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To: ahhaha who wrote (10962)	6/10/1999 5:55:00 PM
From: E. Davies	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

What about advertising revenue? Why do you believe it is so significant? That advertising revenue will drive economics on the internet is an article of faith. If you do not believe that an advertising based model for the internet will be a success, I suggest you are better off not investing in anything remotely related to the internet. It is that critical in my view. The internet will not fulfill its promise without it. The "net" will be nothing more than a few online catalogs and some e-mail & chat, and slowly die into an "also ran" as one of the many forms of media communications. Every successfull form of media is driven by advertising. People simply are not willing to pay enough on a "per use" basis for entertainment or information to make it worth the cost of creating that content. They never have been, with the possible exception of motion pictures (who's "appeal to the masses" style is as opposite from the internet as you can get). no advertising->no content->no users->no broadband-> no @home. Eric

To: ahhaha who wrote (10962)	6/11/1999 3:24:00 AM
From: Ted Schnur	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

Ahhaha, I think you misunderstood what I meant in my post. <<Operationally you've forgotten or don't know the problems of accommodating such a feed in the last mile. The last mile is under the purview of the MSOs. They are with whom the copper ISPs must negotiate and it is in their backyard where the big modifications must be made>> If the ISP's connects directly to ATHM's backbone, there are no "last mile" considerations. Subscriber access to a different ISV would only change the "flavor" of the content running across the last mile, and should not take up any more bandwidth then a typical ATHM subscriber. The MSO's are currently restricted by its exclusive agreement with ATHM, so an agreement between the MSOs and the copper ISP's is not an option. However, the ISP's may be free to negotiate an agreement with ATHM. <<What happens when 500 users are pointing in directions that supersede the caching server function and make them superfluous?>> The caching server may become superfluous with 500 ATHM users that are all pointing their browsers in different directions. What difference does it make if some of the user's home page and e-mail servers are not from the ATHM network? I would argue the caching servers are superfluous smoke and mirrors functions that make the network appear faster that it might be if there is a cache hit, but slow the user down when there is a miss (or is it just a slow web site?). In a corporate environment where a lot of the intranet data is being served from well known servers and application, the hit rate is high enough to justify the investment. In the environment we are talking about, I am not convinced that the money spent on these systems should not be going into infrastructure, or other services such as web hosting, mirror sites, offsite data backup services, and so on. << The data moves farther away from the user and the load rises proportionately on every access segment up to the NAP or data center… That's part of the ATHM strategy.>> But does it work? I'm a little rusty on my network design skills, leaving the field long before the age of the Internet. Anyone out there has some experience with these systems, or access to traffic studies that confirm that caching servers are worth the investment? Either way, it's a great marketing pitch. If I assume that there is a return on investing in caching servers, then how about the following design. Spend some extra money on a faster trunk between the first router and ATHM backbone. Then use very large, very fast caching servers on the fast backbone. Now, the only users that are served up the IP address of these larger caching servers (from the multi-domain DNS server) are ATHM subscribers configured with a xxx.home.com domain. Advantage ATHM! I agree that the major problems with open access via the MSO's are legal and physical in nature, whereas IMHO, open access via ATHM's network is not.