[2185] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Are We to Buy Speed for a Few or Connectivity for Many?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sean mclinden)
Wed Jan 29 13:31:21 1992
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 13:15:29 -0500
From: sean@dsl.pitt.edu (sean mclinden)
To: com-priv@psi.com, steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov
Excuse me as these comments are, admittedly, made in ignorance, but:
"Researchers need gigabits, NOW."
I'm curious to know:
1. Who, besides the people building gigabit network testbeds are these
researchers and what are they doing?
2. What is the social, technical, economic, and political impact of their
use of clear-channel gigabit bandwidths in comparison to that of the
hundreds/thousands of people who have an aggregate need for this band-
width (or rather, *might* have a need for it if they ever got connected).
I guess that what I read in Marty's comments is not the technical need,
but rather, the social need. What should be our =US Gov't = NSF's priority
with respect to this?
What concerns me is that I believe that there are very real problems with
scaling existing multimegabit services to the potential user community that
are as significant, if not more so, than whether we can build gigabit
superhighways.
To draw an analogy, when the Wright Brother's made their first flight
one could already imagine a real application of the Concorde. But it
would have been ridiculous, even if it had been feasible, to build it,
then. With no air traffic control, with no international standards, with
no knowledge of travel or usage patterns, in short, with no real feel
for the social technology of managing an air traffic system, such tech-
nology as supersonic travel, would have a cost totally out of proportion
to its benefit to society.
I don't argue that gigabit networks are unnecessary or inappropriate.
But I *do* think that we have the right to question whether such efforts
deserve a higher priority that the more mundane (but, perhaps, socially
more important) issues of letting students at home bridge to their
AppleTalk networks at school. Personally, I think that the issue of
affordable, open, peer to peer connectivity of small businesses, schools,
homes, and other places where *people* are is not yet solved. What I
am reading seems to support this contention. Technology, after all,
is not the major problem.
Sean
