Broadband

Problem solved

Comcast and BitTorrent are working together to improve the delivery of video files on Comcast’s broadband network. Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent — Comcast will slow traffic for those users who consume the most bandwidth, said Comcast’s [Chief Technology Officer, Tony] Warner. Comcast hopes to be able to switch to a new policy based on this model as soon as the end of the year, he added. The company’s push to add additional data capacity to its network also will play a role, he said. Comcast will start with lab tests to determine if the model is feasible. Over at Public Knowledge, Jef Pearlman argues that the Read More ›

Conyers opposing regulation

John Conyers, Jr. If broadband providers turn the Internet into a “world where those who pay can play, but those who don’t are simply out of luck,” current antitrust law can solve the problem says House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI). I believe that antitrust law is the most appropriate way to deal with this problem — and antitrust law is not regulation. It exists to correct distortions of the free market, where monopolies or cartels have cornered the market, and competition is not being allowed to work. The antitrust laws can help maintain a free and open Internet. The comment came at a Congressional hearing yesterday. Of course the broadband market isn’t characterized by monopoly or cartel, so Read More ›

Japan does it, too

An inconvenient fact (for opponents of network management): A survey by the Japan Internet Providers Association shows 40% of Japanese ISPs perform network management, according to Yomiuri Shimbun, and the trend is growing. Of the 276 respondents, 69 companies said they restricted information flow through their lines. A total of 106 companies, including those that rent lines from infrastructure owners, impose such restrictions. Twenty-nine companies said they were planning to take similar measures. This is somewhat ironic because advocates for a centrally-planned national broadband strategy led by bureaucrats cite Japan as one of the successful examples the U.S. should follow. See, e.g., “Down to the Wire,” by Thomas Bleha in Foreign Affairs (May/June 2005). Hat tip: Ken Robinson

Chaos and opportunity

Referring to Bret Swanson’s and George Gilder’s prediction U.S. IP traffic will reach an annual total of 1,000 exabytes, or one million million billion bytes by 2015, Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe foresees a terabit-per-second Ethernet, according to Telephony. Although not sure eaxctly when, Metcalfe predicts — New modulation schemes will be needed for the coming network, he said, as well as “new fiber, new lasers, new everything.” The need to replace existing technologies will create “chaos,” Metcalfe said, but also opportunity for equipment vendors.

Broadband for the people

The Federal Communications Commission conducted a public hearing this week on network management before a group of law students — as opposed to, say, engineering students who are the ones who study network management — where lead witness Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) declared [T]he Internet is as much mine and yours as it is Verizon’s, AT&T’s or Comcast’s. Please keep front and center in your examination the needs and wishes of the community of users rather than a small coterie of carriers. As a matter of law, Markey would have flunked if that were an exam question. But of course the government has a right to try to control whatever it wishes one way or another. The interesting and relevant Read More ›

Unleashing the Exaflood

Bret Swanson and George Gilder have a column in today’s Wall Street Journal in which they argue that more Internet capacity will be necessary to keep up with movie downloads, gaming, virtual worlds and other fast-growing applications. They explain that Internet capacity will have to increase 50 times in the next couple years in their recent report “Estimating the Exaflood: The Impact of Video and Rich Media on the Internet — A ‘zettabyte’ by 2015?,” which I discuss here. In their column, Gilder and Swanson warn this won’t happen if politicians re-regulate network providers: The petitions under consideration at the FCC and in the Markey net neutrality bill would set an entirely new course for U.S. broadband policy, marking every Read More ›

The Coming Ad Revolution

Check out Taylor Frigon’s blog post, “A paradigm’s shift in the way you get information,” which links to a story in the Wall Street Journal by Esther Dyson entitled: “The Coming Ad Revolution.” Dyson’s column discusses major changes in advertising that have been on their way for years but which few people today even see coming. Frigon writes: The article outlines an impending paradigm shift in the way people find information, which will have a tremendous impact on the advertising business and those that support it. But this revolution in the way that people find information will impact more than just the ad industry. We wrote about some of the potential implications in the world of search two months ago Read More ›

Markey’s bark worse than his bite

Markey: “The bill contains no requirements for regulations on the Internet whatsoever.” The long-awaited network neutrality bill of Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) was unveiled this week. H.R. 5353 establishes a new broadband policy and requires the Federal Communications Commission to conduct an Internet Freedom Assessment, with public summits and a report to Congress. Broadband Policy According to the bill, it would be the policy of the U.S. to: maintain the freedom to use for lawful purposes broadband telecommunications networks, including the Internet … ensure that the Internet remains a vital force in the United States economy … preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of broadband networks … safeguard the open marketplace of ideas on the Internet by adopting Read More ›

Networked Nation

Last week Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez noted that the total number of broadband lines in the U.S. has grown by more than 1,100 percent from almost 6.8 million lines in December 2000, to 82.5 million in December 2006, according to the most recent FCC data which is cited in a report issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The NTIA report is entitled “Networked Nation: Broadband in America, 2007,” and is available here. The report also contains the following graph which illustrates the dramatic increase in broadband investment — from $15.2 billion in 2003, to $24.4 billion in 2007 and projected to double in 2010: This investment boom isn’t the result of a public works project which, according Read More ›

A Breakdown of the Innovation Culture?

In preparation for the “Exaflood” paper, I read the November 2007 paper by Nemertes Research — “The Internet Singularity Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web.” It is an exemplary supply-side work (low utilization rates signify inadequate bandwidth rather than lack of demand). Failure to invest in infrastructure will produce not a breakdown of the Internet but a breakdown of the innovation culture of the net that brought us YouTube et al. I recommend the paper to all as a guide to the prospects of our network processor and hollow router paradigms. It contains a number of obvious errors (dates reversed on charts (p.22), confusions between zettabits per second and petabits), and a “What me Read More ›