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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ftth who wrote (8152)	8/23/2000 12:04:10 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Well, I didn't want to go into the other providers, AGAIN. Those are all fairly well-understood likelihoods by now. I did get my shot in though on the wireless broadband thing. They can only handle so much stream at a time, even if they do switch to the next bloak quickly. A client (an engineering fella who I've worked with extensively over the past two or three years) who happens to be a TCP/IP maven stuck his head into my office the other day to use me as a sounding board. He was livid. Seems his provider (Comcast @Home) is putting the screws to him and other VPN users. SPs can detect who VPN users are by filtering TCP port numbers, btw, so it's not like paying residential phone rates while you use the phone for business. Here, they got ya. They are cutting him off unless he subscribes to @Work. Hmm... He is besides himself with this, because he has tallied his VPN usage stats and they are far lower than what he chalks up when surfing or using the web for other purposes. This person, btw, wrote the gateway and policy code for one of this country's largest private intranets (VPNs), which causes this whole thing to stick in his craw all that much more. His take, and I happen to agree with him on this count, is that Home knows that they can exact more revenue in the way of higher subscription fees from corporations (who often pay the VPN subscription costs directly, but not in this case) than they can from residential subscribers, so they will use the "label" of VPN to enforce their ploy, even if the traffic stats don't warrant it in any given case. Well, it's akin to a ploy, if they don't provide QoS guarantees to legitimate VPN users, and if they do enforce their policies on VPN users whose usage is only occasional, or very light. Which brings up the interesting prospect of having two different classes of service over a single HFC loop, one for the kids and one for VPN use. Hmm.. again. Do you suppose then that each would be suject to minutes-based, or some other means of billing based who uses the service, and for how long? All of this, of course, doesn't begin to address the fact that the HFC (and wireless services and dsl loops, alike, at some point) isn't going to handle a boatload of legitimate VPN users and power-user work-at-homes, anyway. Leastwise, not during peak hours and during popular webcasts, which, I hear, are sure to be rise before long. I suppose that this form of enforcement is one way to thwart such an eventuality... by cutting them off. I asked him if he thought about speaking with the folks over in Equinix, or some other neutral Internet exchange, to set up a spoof account that would pass him through to his VPN and vice versa. Of course, I would never endorse such a thing...

To: ftth who wrote (8152)	8/23/2000 2:40:38 AM
From: lml	Respond to of 12823

The trouble with the cable modem case is the user will be hard pressed to know that the problem is an oversubscribed network (and will be even harder pressed to prove it). . . . which is why more vigilance by the local franchising authority is ever so important. But what can we really expect from these custodians who are entrusted as the guardians of our bandwidth. I think we've seen some articles going back as far as a year whereby T and the City of Fremont had negotiated, much in T's favor, IMHO, a performance rating criteria upon which to evaluate whether franchise subscribers were getting a fair shake from the cable modem service. Irrespective of what was negotiated in Fremont, IMHO, we will see introduced in many state legislatures new legislation that seeks to protect subscribers from the economic incentives of cable, DSL & DBS providers to give their subscribers less than they bargained for. The average consumer needs to be protected, as unlike the market for physical goods & services, there is little that "meets the eye" in the consumption of digital goods & services, and the unknowledgeable, which is many, will become easy prey. The common law rule of caveat emptor will remain steadfastly in place under consumer protection laws are put in place.