Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Davies who wrote (18031)	12/18/1999 1:39:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Eric, your assumptions here are correct for the most part, but I think that you are missing an important point. "it seems to me that once you make the assumption that the ISP's will access the "wire"...at the IP level the physical nature of the wire itself is irrelevant and the only new concern is that of providing enough capacity to handle all the customers." You needn't go any further. The physical nature of "this" wire "is" relevant. It's not a plain old wire. When you introduce the DOCSIS modem and CMTS assemblies between the user and the cloud (which itself is, in the case of ATHM, a "proprietary" or closed backbone) you no longer have a "wire." What you have, instead, is an elaborate scheme with its own rules defined in the DOCSIS architecture which sits on the tail section of a proprietary intranet, and not the Open Internet supporting plain old IP. Big difference. Also, DOCSIS treats the end point profile as an integral part of its administrative functions such as SLA level, security feature invocation, voice options, etc. It's not set up to administer multiple account profiles at the end of each wire for an elective ISP's use, the properties of which may not even be known to the facilities based host system (i.e., the MSO), with multiple variations of VoIP and differing types of QoS and security, each to satisfy every ISP's individual whims. Some, perhaps a lot of, architectural work, to say the least, would need to be performed first. That's why I suggested the use of a high speed NIC and a passive medium attached to the Lightwire architecture, instead, which for all intents and purposes would represent a passive element in the greater scheme of things. This is not a cure-all by any means, since other issues need to be addressed, but those issues would then be satisfied using standard IETF RFCs, and not those of CableLabs which are, again, proprietary to the cable industry's own design purposes. Can it be made to work using the existing constructs? Sure it can, but I suspect that it would result in a massive kludge. And if not a kludge, then a radical departure from the precepts which have made the Internet an open environment. Yes, it can be done. It wouldn't be the first time that the cable industry has chosen to do things its own way. The danger here is painting oneself into a corner. Comments, corrections welcome. Regards, Frank Coluccio