Brad Ideas - Governance - Comments

Invention of the Internet

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:56:43 -0800

Here's a new twist on this question. Pretty funny

http://colonial-america.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_invention_of_the_in...

bizarre

Kaleberg — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:06:58 -0700

I was tempted to respond with my own satire:

"As president of Murder, Incorporated, the largest murder for hire organization in the world, I agree that business must be protected from unwarranted government regulation. If someone really wants to live, all they need do is buy a firearm, give up sleep, stay in a safe location, and protect himself."

It would go on in that vein.

The typical burdensome regulation that is invariably considered intolerable to business is something like:

- don't kill your employees, which is right out of the ten commandments which shows that God is anti-business
- compete with the Japanese, which is why Detroit is still making cars despite their 1970s suicide attempts
- keep track of where the money is coming from and going to, which is the outrageous demand of Sarbanes Oxley

No one whines like a business man. No one demands bigger handouts with fewer strings.

The railroads did not have network neutrality until after World War II. It was cheaper to ship raw materials east and north than south or west, and it was cheaper to ship manufactured goods west and south than north and east. When the government told the railroads to stopping peeking into packets, in this case rail cars, the south and west finally started to develop industrially. The interstate highways copied this model. The New York Thruway could have had differential tolls based on cargo and direction, but they didn't, nor did any other interstate highway, and we have more rational industrial distribution nowadays.

Whenever you hear talk about the new south or rising west, remember, that was nasty, evil government regulation of good, honest, benevolent private industry.

Bandwidth

John Daly — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:24:02 -0800

Isn't an oc3 connection very expensive? Bandwidth at that speed is for large corporations with deep pockets.

Omnidirectional antennas

Brett Glass — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:01:59 -0800

Omnidirectional antennas (a misnomer, actually; they really should be called "antennas with 360 degree horizontal beamwidth) are not a menace. In fact, they are necessary to follow one of the precepts Brad advocates above: to use as little spectrum as possible and not hog it.

Many wireless ISPs use multiple sector antennas on multiple frequencies at their access points, unnecessarily congesting the spectrum. It is easy to demonstrate that the most efficient use of spectrum and the least interference in a point-to-multipoint system are achieved when each provider uses an omnidirectional antenna and a single channel, rather than multiple sectors and multiple channels.

Unfortunately, many of today's wireless ISPs use the multiple channel/multiple sector approach, with antenna gains and power levels that violate the FCC's Part 15 rules. Why? In part, because equipment vendors -- who get to sell them more equipment if they do this -- tell them to. Another reason is that no one is enforcing any requirement not to hog spectrum, so they just use it all. This approach backfires, however, when multiple providers must coexist -- especially on bands such as the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The 4 Color Theorem says that even if each WISP used a different channel on a directional channel pointed at each given area and the signal did not splatter into others, there STILL wouldn't be enough channels for interference to be avoided unless the number of available channels 4 times the number of WISPs serving the area. However, there's no "4 Color Theorem" for spectrum. So, if there are as many channels as there are WISPs (which can be achieved by using slightly narrower channels than standard Wi-Fi) you can have no interference between them.

Omnidirectional antennas

brad — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:14:39 -0800

Have their place, of course. For handheld devices, for example and today for most mobile devices. (It's not that hard to imagine, however, the availability of mass-produced directional self-aiming antenna systems for vehicles that are cheap enough to do away with omnis there.)

Fixed wireless should be directional, clearly. That is more work and a touch more expensive, but again it is the sort of thing that can come down in price. One can even make fairly simple mildly directional antennas without moving parts if you have multiple elements and can switch among them by electronic means. Expensive today -- but in quantity 100 million, almost everything is cheap.

Very small devices like bluetooth dongles and the like will continue to have omnidirectional elements, but at low powers and high bands, mostly.

Omnis can also make sense if you legitimately have a giant audience. If you have millions of people tuning in to a broadcast, using high-power, omni signals like a modern TV station is not selfish, in fact it's efficient. It is an interesting challenge to work out what the audience threshold is -- in this case we do have a scarce piece of bandwidth. To show you are not selfish in using it, you would just show that your audience is at some percentile of size.

omnis!!!

Alex Goldman — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:04:39 -0800

I think that some may have comments on most of your ideas, but surely everyone agrees that omnis can be a menace?? That's what I hear from the WISPs I talk to.

Interference

brad — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:11:54 -0800

Radio waves do not interfere in space. Two radio waves can pass through one another without effect. Interference only occurs when they both reach the same receiver on the same band with sufficient power for the unintended one to disrupt the intended one. The higher the frequency, the more bound the path of the waves can be. Low frequency waves like FM will spread everywhere, they should only be used when that is the goal — to go everywhere. High frequency waves can have directional transmitters and receivers that will only interfere when two transmitters are along the line the directional receiving antenna (or in particular dish) is aimed — or over a wider swath when the application demands less directionality in the antenna. And again, only if the unwanted transmission has enough power to interfere with the desired signals, since they should be using a noise tolerant system.

Low frequencies should be used only for rural applications, where you need to go long distances to mobile devices.

Alas, the news for hams is not good under my regime. Hams would have to stop using bands the way they do, and experiment with new technologies to be unselfish. But in fact that’s what being a ham is all about, after the initial learning phase. It’s not about using ancient technology, it’s no longer about code, and if you want to socialize with remote people, there are far better and less selfish ways to do that now.

Though on the other hand, there really is so much spectrum out there, if we opened it all up, that there should be enough for people to “play” and experiment and engage in activities that would be selfish if there were other people with a better use for the spectrum. But if there aren’t, then hams could feel free. No need for a licence, actually.

Comment on Radio/Interference

Earl Voss — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:17:15 -0800

Hi Brad,
Regarding Amateur (Ham) Radio, at least, there are regulations which stipulate which party must correct interference; these regs do follow common sense. In truth, most operators operate in a good faith manner.

I do agree with using the internet whenever possible; again, in Amateur Radio, this technology shift has been felt; many operators use packet-based communications, etc. via the internet.
Regarding interference "in the ether", we perceive the interference at the receiver, because that's how we hear it. There are occasions, however, when 2 distinct signals operating at the same frequency, but originating from different sources, can find themselves in the same space at the same time. It is for this reason that some transmitters (ususally FM) transmit at much higher power levels during the day than they do in the evening, because of ionospheric ceiling changes. I recall travelling back home from the NJ shore to my home in Northern NJ and there was a distance during which the FM signal 92.7 recieved by my car's FM radio kept switching between the South-Jersey based WOBM and the Long Island based WLIR, and that happened despite FCC transmission power regs.

for whatever it's worth :-)

Earl

They're already testing this...

Phaedrus — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:24:54 -0800

See www.numetra.com & www.interstream.com. Basically, it looks like they plan on throttling the peer to peer, leaving the regular broadband speeds about the same & letting the streaming video get guaranteed service. I doubt it will have any impact on our current broadband experience -- unless you already have 10 or 20 Mbps.

He's backpedaled

brad — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:21:15 -0700

But I doubt it was the transit pipes because Google doesn't use those for free, as far as I know, nor does anybody else. Some large ISPs have no-accounting peering but they pay for their own transit to the peering points. Google, it is reported, buys a lot of long haul pipes, more than many ISPs.

Free peering has always been a controversial issue. Large ISPs peer with one another for free, smaller ISPs pay to do this, though in theory only paying for transit. But what makes an ISP an ISP? Can't Google or YouTube argue they are an ISP (with very popular data) with one giant customer, bigger than the combined customers of many medium sized ISPs.

Who is the traffic for? When I search Google, it's for me. When they present me ads, it's for them. The internet decided on the "I pay for my half, you pay for yours" rather than trying to figure out who the traffic was for, and having "toll paid" traffic and "800 number target paid" traffic like the phone system or the X.25 networks. Who won?

a minor correction

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:01:58 -0700

not that i support whitacre, but when he spoke of google using "his" pipes,
he was, i think, referring to transit traffic, not last mile traffic (which customers
have rented).

Thanks

Yonemoto — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:07:02 -0700

Thanks for a well thought out commentary on the issue -- that's been very lacking. I never thought about how proponents of "keeping the internet free and accessible to all" will likely wind up causing usage-based fees, which will make the 'net more restrictive. I may just have to change my stance on net neutrality.

In any case, why not just allow ISPs to do whatever, just require them to disclose their bandwidth rules free of charge to anyone who requests it?

I don't doubt the temptation

brad — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:38:14 -0700

I understand the motives of those promoting network neutrality as law, and sympathsize with them, and understand the temptation.

But it’s not correct to say that even the laws you cite are not making legal requirements about architecture. Saying you can not do something with your architecture is still legislating architecture. Saying that you can’t charge for something is still legislating architecture. Just because I believe that the flat rate open net is the best architecture doesn’t mean this is the only valid opinion or the only valid way to design, and bill for, a network.

That bill also does exactly what I don’t advise. It regulates “broadband providers” with a definition that’s quite broad (200kbps in one direction) and would thus include satellite, cellular and just about anything else that’s not a dial-up modem. There is no problem here except from franchised broadband providers that have been granted some sort of monopoly. That means MSOs, ILECs and to some extent the new WISPs that have been granted monopoly rights to poles. (It might also include use of licenced spectrum.) We would not want to affect anybody else.

And I don’t think you or others want to affect the small upstart ISPs. I presume it was felt that if you singled out the monopoly ISPs they would complain this was unfair. Either way they will certainly work to amend any bill to make sure it provides regulatory legwork for small competitors. That’s what they do. It’s what they always do. And members of congress don’t seem to understand how much paperwork and permission equal asphixiation.

It is also important to understand that the network of an ISP is not the internet. The internet, by definition, is the network of networks, tied together because they all use IP and can route amongst themselves. You can regulate how private networks interconnect to form internets, but it’s much harder to do it for the private networks at the end, but that’s the likely place they will want to interfere with network neutrality if you could stop them at the interconnect.

While we’ve been concentrating on this legislation, they seemingly snuck past us something far more damning to the internet than network non-neutrality is ever likely to be — the USF. A fat tax on small players, VoIP companies and ISPs, paid to the big telcos, along with a bureaucracy which will involve ISPs having to register, report revenues and pay fat fees.

We want to keep it hands off as much as we can. Which alas, does not mean “hands off except on the things we want.”

I respectfully disagree

Bill Herman — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:06:03 -0700

Mr. Templeton,

Your post was invoked by Tim Lee in a post defending the wait-and-see approach to net neutrality. I respond to Lee, Felten, and you, though I suspect you and I are probably closer on this issue than are Lee and I.

In any case, my extended blog post is here.

Shills Among Us?

Sagecast — Sun, 21 May 2006 04:48:00 -0700

Readers of this comment thread should know that pkp646, Paulaner01 and lessgov look to be part of a tag-team of industry shills who invade blog comments on net neutrality or other issues to argue against any government regulation of the Internet. Other names who run with this crowd are John Rice and oldhats. (Google any of these names in combination and you'll see how their game works).

By tag-teaming the blogs this small handful of individuals gives the false impression of broad popular support for their industry-friendly position.

I'd like these people to tell us how it is that they appear together (usually one after the other) spouting identical industry talking points across the blogosphere.

What gives fellas? Are you being paid?