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Technology Stocks : Frank Coluccio Technology Forum - ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. K. G. who wrote (876)	1/6/2000 12:32:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1782

Hi Denis, did you bring that rather interesting article to the board because of my reference to Ethernet in the FTTH scenario which I've been discussing here for the past couple of days? Or was it, as you say, for general interest? In either case, I found it useful and instructive in certain ways because it focused my attention to an area I hadn't considered previously during the FTTH matter. Let's look at what he says. ---- While Krugman makes some interesting points and begins to tell a good story himself in his own way, the issues he brings up are subject to their own qualifications and interpretation. Lest, we begin to believe that all nodes in all cities are equal (which they are not, in terms of their importance and draw), and that all networks must be built from scratch -- specifically, the Internet, since that is the subject of his focus, even if he does start off with Metcalfe's Law and digresses into the last century (or, make that two centuries ago, if you are a believer of the millennium turn). In the days of the telegraph it was necessary to build from scratch, and I'm sure that his conclusions held true there, more times than not. Today, however, incremental city pairing and adding nodes to the Internet does not fit this model at all, at least not in the developed countries that have enjoyed pre-Internet telecomm infrastructures. For example, it wasn't necessary to begin stringing new copper meshed networks, from scratch, during the most explosive growth phases of the Internet in the developed countries of the world. A period which we are still going through, I should add. Instead, most new nodes and the cities they live in were added to the 'net by leveraging the existing PSTN and other existing telecommunications platforms. Building a new mesh network is one thing. Leveraging one that is already in place, however, or incrementing one that is easily incremented without regard to the number of pre-existing endpoints on it, is something else. We are now dealing with pre-exisiting cloud structures which obviate many of his assumptions and conclusions about the costs of growth, IMO. There do exist certain new economies, contrary to his conclusions, afforded by optical networks and satellite technologies, particularly, which are not applicable to the rather straightforward algebraic formulae he used to describe virgin new mesh networks borne of copper and barbed wire. But his points are well taken, nonetheless, and not entirely lost for the reasons that I've implied. Far from it. I very much enjoyed reading his views. Thanks again, Frank