[8722] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: One-way Internet?..no, it's "Asymetric"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Larry Walker x5-8262)
Wed Dec 1 17:33:39 1993
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 93 16:33:20 CST
From: walkerl@iscmed.med.ge.com (Larry Walker x5-8262)
To: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
=> From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
=>
=> Some examples where the assymmetric model works well:
=>
=> a radiologist types in a few dozen characters specifying an
=> image he/she wants, and a megabyte of image data comes in.
=>
=> a mosaic user intermittently clicks on menus, causing a few
=> bytes to be sent out and hundreds or thousdands of bytes to
=> flow in.
=>
=> an ftp user types a few characters to log in and request a
=> file, and a megabyte tarfile is sent to him/her.
=>
=> a user runs an X graphics program; he/she sends a few typed
=> characters and mouse events out and gets large amounts of
=> graphics data back.
=>
=> The assymmetric model is less than perfect, but it's lot better than
=> most of us have now, and it uses wiring that already exists almost
=> everywhere: cable in and telephone out.
=>
Agreed, but asymetric doesn't help me get cheap data connections to hospitals for service purposes: The hospital is the "home cable customer", and I want them to send megs of images and error logs back up stream to the cable head-end (and thence over the Internet to our National Support Center).
For individual households, the asymetric model may be ok (or may not be: My sister wants to be able to do video art, and broadcast her own "Liquid TV" shows), but for a cheap, ubiquitous link to many kinds of commercial users, it falls down, doesn't it? (In your first example, where is the radiologist getting the images from? A master image-repository hung on the backbone, or from a community clinic in a rural town 200 miles away? I think the latter.)
=> --
=> Dick St.Peters
=> GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
=>
