[IP] more on Lucky warns of end-user broadband expectations
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 13:03:17 -0700
From: DV Henkel-Wallace <gumby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] Lucky warns of end-user broadband expectations
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
On 04 Apr, 2004, at 06:41, Dave Farber wrote:
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 16:37:25 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Lucky warns of end-user broadband expectations
By Loring Wirbel , EE Times
Lucky said that even though he spent his career in the telephony realm
dominated by a centralized Advanced Intelligent Network, he believed in
the inevitability of a dumb central fabric and intelligent end nodes. The
overall costs may be more in a connectionless packet-switched network, he
said, but the empowerment provided to end users makes IP a better system
" provided end users realize that some costs must be borne by users and
service providers to maintain backbones of the system.
I'm glad Lucky has taken the plunge and embraced the dumb network (but then
again, he's a really smart guy). What pains me is that there is no
discussion of funding packet transport the way we fund the streets: as a
(literally) common carrier public resource.
I think it's due to an unfortunate confluence of ideologies: the federal
parties don't want to spend money on infrastructure and have a bias to
"letting the market decide" even when it's inappropriate; the techies are
afraid that government spending must mean interference.
But the reality is that the public streets are open to everyone:
80-year-old grannies, teen-agers, terrorists and law-abiding citizens.
You choose your vehicle, you choose what to put in it and you choose where
you drive it and by what route. _They_ don't get built as private efforts
except in very rare cases.
Packet transport has turned into a classic externality, entirely
appropriate for government funding and development. It's a shame that
municipal efforts (like in my own Palo Alto) to build public Internet
infrastructure are heavily resisted by entrenched interests and ideologues.
-d
PS: People who haven't heard of Wirbel should read his stuff. His opinion
pieces in EE times are usually insightful and right on the mark.
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