Broadband Shuffle

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 09:05:12PM -0500, David Kramer wrote:
> - The owner of that one tie-in, or owners of those few tie-ins, are
> subject to rules and restrictions by their ISP.  

That is the thing that bothers me about the free nets that are popping
up.  I certainly don't want to offer drive-by spammers an opportunity
sully my IP address's reputation.

But that doesn't mean that a cooperative using 802.11b for the "last
mile" can't make sense.  (At least once you get around the WEP
security holes.)  Only let members on, and hold them accountable.
 
> - 11Mb/s just isn't that much bandwidth.  If just two of those people are
> streaming audio, the whole network is sunk.  If you can set up quotas (or
> traffic shaping), you might be able to get around this.

Were I stranded in some small town in Vermont I would consider setting
up a cooperative ISP and getting an unrestricted T1 line.  It would
take a fairly large group to get the T1 cost down.  But these days
nearly everyone thinks internet access is important, so it might not
be that hard to make the sale.

11Mb/s might not seem like much, but it is more than the T1 can do.
Yes, it wouldn't be like having your own T3-speeds for the
going-out-of-business-fast $29.95 a month, but it would be a lot
better than rural dial up.  Yes, do some traffic shaping to degrade
every gracefully during peak hours.  27 people times 56kb/s is less
than a T1's capacity.  Those people would have better latencies than a
dialup modem, more reliable, always-on service--and 56K modems don't
actually operate as fast as 56K.

27 people sharing a single T1 brings the cost down to something pretty
reasonable.  Assume that some are watching TV, sleeping, eating, or
wondering what key to press next, and maybe 50 people could share a T1
comfortably.  Now a shared T1 starts to seem pretty cheap for people
who never expected to get DSL.  Remember, compare it to dial up.

> - You are creating a single point of failure for too large a group, a flaw
> the internet was specifically designed away from.

The internet (and IPSs) are full of single points that will bring many
folks if they go out.  Keep them to a minimum and design carefully,
but don't pretend a few end users can reasonably be fully redundant.
(How many urban DSL folks go dark when a single DSLAM dies?)

> - I'm not sure the FCC would allow an extended area of superduper antennae
> and what not.

They seem not to mind.  A superduper amplifier would indeed piss them
off, but a fancy antenna does its magic by concentrating the signal in
a very small spot, which makes the interference in all other
directions even less.


-kb