Security Review of 802.11b: an excellent rundown by the author of a recent O'Reilly & Associates book on 802.11b.

9:17:18 PM    comment   

The interesting part was AOL's lack of a strategy for consumer broadband.  Instead, Case talked about what he thought was the big opportunity:  home networks.  Unfortunately, in my opinion this area is not ready to explode for 3-5 more years, all the factors aren't in place yet.  AOL should be gearing itself up to provide software that leverages the use of broadband connections first and work on solutions for home networking as a second stage strategy. 

Here's why.   Early dial-up services were limited by bandwidth.  Companies like AOL that sold connectivity and services, configured their software to optimize connectivity by storing graphics on the desktop.  AOL thrived in this environment (I remember using AOL when it had only 100 k customers, it worked nicely given the limitations).  As connectivity radically increased to fast dial-up and early broadband, it became possible to use Web technologies to provide services to consumers.  A light client with a small cache could provision most of the content and services it needed from sites on the network as needed.   Most of the work could be done at the network or cloud level.  Given the level of power available on most PC's in 1995-97, this made sense.  It scaled nicely and the roll-out was a simple software-enabled logical connection, the physical connections via modems were in place. 

The next phase of the Internet's development is consumer broadband.  It requires a different approach.  The problem is that as we move to mass adoption of broadband, the demand for content and services outstrips the ability of the centralized cloud (the Web) to economically and technologically provide those services.   Add to this the huge numbers of PCs with fast processors and plentiful storage (~140 m PCs with 1 GHz processors and 40 -120 Gb of storage will be sold in 2002) that will be sold this year.  These beefy desktops demand to do more than sit idle using a browser.  The Web isn't a solution for consumer broadband and beefy PCs.  What is needed is decentralized software platform that lives on the desktop.  A platform that leverages the standards of the Interent to do new things.

This is a called a Personal Broadcast Network.  I wrote this concept up as a long-term vision report while at Forrester in 1996.  It requires a fat client.  A desktop development platform.  P2P connections, and desktop webapplications that combine webservices and P2P connections to do new things.  It is software that can ride on the broadband connections provided by the telcos and the cable companies.  It can suck those connections dry 24/7 while leveraging the desktop's resources to provide an excellent consumer experience.  It minimizes the use of centralized resources and therefore is inexpensive to operate. 

Could a new AOL emerge overnight?  Yes.  There isn't a need to carpet bomb homes with CDs to launch this network.  It can be inexpensively downloaded.  The installation process would take only a couple of minutes.  The physical connections are already established.  What is clear is that the first major PBN that emerges will take the lion's share of the market.  Remember, this is a process of layers.  The Web will still be used by hundreds of millions in 5 to 10 years.  It will continue to provide value.  However, the percentage of time people will spend using it will decline in favor of a more useful and engaging platform -- a PBN. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
11:57:16 AM    comment