IIC Internet Virtual servers

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:10:01 -0400
Ward Vandewege <ward at pong.be> wrote:

> If Verizon would stop thinking as a telephone company (where *every feature*
> costs extra - caller id, voicemail, etc) and start thinking as a data
> company, this sort of nonsense would probably go away real soon. But I don't
> see that happen anytime soon. Not without some serious competition.
We've been talking about this for over 10 years. I remember a talk
given by Jeff Schiller who complained about Nynex T1 lines. Although
these were digital, the allowable error rate was too high for data use.
You can drop some bits when you are sending digitized voice, but not
data. 

The bottom line, whether Verizon, Comcast, or tin-can communications
(eg. Adelphia), the primary products you are selling are:
1. Land line voice communication - telephone and related services
2. bandwidth for Internet communications
3. TV rebroadcast. 

Comcast itself is really an embodiment of a phone company. 

WRT:Internet, there are some important issues. One is the law, so they
are now trying to insulate themselves from their clients. The
government would like them to screen every packet :-) Another issue is
bandwidth sharing. Regardless on how the bandwidth is delivered to the
client, either in a shared LAN or dedicated bandwidth, there is a point
where all the customers in a region converge into the backbone. The
bottom line is that for residential customers, while they appear to be
selling you a certain bandwidth, they are not, and you can be penalized
for using too much of that bandwidth or you can be penalized for just
being a schmuck. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9