Today, in response to "It’s The Internet Stupid", Richard Bennett highlights (on the IP List) something I've noticed even among other advocates of 'Net Neutrality' (and how I've come to detest the term after its widespread and misguided overuse). Legislating against the concepts of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) or other preferential treatment of packets is not the brightest thing to do. I've seen others draw analogies to gun control using the 'guns don't kill people' argument... more
In their annual hype cycle on on network technologies, Gartner lists the emerging technologies and an estimate of the timeframe in which they will reach the plateau of productivity. The latest hype cycle on enterprise networking labels Software-Defined Networks (SDN) as an obsolete technology. So on the surface, it would appear that SDN is now semi-officially dead. While most natural scientists accept the Darwinian theories, the technology industry has traditionally been trying to defy evolution. more
My prediction is that LTE and WiMAX are toast. The new great thing will be WRANs (wireless regional area networks). WRAN's will extend and eventually subsume WiFi. The detailed regulations which implement the FCC decision to free the spectrum formerly known as TV white spaces have now been released. They look pretty good from the point of view of someone who believes the unlicensed use of this spectrum has the potential to make a huge difference in the way the world communicates. more
I have long been perplexed at how Google plans to make a profit with their Kansas City Fiber project. Originally the project was touted as an altruistic move by Google to really understand the underlying costs of deploying fiber in a large municipality. But as anyone who has been in the trenches can tell you, it is not the technology that determines the cost of a fiber deployment, but the tyranny of the take-up. more
Mobile operators face soaring data demand. The natural evolution of 2G/3G/4G infrastructure delivers about 2X additional capacity every 24 months. That's a major disconnect! (At least) two solutions are on the table, Femtocells and Wi-Fi offload. Both approaches solve the backhaul issue by using customer or 3rd party links (DSL, DOCSIS, T1/E1, WISP or otherwise)... As a solution for mobile data capacity, Wi-Fi wins, for many reasons. more
Google Cloud has landed its muchly anticipated subsea cable, Grace Hopper in Bude, Cornwall. The 16-fiber pair Google-funded cable will connect New York (United States) to Bude (United Kingdom) and Bilbao (Spain). more
May become the access answer for many at the end of the road. The icicle dripping dish in the picture is the antenna for Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service from SpaceX -- one of Elon Musk's other companies. It came Saturday, just before the snow arrived here in Stowe, VT. It's heated, so I didn't have to shovel it out, and it's working despite its frozen beard. The pandemic has shown us that it is socially irresponsible to leave any family without broadband access. more
Fergie replied on NANOG to my recent post on the subject of broadband routers insecurity: "I'll even go a step further, and say that if ISPs keep punting on the whole botnet issue, and continue to think of themselves as 'common carriers' in some sense -- and continue to disengage on the issue -- then you may eventually forced to address those issues at some point in the not-so-distant future..." He is right, but I have a comment I felt it was important - to me - to make. Not just on this particular vulnerability, but on the "war"... more
In a blog post, Sandvine announced that for the second year in a row, the Super Bowl was seen as an event that led to a 15% reduction in overall internet traffic, despite being available as a streaming video feed for United States viewers. The blog says "Sandvine's traffic statistics have showed continued growth in adoption of live streamed sports events, but for the time being it is no threat to replace viewing via traditional broadcast methods." more
In the mid-year 2008 rankings by the Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) Council, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan occupy the top four positions in terms of household penetration percentage. Asia Pacific now accounts for more than 27 million of the world’s 32 million FttH connections. more
Talk, conjecture and analysis have predicted a wireless spectrum crisis for years. The official word seems to project a culmination of dropped calls, slow loading of data, downright network access denials as impending by 2015. If so, then we should look at the current argument about how that additional spectrum can be disseminated to wireless carriers in a fair and balanced fashion. more
Canada has made impressive progress in mobile broadband deployment in recent months. This is partly due to operators needing to arrest falls in revenue from mobile voice services by buttressing their data capabilities, as also by the stimulus to the market introduced through the auction of Advanced Wireless Services spectrum in 2008. This auction overhauled the wireless market, introducing a number of smaller players which have added to the competitive mix as well as furthered the development of LTE. more
Since the first undersea cable was completed in 1858 to deliver telegraph messages between the US and England, we've had an extensive network of undersea cable networks that enable communications between continents. Earlier this year there were 378 undersea fiber cables in place that stretch over 745,000 miles. Here's an interactive map that shows all of the cables... What's most intriguing about the map is that there are a few cities around the world where numerous cables terminate. more
SpaceX has begun the process of securing licenses to operate its Starlink Internet service in the Caribbean. I don't know which nations they are considering, but would advise them to seriously consider Cuba -- Starlink service in Cuba would benefit the Cuban people, SpaceX, and the US. What's in it for Cuba? Fixed home and commercial connectivity in Cuba are limited, slow, and expensive, but they do have shared connectivity... more
NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. .. One of the more memorable sides in this presentation was a reference to "map" drawn by Charles Minard in 1869 describing the statistics relating to the Napoleonic military campaign in Russia, and the subsequent retreat. more
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