Networking

Overheard: Internet metering brings us back to 1995

Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service… Brian Stelter, To Curb Traffic on the Internet, Access Providers Consider Charging by the Gigabyte

In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.

In 1996, when AOL started offering unlimited access plans, Internet use took off and the online world started moving to the center of people’s daily lives.

Is Brian Stelter the only person who’s writing about how we’re going backwards with Internet metering? Everyone’s acting like this is a new thing. It’s an old thing, billed in a new way — gigabytes instead of minutes.

Overheard: Leveraging rich presence — a marketer’s dream

Ignoring the fact that I find the whole concept of “presence management” a solution in search of a problem for most people, there’s the whole technical problem of trying to work within the various walled gardens…Until we have a single identity across networks, no method of managing presence will be effective. Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy,  Presence And Identity

Rich presence is simply networking on steroids. And people are right to be wary about how the information aggregated from rich presence opt-ins could be used by marketers.  Sure, Facebook backed down on Beacon — but you know its just a matter of time before the “tweet” saying you wish you were in Hawaii brings you snail mail brochures.  Our best protection right now is that there isn’t a way for marketers to leverage rich presence effectively.  We have too many networking identities.

Overheard: Who invented the Internet?

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating theInternet.
- Al Gore describing his 1986 legislation to interconnect five supercomputer centers (17 years after thefirst Internet servers hooked up)

If Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell-check.
- Former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle

The day I made that statement, I was tired because I’d been up all night inventing the Camcorder.
- Al Gore attempting damage control

Those days were funny, weren’t they? Actually, the Internet is just a grown-up version of ARPANET.

Overheard: Telepresence is the new magic word for videoconferencing

I’ve seen videoconferencing vendors trying to upgrade their offerings with high-definition media and larger screens to compete with telepresence technology. You can put wings on a pig and call it a bird, but it still won’t fly. David Hsieh, as quoted in Telepresence industry to pass $1 billion in 2013

Videoconferencing is out. Telepresence is in.

It’s been ten years since I’ve attended a meeting in a videoconferencing suite.  I remember it feeling like I was talking to astronauts on the moon. The audio lag was at least five seconds. 

The new telepresence technology is too pricey for small to mid-sized businesses, but just like in the old days — there will be telepresence centers where you can take advantage of the technology. Cisco has partnered with Regus business centers and HP has partnered with Marriott to make it happen faster.

Overheard: WiMAX gets a marketing makeover

It turns out the announcement isn’t a new vaporware wireless technology, it’s my favorite old vaporware wireless technology, WiMax. Sprint finally figured out what to do with it. The unbelievably frustrating part is that Sprint has pretty much slipped the deployment plan for WiMax by another two years. It’s hard to get excited about a new technology, no matter how great the investors, when I have zero confidence in the companies’ ability to deliver. Michael Mace, WiMax gets closer and further away at the same time

The involvement of Google means we’re very likely to get a pretty much open ecosystem on a major wireless network, which Silicon Valley has been collectively screaming about for years. The size of the investments mean there is a lot of money available to build out the network. People ought to be dancing in the streets here, but instead most of them appear to be either yawning or throwing spitwads.

I’d be out there dancing myself if it weren’t for the slip in the schedule.

Hat’s off to Michael Mace for explaining the real buzz around WiMAX.

Overheard: The Great Firewall of China

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government’s attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. John Ritter, The Connection Has Been Reset

When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government’s approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people’s daily lives.

Overheard: New Internet on its way — thanks again to CERN

“We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries.” Tony Doyle as quoted in Coming soon: superfast internet

Yes, that’s right folks. The Internet could soon be made obsolete by a new “grid” system that’s going to transfer data 10,000 times faster than our current broadband Internet connections. Think of it — 10,000 times faster!!!

The Grid’s main purpose is to track the data associated with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider “big bang project” — although the Grid will also be made available to some researchers. Current thinking is that CERN is reinventing the Internet and no matter what you think about CERN messing with sub-atomic particles, the idea of a new Internet is intriguing — especially with recent predictions of our “using up” the Internet we have by 2010.

The new Grid has routing centers, dedicated fiber optic cables and over 50,000 servers — and the potential to offer everything from HD video telephony to the transmission of holographic images.

Overheard: Internet needs a $130 billion makeover

In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today. Jim Cicconi, as quoted in AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president-External and Legislative Affairs,  gave an interesting speech at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 last week.  First he got people’s attention by saying that the Internet will reach full capacity by 2010 and we need to invest $130 billion to update the infrastructure.  Then he went on to say that private industry should be the fixer, not government.  I agree with him. 

“I think people agree why the Internet is successful. My personal view is that government has widely chosen to…keep a light touch and let innovators develop it. The reason I resist using the term ‘Net neutrality’ is that I don’t think government intervention is the right way to do this kind of thing. I don’t think government can anticipate these kinds of technical problems. Right now, I think Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.”

Overheard: Iron curtain between IT and telecom

“Today, we might have achieved voice and data convergence from a technology standpoint, but convergence from a human resources perspective is still a figment of our imagination (if that). If this situation is as bad as it seems from Tom’s observations, it’s certainly clear that [converging IT and telecom staffs] represents a major stumbling block in achieving the promised benefits of IP communications technology — and that such corporations with departmental ‘iron curtains’ that are deploying these solutions risk wreaking havoc instead of reaping cost savings and workforce productivity/efficiency improvements.” Marc Robbins, The Convergence Dilemma: Getting IT and Telecom Departments to Play Nice Together

Here’s an interesting case study about how the Department of Central Management Services for the State of Illinois went about converging IT with Telecom.  I have to say, I’m impressed that they not only recognized that moving from a decentralized model to a centralized model would affect their staff members and contractors — they actually addressed the issue head-on in their planning.

“In any transformative initiative like this, people are what make and break the project. You can always solve technology issues because you can think through technology issues. You can’t think through logically and rationally when you relate to people.”

A key challenge in handling people relates to the cultural change. There were shifts in the reporting structure, changes in job profile of people and in some cases there was also a need to relocate. These changes brought in a lot of apprehensions in the minds of people. There was a growing fear and concern regarding their job security, pay scale and the new role which they would be playing. To address these issues, training sessions and orientations were held to familiarize people with the new reporting structures, functions and work practices. Also, there were documents posted across different agencies that answered questions regarding job security, change in pay scale, job relocation and such other.”

Overheard: Verizon using stance towards net neutrality as a gorilla marketing message

“Verizon is kinda sorta using their total lack of filtering as an underground marketing thing already, which is especially effective when coupled with FiOS’s insane speeds.” Matt Buchanan, Will Your ISP F You In the A? Bandwidth Hogs Beware

Interesting post by Matt Muchanan over at Gizmodo about ISP bandwidth management practices.  Can it be true that everyone but Verizon admitted they were managing bandwith? 

 ”We don’t manage our network by throttling, slowing or curbing service, either on DSL or FiOS.” In reference to content filtering, we weren’t given a new statement, but referred to earlier remarks by public affairs VP Tom Tauke that it is “reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks,” the most pro-active stance against content filtering. However, it’s still no fan of the government stepping in: “These are decisions best made by network engineers and operators—not policymakers.”

Managing bandwidth has a new name, btw.  “Filtering” is out.   So is “throttling,” ”capping,” and “curbing.” 

The new name? ”Traffic shaping techniques.” Hats off to whoever thought that one up.