The San Francisco Bay Area comprises many cities, two of which, Oakland and San Jose, are larger than San Francisco itself. San Francisco has a rapid-transit system whose central backbone is a half dozen routes on which light-rail-vehicles [LRVs] ply the streets and a single-track (in each direction) subway under Market Street. The subway is called the MUNI Metro. [Read more…]
After Net Neutrality
Under the principles of net neutrality, Internet Service Providers [ISPs] are like common carriers, carrying all bits equally, but with neutrality nullified, what’s the likely outcome?
The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] in the United States has voted to nullify the common carrier status of ISPs, and thus to kill net neutrality, but of course other nations may not do so and I think there are customer actions that could make it difficult for carriers to run roughshod over this principle. The FCC calls their own action “Restoring Internet Freedom” and I, along with millions of others, contend that it’s only restoring the freedom for carriers to differentiate and prioritize, and charge as they see fit, making it more difficult for us common folks in the long run.
Net Neutrality — The Issue is Bandwidth
The Internet is a network of networks. An Inter-Net. (And keep in mind that the Internet is way more than “The Web” which is just one service running within this gigantic infrastructure.)
The Role of the ISP — Individuals and companies who have their own networks interconnect those nets by plugging in through Internet Service Providers [ISPs]. And in turn, each ISP is linked to “upstream” network providers, and through those to a group of very large carriers who form what’s called the Internet backbone. It’s not just a two-dimensional backbone, but itself is a distributed network of very-high-speed carriers with real-world physical interconnection points. There are many possible routes from an end user to another end user through this backbone. The big providers do what is called peering at these interchange points, where they are all peers, handing off traffic from one to the other with the flow based, of course, on how much traffic is going in any given direction, but otherwise “equally” in terms of priority. [Read more…]
Net Neutrality — Introduction and overview
I thought I’d write up some thoughts on underlying principles of the Internet — starting with Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality — Its core is that 1. all bits/packets on the Internet have equal priority; and 2. all endpoints on the Internet are interconnected and traffic is accepted and delivered without prejudice to and from each and all of these endpoints.
The network operators (as data carriers) find better and better ways to carry traffic faster and cheaper (and perhaps more profitably overall), but to date it has been Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs, commerce, media, news and online services who have created new uses of this Internet platform, not the traffic carriers themselves.
The opponents of net neutrality want to eliminate the neutrality principles. [Read more…]
The Time-Machine Queen
I laughed out loud at the opening “paragraphs” of The Queen’s Christmas Day Speech 2017, which I viewed today. She opens with some comments on technology – she was first on television 60 years ago, and she has lived through an amazing transformation in communication (due to computers). I am beginning to understand the “time machine” aspect of being that old (she is 91) — as she has viewed so many changes and developments. These speeches are certainly written by others — such trendy statements, and the interleaved video, unlike so many presidential addresses with the man-behind-the-desk vibe we know so well. I found it all to be a reminder of the age of the British Empire, yet fresh with hints of how Britain and London have really moved into the modern connected world. And you could see expressions on her face clearly indicating that she understood well the unique modern import of what she was saying, as well as a funny pause where certainly there must have been thoughts and words going through her head like “gads…what is this about?…gulp.”
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