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Yes. We can generally all agree that ISPs in the United States are effectively monopolists with no incentive to do what's right for their customers. Now, let's

Yes. We can generally all agree that ISPs in the United States are effectively monopolists with no incentive to do what's right for their customers. Now, let's talk solutions.

logfromblammo 12y ago
Everyone run some fiber to your nearest neighbor in each of the 4 cardinal directions. Go to MIT, find one or more of the kids that already figured out to make all that work, and read their theses. Launch an open-source project for the required network hardware and its firmware, and manage to sell as many as you can produce at $30 each. My pipe dreams are about a series of tubes.
- wmf 12y ago
  A five-port gigabit fiber router sounds more like $300 in volume, and most Americans would rather pay $299/month than $300 one time because it's cheaper.
- justizin 12y ago
  this is how all networks work. there are no special MIT theses. get an ASN and use BGP. Fiber hardware at $30 each is probably not happening, since we barely get ethernet hardware in that price range, and certainly not of any quality.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    I was actually referring to the [implied] part where the person installing it doesn't need to know anything other than how to plug everything in. You're not going to get a usable network out of this if it requires the people using it to know anything at all about their hardware, or if they have to get their own identifying numbers from ICANN. It really needs to be something where they plug in a box and hot and cold running Internet comes out when they open the faucets. And if you thought disruptions were bad when some country "misconfigures" their BGP to route the entire Internet through their spy agency's offices for 15 minutes, wait until a thousand Joe Bagadonuts are doing it truly accidentally, all the time.
jessaustin 12y ago
We can generally all agree... This made me smile. I would like to imagine that there were consensus on this point. Now, let's talk solutions. I think the effective solution for much of the nation will be wireless, but FCC and affiliated interests have been postponing the liberation of enough unlicensed spectrum to make that feasible. The dominant regulatory scheme creates scarcity where none should exist, and that's how all of these bastards keep the gravy train rolling. They rue the day they decided to just let the microwave ovens have 2.4 GHz, because now that frequency is proof that there is no physical reason to "license" electromagnetic radiation. If we can just pry a few more spectrum slices from their grasp, including those better suited to slightly longer ranges, that's the hole in the dike that will eventually create a market in telecom.
- ewoodrich 12y ago
  >They rue the day they decided to just let the microwave ovens have 2.4 GHz, because now that frequency is proof that there is no physical reason to "license" electromagnetic radiation. What do you mean by this? 2.4ghz is used for low-power, short range communication, so of course there are fewer issues with interference. You can't say the same about the FM radio bands, for example.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    See sibling note by 'rayiner. FM as broadcast now is really old tech. Car radios would have to be updated to have cognitive radio capability, if this regulatory regime were extended to that band. But that doesn't have to happen soon; the spectrum is vast and could certainly accommodate more unlicensed use without inconveniencing this particular use. EDIT: In case this is still unclear: I'm talking about opening specific, limited bands of spectrum to unlicensed use. I would not nominate FM radio as the first such band. Just as wifi chips today are capable of not interfering on bands they don't use, super-wifi transmitters would not interfere on bands they don't use.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I used to work precisely on the sort of technology that would make this possible, and I support liberalizing FCC regulations, but I think your comment is off-the-wall. At the time FCC licensing was instituted, there were no cognitive radios that could listen for free channels before transmitting. Heck, frequency-agile radios didn't exist. Even today, whitespaces technology isn't so well-developed that we could just get rid of the licensing regime. Remember the wireless mic debacle? http://gizmodo.com/287736/microsoft-google-dell-coalition-white-space-prototypes-get-knocked-by-fcc-device-gallery-and-details http://gizmodo.com/287736/microsoft-google-dell-coalition-wh....

Yes. We can generally all agree that ISPs in the United States are effectively monopolists with no incentive to do what's right for their customers. Now, let's talk solutions.

logfromblammo 12y ago

Everyone run some fiber to your nearest neighbor in each of the 4 cardinal directions. Go to MIT, find one or more of the kids that already figured out to make all that work, and read their theses. Launch an open-source project for the required network hardware and its firmware, and manage to sell as many as you can produce at $30 each. My pipe dreams are about a series of tubes.

wmf 12y ago
A five-port gigabit fiber router sounds more like $300 in volume, and most Americans would rather pay $299/month than $300 one time because it's cheaper.
justizin 12y ago
this is how all networks work. there are no special MIT theses. get an ASN and use BGP. Fiber hardware at $30 each is probably not happening, since we barely get ethernet hardware in that price range, and certainly not of any quality.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I was actually referring to the [implied] part where the person installing it doesn't need to know anything other than how to plug everything in. You're not going to get a usable network out of this if it requires the people using it to know anything at all about their hardware, or if they have to get their own identifying numbers from ICANN. It really needs to be something where they plug in a box and hot and cold running Internet comes out when they open the faucets. And if you thought disruptions were bad when some country "misconfigures" their BGP to route the entire Internet through their spy agency's offices for 15 minutes, wait until a thousand Joe Bagadonuts are doing it truly accidentally, all the time.

jessaustin 12y ago

We can generally all agree... This made me smile. I would like to imagine that there were consensus on this point. Now, let's talk solutions. I think the effective solution for much of the nation will be wireless, but FCC and affiliated interests have been postponing the liberation of enough unlicensed spectrum to make that feasible. The dominant regulatory scheme creates scarcity where none should exist, and that's how all of these bastards keep the gravy train rolling. They rue the day they decided to just let the microwave ovens have 2.4 GHz, because now that frequency is proof that there is no physical reason to "license" electromagnetic radiation. If we can just pry a few more spectrum slices from their grasp, including those better suited to slightly longer ranges, that's the hole in the dike that will eventually create a market in telecom.

ewoodrich 12y ago
>They rue the day they decided to just let the microwave ovens have 2.4 GHz, because now that frequency is proof that there is no physical reason to "license" electromagnetic radiation. What do you mean by this? 2.4ghz is used for low-power, short range communication, so of course there are fewer issues with interference. You can't say the same about the FM radio bands, for example.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  See sibling note by 'rayiner. FM as broadcast now is really old tech. Car radios would have to be updated to have cognitive radio capability, if this regulatory regime were extended to that band. But that doesn't have to happen soon; the spectrum is vast and could certainly accommodate more unlicensed use without inconveniencing this particular use. EDIT: In case this is still unclear: I'm talking about opening specific, limited bands of spectrum to unlicensed use. I would not nominate FM radio as the first such band. Just as wifi chips today are capable of not interfering on bands they don't use, super-wifi transmitters would not interfere on bands they don't use.
rayiner 12y ago
I used to work precisely on the sort of technology that would make this possible, and I support liberalizing FCC regulations, but I think your comment is off-the-wall. At the time FCC licensing was instituted, there were no cognitive radios that could listen for free channels before transmitting. Heck, frequency-agile radios didn't exist. Even today, whitespaces technology isn't so well-developed that we could just get rid of the licensing regime. Remember the wireless mic debacle? http://gizmodo.com/287736/microsoft-google-dell-coalition-white-space-prototypes-get-knocked-by-fcc-device-gallery-and-details http://gizmodo.com/287736/microsoft-google-dell-coalition-wh....