who is one of the early explicators of a generic network that decouples the distribution mechanism from the content it carries.

I have been on panels with my heroes before, but I found the prospect of opening my mouth near Farber and Cerf unusually intimidating. So I wrote down every word that I intended to say in my allotted five minute opening statement, then I rehearsed and wordsmithed and re-rehearsed. Once on stage, Tennenhouse threw us a curve. Instead of calling for opening statements, he immediately prodded us into discussion. It was a brilliant stratagem. We had fun, and the audience picked it up. We also did some useful thinking in public (e.g., that the Telecom Act of 200(6?) was virtually certain, so it might be time to start thinking about structural separation at the IP layer).

But my carefully prepared opening statement was all dressed up with nowhere to go. So let this be the alternate destination for its payload.

Now that home Ethernet is almost as common as a cable modem, it a misnomer to talk about, "the last mile." Clay Shirky points out that today's Internet is dumbbell-shaped; it is fat on the premises, fat in the backbone and at least 100 times skinnier in between. So to me, the big issue for the next five years is how the skinny middle will achieve the girth that technology makes possible. Here are four scenarios, alternative futures that sample the space of possible outcomes.

Scenario #1. The telcos would have us believe that they'll give us that fat middle pipe. They'll have to lose their vertically-integrated business model to do it, or they'll have to find a way to cripple the end-to-end property of the Internet. It is a huge challenge for an established company to change business models. And if they cripple end-to-end, they're likely to cripple the very thing that makes the Internet so useful to so many people. But it's a plausible scenario, in fact it is The Official Future Scenario.

Scenario #2. Other utilities -- the electric company, the gas company (and maybe the cable company) -- could use their rights of way to build the fat pipe to the premises. Utilities are good at delivering bulk, low margin goods. But can utilities be entrepreneurial enough to open new lines of retail business?

Scenario #3. Customers will own the technology that extends the fat home network towards the fat backbone, eliminating the "access" sector. The ownership model might be condominium fiber, or fiber owned by homeowner associations or other kinds of small quasi-governmental organizations. This fiber will probably coexist with customer-owned 802.11 and other wireless link and distribution technologies. For this to scale, premises network infrastructure must become more self-connecting and self-operating than it is today. A further warning -- the only wireless solutions that scale enough to encompass any reasonable end-game are multi-hop or packet relay networks.

Scenario #4. The telcos lawyer and lobby and legislate to preserve previous power and prevent customers, utilities and other competitors from building the network that we really want. They'd use this last strength, their remaining core competence -- to make broadband end-to-end networks illegal. This is the scenario that's most demonstrably happening in the United States today. According to a recent ITU study, among the developed nations, the United States is now #15 in broadband penetration per capita and falling fast.

I think Intel -- and Intel's partners -- and the rest of us -- would prefer scenario 3, where the customers own the connection to the backbone. This outcome is not guaranteed. To get Scenario #3 we'll need good technology, strong partners and a rich value matrix, of course. But to stop Scenario #4 from making #3 impossible, we will need some major policy innovations.

Five years from now, the U.S. will have the Internet it deserves. It might well be an Internet that is further behind the rest of the world's Internet than we can possibly imagine.


This commentary appeared as part of SMART Letter #89, August 18, 2003. Copyright 2003 by David S. Isenberg

[stainlessbanner]

Forecast: Faster FReep times ahead!

[spodefly]

To jump-start the process the National Science Foundation awarded $7.5 million Wednesday to several academic institutions, including Rice, to develop technologies 2,000 times faster than dial-up and up to 250 times faster than DSL or cable modems. And they want to bring this ultra high speed to 100 million homes.

Porn and spam vendors rejoiced at the news. And 15 year old script kiddies will now be able to infect more computers faster than ever before.

[Billthedrill]

Critics say there is no proof more broadband will make people more productive.

I'm living proof. Think of how much more time I'll be able to waste working between FR posts...