KailuaBoy,
ATHM's network is of a different genre, to be sure, than the public 'net, by a number of yardsticks. That is essentially what my messages have been all about.
ATHM's interior network is not a part of the public Internet, per se, except for where they gateway to the outside world through peering and links to the network exchange points where they pick up routes to targeted web sites.
But there are many other instances of private virtual networks.
[[I should clear up this business about VPN now, while I'm at it. My use of this term was merely a form of parroting popular use of the term as it applies to ATHM. But even though I've used the term VPN in the case of ATHM, it really isn't virtual in this case, in the technical sense. It's actually a physical network all to itself, on the interior. "Virtual private" connotes that certain means are being used to separate them in some logical sense from other participants on the same physical media. But as we now know, no one shares the interior ATHM network with ATHM in an appreciable way, except, perhaps, its partners.]]
But there are plenty of other examples of networks like this which support "closed user groups" [CUGs] or "communities of interest" [COIs], and even public users, as in the case of many VoIP nets. But these are not consumer Internet- access-oriented, per se, as ATHM is.
For one such example, there is the automotive network exchange, or ANX, which was highlighted in a sidebar article which I posted earlier today from Data Com.
There are many others which hinge on financial market data services (SIAC feeds, or the Bloomberg network, for instance), or VoIP (e.g., ITXC's first tier option in their international operations), and even Lexis Nexis in the legal community. Many of these use dedicated access, but not dedicated cable modem access that I am aware of, and many of their backbones are not physical, but use varying degrees of virtuality...
But their interior networks are very similar to ATHM's from a functional perspective, being comprised of private line backbones (often virtual), their own DNS servers, private server sites, caching, firewalling, and their own administrative databases.
" Do you see another provider being able to control traffic flows they way ATHM can?"
No offense, but that is a somewhat loaded question, wouldn't you say? smile
If you mean for consumer use, then arguably, some DSL services can, especially some of those which BLS is now putting in, in their fiber-to-the-curb and fiber-to-the-home installations. In some cable modem installations, such as the one in Palo Alto where Com21's using ATM principles are being used, they are able to support telecommuting applications at higher speeds in both directions much better than ATHM, albeit at a very high price, IMO. There are wireless alternatives coming off the assembly line which will do better than both DSL and CM where atmospherics and teledensities permit.
I can't give you a blanket answer to your question, but ATHM's ability to meet with superior performance results, as you suggested, is still very high at this time. Only time will tell whether they can maintain this level as both subscribership and average transmitted payloads (downloads AND uploads) increase, over time.
Oddly enough, ANX came into being because they weren't satisfied with the way peering was working out, in general. In contrast, ATHM's came about, with one of its express purposes being, the avoidance of peering. Comments and corrections welcome.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
