Wireless stupidnet abroad
I briefly saw mention of David Isenberg years ago.
Turned off by the marketingspeak at his site, and the
"pronouncement" nature of his one-way mailing list,
I promptly forgot about his site for a long time.
Yesterday,
Boing Boing had a link to isen.com, along with an extended
excerpt, that made me look again.
The key "stupidnet" idea is that
"All the smarts in the network should be at the ends."
Then they go on about fiber cables.
What's even stupider than simple cables? Air. Empty space.
They make the point that the telephone companies, the
cable TV providers, and the entertainment/broadcast
cartel, all have their bread and butter invested in
the status quo. Not to mention the FCC, bought and
paid for by the above entities. None of these have
the incentive to use even the oversupply of fiber that's
out there right now in the US.
Seems to me that the kind of network Isenberg describes
is in a direction somewhat different from where the actual
users want to go, which is wireless.
Despite Michael Powell's apparently encouraging
Halloween-eve speech,
the FCC (IMHO) will not be likely allow a wireless
abundant-spectrum network to arise. IN THE U.S.
The way to win is to figure out a way to create a somewhat
stupidnet that uses wireless connections,
in all of the developing countries on the planet.
It seems to me that the wireless versions are the ones most
likely to win out over any other technology, if you're
starting from scratch. Maybe not today's wireless protocols.
If the stupidnet is the right way to foster innovation in
networking, and the FCC and the entrenched profit-addicted
infrastructure corporations will not make any moves in
such innovative directions, then
it is inevitable that some other country will gain a
modicum of sense, leapfrog the US parts of the Internet, and
win big.
By 2010 or so. Scandinavia? Indonesia? India?
CHINA? Somewhere.
Somewhat-related links that I still have to read ...
And I recall seeing a paper that described how peer-to-peer
networking ideas could make a network's bandwidth increase
as more users join the net, instead of decreasing. But I wasn't
able to re-locate that site tonight.
1:02:51 AM
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