Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)? 650
eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"
TANSTAAFL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
No charge????????? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhhh, as long as the equipment to transmit wirelessly and the electricity to power out isn't free (not counting the multitude of people to roll it out and support it), you're always going to be paying something.
Hard to believe that a question devoid of basic Economics 101 would appear on Slashdot.
Yes... (Score:1, Insightful)
Further more, the kind of hardware these groups you want to be no more use is far out of the price range of most private citizens, such hardware is required within any kind of system which is of any size.
Umm, No Thanks, i like my speed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you understand the value of redundant OC48 backbones, BGP4 and IS-IS routing, and colocated servers on gigE links.
Your ad-hoc networks would be OK for MAN's (Metropolitan Area Networks), but are simply unusable for anykind of backbone.
The tragedy of the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Rich
2 problems (Score:5, Insightful)
2. no "backbone"--hopping accross phones works around the city (maybe), but how many hops will it take to get to.. japan? and don't forget that there's some countable amount of milliseconds per transfer--to get accross the nation is a lot of cell-phone coverage sized hops. Plus, we have to go around the grand canyon.
Disconnected Islands (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
Another thing (Score:3, Insightful)
"why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating?"
Communicating is not what you are paying for. It's still free to communicate with anyone in the world. Just go get your plane ticket (mail your money, please) and fly on over to strike up your conversation.
This article is so assinine, I am already tired of writing.
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No charge????????? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The tragedy of the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "the Man" that screws you into paying internet access costs - it costs money to lay wires and run all of the routers on the internet. This is a fact. Wireless infrastructure is stupid on a large area network, as you waste virtually all of your power transmitting to areas where there are no listening machines (or no applicably listening machines).
Why does slashdot continue to let 14-year-olds with dreams of free everything post to Ask Slashdot?
Problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Wireless doesn't have the bandwidth to provide service everywhere everytime for everyone. Assuming the hardware was in place, there would be limits to how much traffic each node could pass and the aggregate bandwidth betweem all the nodes wouldn't be as great as that provided by fibre links.
Political problems?
ILECs, CLECs, Cable Co's, Govenments, etc., take your pick. It's an idyllic concept but too many people will want their piece of their pie.
Economic problems?
The system (were it technically workable) would require a large installed base before it would work AT ALL. Who's going to go out and buy new gear in the hopes the system will reach critical mass and become viable? Let's not forget the incumbants lobying the above point to keep from losing out on this point.
While the concept is certainly interesting, and could probably work on limited scales (p2p locally, then into a Supernode for long distance. I seem to remember Ricochet used something similar, with data hopping across subscriber nodes to reach the main towers) there's no way it'll work in the current social, economic, political, or technical climate.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
you're in luck (Score:3, Insightful)
I do the same for Bentlies as well, but the price for an ignition key is starts at $600,000
Re:Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now brothers, shall we chant: "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs."?
Re:replace free with very very cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think you *pay* your telco for? A line? No you pay for all of these services -- and more.
A defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Criticisms about e. asking for a free lunch, or forgetting economics 101 are missing the point: can wireless technology evolve to a point where our dependency on land-lines is greatly reduced? And can technology be created that accomodates such a world, where every computer is both a transceiver and a relay for traffic?
I would strongly contend the answer is yes. Why? Several trends contribute to the answer.
There's more that would suggest that ISPs and Telcos of the future will either not exist or be radically different, but I haven't eaten my supper yet, so I'm too tired to articulate more thoroughly. It's easy to see that telcos will consolidate around providing high-capacity long-distance links for businesses--wireless will lag beyond land-lines for a long time on both counts will win. And ISPs? In a pervasively networked world, where many nodes are mobile (and many users may switch among multiple, personal nodes), some things have to remain at fixed, well-known nodes--leaving ISPs to consolidate around various forms of hosting and co-location. It may be that in the future, that's what happens to telcos and ISPs: network providers that offer co-location and hosting services.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, you've put your finger on a major problem. We'll still need long haul carriers, sattelite, cables under the ocean, big radio transmitters, etc., for the large distances between population concentrations.
Someone would have to pay these costs. Right now, the line costs are pretty much shared by all to some extent as so much traffic goes over the public networks, but this peer-to-peer system might bring about a scenario where those who access long haul services pay more. There couldn't be automated routing to the big long haul pipes from the peer devices without a good way to charge it back to the user.
Still, I could see where there could be less reliance on long haul lines than there is now. Local peer networks might bring about some economies. Right now, if you connect to a someone in your own town there's a good chance that your packets go through a dozen hops and travel thousands of miles, using lots of fiber. A system that really tried to route locally first might be more efficient and require less long haul infrastructure.
I don't see how it could be practical if everyone didn't kick in some for long haul access, though.
why CS departments teach networking classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Because infrastructure and reliability costs money(no no, trust me, I get more insightful below. Well, maybe not insightful. It's hard to answer this story insightfully, I just point out the facts.) Communications mediums are WORTHLESS if they are unreliable, which is one of the reasons cell phones took decades to "take off"(realize that it's been at least 3 decades since the cell phone was invented, and only in the last 5-6 has there really been a cell phone boom, at least in the US. Realize that the # complaint with cell phones is still how unreliable they are.)
Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices.(snip) What are the technological barriers?
Well, you asked, so here goes:
There are also some hidden consequences, like "everyone's mobile device is no longer idle, it's processing someone else's packets, so its battery life goes into the toilet".
How would you solve problems of geographic isolation?
That's just it- you'd need wires/fiber/something...and that would cost money. But, reliability would be far better- so people would opt for wired connections they had to pay for. Oops, right back where you started.
Also related- the reason high-speed access costs so much money in the US is because of geographic isolation and population density. It's no surprise that several Asian countries have DSL service in the megabyte-per-second range to your door for $10-20/mo; after all, you're probably in a huge apartment complex, in a city.
If the population density isn't high enough to support pricing high speed access low enough, I doubt you'll have enough nodes to even occasionally get any kind of connectivity to anything else- much less guarantee it.
Back to the cell phone example- look at how many billions(if not trillions?) of dollars have been poured into the cellphone network(which in turn is reliant upon a larger wired network.) I don't care what network you're on, soon as you get a little bit beyond the suburbs, off a major highway- forget it, you're screwed.
Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?
Well, for one, if you did telephone calls over this "system", I'd move to another country. When I pick up the phone, I damn well expect a dialtone, because, oh, say, my house could be on fire. There are no doubt thousands of o
Re:Umm, No Thanks, i like my speed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh heh... data would take about 300 hops to get from my apartment in Brooklyn to a server in NYC going wireless to wireless. Where's the routing info going to come from in such a flat space? A huge 200GB routing table on each WAP? Some new border protocol that takes up 99% of the available bandwidth keeping itself current? A new IP addressing scheme based on location (like zip+4+IPv6)?
What if I want to reach a server in Cali? I can see a string of single houses running through South Dakota through which all the east/west data has to pass. All choked down to 802.11b speeds. And suppose one of those guys gets fed up with the traffic and shuts down his WAP? Pony Express was more reliable.
Re:what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know that nirvana is hard to achieve, so why are we wasting time insulting eraserewind when *instead* we could be hypothesizing about *how* to head towards nirvana a little more??
And, no, I'm not fucking new here--you probably are, and pretty much ruining it for the rest of us who used to like coming here for insightful discussions about the possibilities of technology.
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
If not RTFA, at least RTFQ(uestion):
"What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network..."
Radio transmitters may not be cheap, but that's now, and doesn't mean that something can't be developed in the future to do away with ISPs and the like.
As for those that seem to think that wanting free=bad (boggle) there are quite a few means of communication that don't require paying a third party for use of the bandwidth/facilities.
In the question he's talking about the future, please take off your vision-stilting pessimism glasses, all those people who seem to be snorting at this guy's wish for a non-fee for bandwidth model of data communication (you know who you are.)
There are obviously big problems regarding the crossing of oceans etc. but that's where imagination and vision come in, surely!?? (No magic bees carrying data packets to-and-fro across the pacific, is not what I mean by imagination.)
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does this statement remind me of that woman on the Donahue show who stood up and said something to the effect of "Why do they always want to make the taxpayer pay for things? The government should pay for them!"
Pessimism of /.ers (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll start:
Use cordless phones as a starting point. Have the base station of the phone repeat the signal accross many other base stations until it finds it's destination. when no base station is available, use the mobile phone equipment. It wouldn't be an answer to the problem, but it could serve as a springboard to new ideas and working technologies.
Or alternativly it could flop and be a great disappointment. Let's work on it.
D
Re:why CS departments teach networking classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No charge????????? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shortsighted slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
If metropolitan areas were linked by a peer system - where the "price" of having a telephone or a being able to view the popular media of that culture (in whatever form, whether written or not) were to buy a box for a couple hundred bucks and pay the energy bill on its use, then that would become the fair unit of exchange. We would no longer value "bandwidth" because it would no longer be a limited resource (just like the printing press - duh). And if these metro areas wanted to communicate with other areas at higher speed, they could pool resources (ie taxes) to a national agency that would maintain such a high speed infrastructure for their use.
Of course, that would put the individual metro areas at the mercy of this national organization - not a good thing. So the sensible thing would be to contract with many providers and let them compete with one another for their share of that aggregated bandwidth.
Which is really pretty much what we have - or could have - right now. Nothing at all preventing you from forming a community network and accepting a monthly fee to pool for the connection to the world. Individuals could even participate for free in the local community (ie local phone service and local TV) for nothing, but would contribute to the pool if they wanted to access the greater network.
What's most limiting this right now is the lack of standardized hardware that people feel comfortable with - ie a telephone, a radio receiver, a TV set. If we could buy an 802.xxx telephone at wal-mart for twenty bucks, or a radio, or a completely plug and play box that could act as a bridge to our existing telephones and TVs, then such community networks would likely explode in number.
Or perhaps I should say when and will...
Reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This question has most definately come from someone with end-user only experience. Anyone who actually "makes the wires work" knows it isn't easy, and it's certainly not cheap. This is just the unchecked imagination of an idealistic DSL user fed up with paying for services. You don't get your electricity, water, gas, cable, or any of the other utilities free, why should communication services be any different?
A more reasonable question would be, why are we still paying such high prices for these services. The answer to that, however, is simple. The public infrastructure is owned by government sponsored monopolies.
Re:Oh my god (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll set you loose in the Library of Congress. We will remove the Card Catalog, and all indicative signs.
You find a single book that I specify.
I'll come back and check on you in three years.
Routing is an art. Do not assume you can just magically pull it out of your ass. That IP is as scalable and capable as it is is truely impressive.
As to your dreams, there is nothing wrong with thinking aout of the box. Things like the internet got started as little projects like ARPAnet. But your optimisim leaves something to be desired, come back when you can get this working on even a dense city level.
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wait. Stop. I'm confused.
1. The government pays for the network.
2. The people pay for the government.
3. The network is, therefore, free.
Wha?
Massive Bandwidth Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. The information infrastructure (and the freedom thereof) is too important to leave to publically unaccountable entities. Before you respond, think about this: You already pay for your government to build the public freely accessible roads whether you drive on them or not. Isn't a free and open connection to the Internet at least as important as your roads?
Re:No charge????????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the number of "when I download music I'm not stealing because I'm not taking anything physical" I understand why there are people who have trouble grasping the costs associated with non-physical goods (like bandwidth).
Re:never happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummmmmm. No. You're talking out of your ass.
And there's an obvious metaphor that's been with us for years: The highway system. In most of the world, it is "free", and all you have to buy out of your own money is a vehicle.
Its not free at all. It's existence might be 'free' in the sense that it came out of your taxes, but in most of the developed world you need to pay extra to use it. In the UK its Road Tax, in the US its a tax on your licence plates (i think, I'm not 100% about how US road tax works). You also pay taxes on the gas you use to run your car. So lets say that you're paying $150 a year in road taxes and petrol taxes. Wait! Thats almost the same as you would pay each year for dial-up access. Hardly free is it.
In all parts of the world, bandwidth is legally "public" property, i.e., owned by the government.
Do you actually know what bandwidth is? Bandwidth is a technical term which has come into common usage to mean the amount of data that can be transmitted over a communications channel in a set period of time. Its impossible to 'own' bandwidth - it isn't a real thing.
I think what you actually meant was radio spectrum. However, radio spectrum is less dominated by comercial interests than it is by military interests. So I guess the publics (goverments) 'property' is being used by the goverment (BTW there are plans to more some of the military spectrums around to make room for more unlicenced bands like are used for Wi-Fi).
A company spending millions of dollars laying fibre and installing equipment doesn't use up bandwidth, nor does it use up the public radio spectrum.
There is one very very big problem with this whole idea anyway. Bandwidth saturation. Since bandwidth is a function of the transmission method and medium, any given medium has an upper limit on its bandwidth. In the case of wireless transmitions its been shown that with the commonly available technologies we have at current (various Wi-Fi forms) it isn't very hard to saturate the available bandwidth. This is why you need those very very expensive fibre links with all the high speed switching equipment, along with all their expensive upkeep. Unless there is suddenly a cheap way to get around that then the question at the top was written by someone who was smoking crack.
BTW - given the inefficiency of a goverment, especially when it comes to contractors to the goverment, I reckon that we're getting our internet connections far cheaper now than if the gov. was to take over....
Re:The tragedy of the commons (Score:4, Insightful)
There is so much wrong with that statement. I'll knock a few holes it it:
- Your CAT5e is fast and everything unless you want to go farther than a few hundred yards. To go farther than that you need something a lot more sophisticated than your $50 ethernet switch, and that technology is not cheap.
- The cost of the bandwidth is not just the cables. Its securing the land rights to run cables, paying people to install and maintain them, and that doesn't even include the costs of managing the datacenters or the routers.
- 'maxing out' a dozen PCI buses does not translate to enough bandwidth for a backbone.
Bandwidth is not cheap.
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A defense (Score:2, Insightful)
This means nothing. The spectrum is a shared medium. The bandwidth is pooled among all its user. In comparison, each wire owns its own spectrum. If we lack bandwidth on wireless we are stuck unless the regulation frees more spectrum, and this means it is no longer available for other usage. If we lack bandwidth on a wire, we pull another wire. Telcos have dropped microwave in favour of fibre partly because a fibre equipped with DWDM and OC-192 can carry over terabits/sec of data.
Do not confuse applications and networks. I know, many applications like to call themselves "networks" (e.g. the so called "Novell" networks) because they enable and manage some form of communication between distributed devices. They are no substitute to hardcore network devices such as switches and routers. The P2P "networks" you refer to are applications that run on OSI layer 7. They require a well engineered physical network to run.
Yes. This means the network model from the original question assumes the peering devices are mobile to a large extent. Have you thought of the impact on the routing tables? You can't engineer the traffic that way. The network has no stable state.
And the point is...? A cable company is a telco. Some of them even offer telephony services in countries where regulation allow it. Remember also that broadcast video is a standard telco offering that can be obtained from the large incumbent telcos. When a TV network broadcasts a hockey game, they often lease a land line from a telco to bring the feed to the TV station. Telcos land lines also often carry signals from the station office to the antennas on some towers or mountain tops. And conversely many of the larger cable companies have offered data services for years, competing head-to-head with the incumbent. This is definitely the case with Videotron and Rogers/Shaw here in Canada.
In short, a cable company is a telco with a large stake in video, a different local loop technology and a different regulatory status. But the technology in their backbones is the same.
let's see (Score:2, Insightful)
1) you use everyone else's excess capacity
2) you don't pay for your use, and you don't get a surcharge if you use a lot
3) there is noone to control "goalkeepers" to prevent you from being flooded by the network in any way not thought of by the initial protocol designers
4) the use of this network is not subject to restrictions of political speech
so
a) this network is spammer haven
b) DOS DDOS and other floods are to be expected
c) you don't have any "point of contact" to reach in case the network is flooding you, just buy a new card
d) use of the network during an election can break democracy through creative flooding, if enough people have it
Have I summarized it correctly?
Ahhh slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyways, sure the original post was a bit off I think, but it was a perfectly legitimate "what-if" in my mind, no need to flame him all to hell for posing the question. How it got included in the day's headlines I'm not sure, but I would seriously doubt nobody in the studio audience here has pondered a similar idea. No need to flame him for asking a question and trying to start a discussion. Uh oh, I feel warm already....FLAMES AWAY!
As far as my thoughts on the subject...I don't think it would work technologically. I think the political barriers would be IMMENSE (ie: who would govern what is 'right and decent' to allow through the 'network', normal political BS that goes on anyway and would be hugely amplified by this type of thing), and I don't know if people would be ready for it (I mean really, do you really want everyone in the world bouncing through your computer to get their kiddie pron? Do you want to be held legally responsible if they do, because you know somehow a government would make you be held liable for what users access through your hops?)
Oh well, flame away, this probably isn't that useful a post on this thread, but mainly because I have to pee and am trying to be brief.
Re:Reasons.. (Score:3, Insightful)
electricity, water, and gas are resources obtained from nature. someone has to obtain and distribute them
cable consists of information and entertainment. information can be distributed in other (possibly more efficient ways), and its entertainment value is a matter of taste. i find its entertainment value to be very low, even negative, due to the unaviodable presence of consumerism, materialism, self-centeredness
but communication is completely human generated and human consumed. i don't need someone else to dig-up communication from the ground. today, i do need someone to throw my ideas and expressions over long distances. the original poster is forward-looking, hoping that someday people might cooperate to eliminate the middle-men (corporations) in this process, as we have the power to passively pass communication on from one to another
currently, the idea seems impractical, but perhaps with a little work and patience, it can approach reality
How about we do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
A free wireless network isn't happening anytime soon, for reasons mentioned by.. everybody. I'd like to also pull attention to the routing problem, which is just as big (larger?) than the huge-gap problem.
The best solution is not getting rid of infrastucture, but making it invisiable and if not free.. very close to that and with hidden costs. Call it Iridium2.
Assume the following technological advances, none which are fundemental breakthorughs (a la telepathy and anti-grav):
- cheap hardware
- cheap space launch
- incredible wireless bandwidth (compression, or other methods)
- incredible wireless range from improved antennae, etc.
Have the government(s) launch a shell of uber bandwidth sats. Ignore the concentration of power we just gave big brother. Assume that the gov gives universal free access and no one notices the additional $5 on their tax bill. (precedents: GPS nav system; the internet).
Now we have routable, free internet and phone for everyone with no coverage gaps and no ugly wires. The costs are dispersed/hidden and maintainance is low. But its highly centralized and control is possible. Pick one.
Re:Shortsighted slashdotters (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the whole point of this submission (your reply could have been summarized: "wow, it's not immediately obvious to me how this might work so I'll spout off and declare it as unreasonable")
You mentioned infratructure. That's the point, dummy. What if we each personally owned all the infrastructure needed? Is the only way to do things is to set things up so that 1 entity that owns (in perpetuity) the basic infrastructure?
It's hard to imagine, I know, but the fact of the matter is that to connect to the internet I not only pay money but I have to provide some of my own hardware (modem, router, firewall, etc. etc.).
What if that's all that's needed in the future? (ie wireless communities? The only other thing we'd need is right for public use of whatever frequencies we need for this). And maybe it doesn't have to be wireless.
Like just about every other post along this vein that I've come across, saying that it isn't practical today doesn't refute the idea. Saying that some investment in infrastruture will/may be needed doesn't refute the idea.
And it is not about getting a free lunch. I payed for the juice, I payed for the hardware, I payed the taxes that were use to lay down/maintain the (maybe needed maybe not) basic infrastructure. And I do this not to talk to the telcos or the goverment, but to other people.
So why is there no way to make this work without a Telco? (that is to say, do you understand the question now?)
Re:Umm, No Thanks, i like my speed. (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, you do understand that we have a fairly distributed backbone topology now. I'm not relying on 2 OC48 links in the same condutit, I'm relying on a dozen or more, going out to 5 different cities, all of which are meshed. Redundancy is a design requirement for backbone providers now. And the problem with traffic to the other side of the street going via San Jose (As much traffic between @Home and the world used to) simply comes down to a provider being cheap. So, don't deal witha provider that doesn't have reasonably near interconnections with the major backbones.
As to caching, that is reliant on the idea that a significant number of geographically-close people are all viewing the same static pages. It simply doesn't work with dynamic pages, or web forums, or email. You can't cache what isn't static, and the net isn't static. Hell it wouldn't even work for slashdot.
Also, how are you going to track who has what cached and where they're located? Something like a P2P app, which requires tracking servers or only makes portions of the network available to individual users.
It also means that everybody's going to have to buy somewhat bigger drives and more ram, as caching will become much more important to network performance.
Oh, it also kills the ability I have with RDC or VNC to easily log into a geographically diverse set of servers to manage them. Because the bandwidth and latency ain't there.
In other words, your network offers me exactly nothing. No speed improvements, no additional content, and it removes the usability of most of the internet's killer apps, especially email and dynamic web content like slashdot. IM will still mostly work, except accessing the login servers wiull be problematic. And many of us would lose our jobs(You know how much of Slashdot's readership works for ISP's and Telco's? A significant fraction. But I'll save $30/month. Nah, I'll just pay for my bandwidth and get performance and availability, hell it's only a case of beer or two a month.
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:1, Insightful)
Just because you're a liberal, don't expect everyone else to be.
Re:What is 'free'? What is 'open'? (Score:2, Insightful)
[leer@gremlac constitution]$ cat constitution | grep -i open | wc -l
2
Oops. It occurs twice. One in the 11th amendment, one in the definition of treason. Odd.) Anyway, it's not defined. The rules that govern openness are a hodgepodge of regulatory acts that have never before had to deal with data per se; instead, they've dealt with telephone and telegraph communications, and are (as such) fairly application specific. By nationalizing the Internet, you'd force those rules to be codified, which (in the current political climate) would definitely be a detrimental outcome to privacy and copyright rights (to name just a couple of the Bad Things (TM) that would happen). The trick instead is to force a delay of numeration of actual rights until such time as the technology is better understood and people lose fascination with the new technology aspect of the problem and start applying common sense to the rules.
In any case, once a technology comes under direct government control it becomes immediately subjectable to government pork-barrel politics and righteous right-wingers (look at these morally bankrupt people!) and overzealous liberals (what about the children?!), etc, who want to regulate it. Which is easier to control -- an Internet infrastructure paid for with tax dollars and maintained by the federal government, or the current system whereby private enterprise runs the whole shebang?
Finally, we have the salient point that private enterprise is always more efficient at this sort of thing then a government is. I think everyone can agree that government departments that start out small with a specific mission quickly balloon to titanic proportions, wasting resources everywhere and leaking money like a firehose leaks water. Governments that have tried to control the technology directly (Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany are two of the most prominent examples that come to mind) really haven't made out too well in that whole survival game.
So, in other words, why would you want the government to control the Internet at this point? It would kill a burgeoning resource of technological innovation and subject it to easier regulation, it would be an inefficent use of both your money and mine, and it would start a trend of government controlled technologies that would leave an impression on America for a while, if not forever. I think this century has proved that a market economy is the best way for innovation and progress to continue expediently. Any step to control this new tool, even under the guise of providing a useful service to Americans, must not be allowed to happen.
emergency services (Score:2, Insightful)
I know this is has presented itself for wireless networks seeking official blessing and the freedom to carry certain kinds of traffic legally.
Generally, ad-hoc networks can't (at least not without major investment) deliver this fundamental.
I for one think this requirement is a good reason to keep telcos - Sorry, no route to host errors when you need an ambulance would not be fun.
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
When we feel the IP crunch, then we'll see the expense paid for a massive IPv6 rollout. It is not automatic, it is not easy, it is not mandatory, no matter what your networking 304 professor told you. Check out Dan Bernstein's rant on the subject sometime.
As for broadband in your area...if you think there's demand, fucking do it yourself. Go to your neighbors, get "preorders" and start community DSL. Or better still, get a loan and start your own hometown ISP. You should be able to get all sorts of tax write offs, and maybe get the state on your side to grease the way around the many, many regulators and contractors you'll have to shine. Out west (Colorado) lots of entrepeneurs have done this with mild success. Many of them have been since bought out at hefty payoffs by national telcos, who were thrilled to not have to build the infrastructure themselves.
Anybody who sees an unmet demand in a Capitalist society should jump on it. That's all it took to get Gates, Jobs, Walden and Case where they are today. That, and dorky haircuts.
An attempt at a serious Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
The technological barriers are:
1) Wireless equipment cost -- it has to come down by a factor of 10 or 20 so that ordinary people can afford to solve their own personal connectivity problems by direct personal action. The range and bandwidth per dollar have to imporve. Mass production of cheep roof-based antenae and other WiFi gear needs to happen. When you can get a 1 mile range for $30, this will take off.
2) Routing protocols -- TCP/IP probably wont work because there will be too many hops and it is too hard to administrate. The network topology will be an order of magnitude more complicated. TCP/IP doesn't deal well with ad-hoc roaming connectivity. Rest assured some really smart people are working on these problems.
3) Making the technology user-friendly and turnkey. Joe sixpack isn't going to want to look at a linux prompt to administrate his peer-to-peer router.
4) New application protocols -- if you throw out TCP/IP to deal with adhoc roaming P2P, you have to rethink everything that rides on top of it: DNS, EMAIL, HTTP, etc... Consider something as simple as establishing your default gateway. What if it wanders out of range?
The geographic isolation problem is directly a function of cost, range, and popularity. Keep in mind that in rural settings, people generally don't have cable or DSL anyway, so the pressure is even greater to find a high bandwidth solution. People were willing to put antenaes on their roofs to get TV -- I'd exect they'd do it for free broadband too. It's a simple matter of making it affordable to use repeaters when necessary.
The political barriers are IMHO the most likely to kill this. AT&T, Sprint, WorldCom etc simply don't want people to obsolete them. You think the RIAA and MPAA are a formidable lobby? Try the telcos. They would attack the uncontrollability of such networks. How do you stop child porn on a P2P wireless network? How do you stop copyright infringement? How do you wiretap terrorists and organized crime when there are no wires?
The economic barriers for deployment are pretty straight forward: equipment cost, range, and bandwidth. But the real question is how do you deal with malicious behavior by network participants? I imagine that trust networks problems have to be solved. How do you avoid the tradgedy of the commons (ie bandwidth hogs). Spam will still be a problem.
Re:So I'm a clueless F'in idiot, huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
What I've learned from reading
Now, had you said that you believe that the people shouldn't be allowed to have such a network as you described, and that it's a stupid idea, all the freedom crazy idealists would have been the majority to speak up and COMPLAIN.
On slashdot, nearly the only people that respond to anything are responding to complain about the topic, if there is nothing to complain about, it seems they keep quiet.
You see, even I wouldn't have spoken up, had I not felt like complaining about this, it's a good thing I'm AC.
Re:The goverment can pay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely you jest. There's not even a comparison here. A "free and open" Internet connection is less important than a road system by several orders of magnitude. If you think it isn't, then let me ask you this- can you transport food, clothing, fuel, and building materials over the Internet? No. Is a transportation infrastructure necessary for moving those listed goods from their points of production to points of disbursement to consumers? Yes. Is said infrastructure often necessary for transporting consumers of those necessary products to the point of dissemination, too? Sure is.
None, and I repeat NONE of this can be done with the Internet unless the Internet includes some sort of matter feed like from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Until then, a transportation infrastructure like a road system is nearly a necessity for supplying survival goods given a certain population size and distance between points of production and consumption. By comparison, the Internet is just a cool way to move information around.
It should also be noted that many people don't believe that a road system should be a government endeavor and believe strongly in a privately owned toll-road system. I am not one of them, but it's worth noting that making this comparison to roads presumes that the ONLY way to have roads is through act of government.
Finally, regardless of the road argument, the reason I would prefer to not have the government "owning" and managing the Internet is because I've seen what a good job government control of radio and television has done for Britain. Nothing quite like paying a tax on owning and operating a TV, and still getting crap programming on a minimum of stations! If we were to make the Internet like the roads, I'd be paying a yearly fee to have a license plate put on my IP address so that the authorities could better track me, and I'd never have an alternative other than not using the Internet.
I think the system's just fine as it is, honestly.