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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4050)	1/10/1999 2:23:00 AM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

This "island" idea is pretty interesting ... it suggests to me a paradigm shift in the perception of value by the end-user. If, for example, the desktop had a nice diagram of the web ... some sort of visual depiction of the topology ... highlighted by performance ... fatter lines for faster "meta-hops" (inter-island or inter-media) ... then the user would perceive that endpoints belonging to his "archipelago" are of higher performance value than others ... and he might tend to preferentially select to use a value endpoint (search engine, or whatever) which was performance-closer. This is already happening to some degree with the modem/net performance instruments (NetMedic et al) which appeared at 56K time... extrapolation of this trend to broadband time suggests the paradigm might become prominent and influential. As performance becomes more visible, as it must when the tiers of service differentiate (dial-up, DSL, cable, etc) ... as the user is enabled to visualize and choose ... then performance grows in business significance as part of the value equation. Business alliances would be influenced by this issue. For example, ATHM could have a special relationship with YHOO, LCOS, or create their own "broadband enabled" search service ... and value would be perceived to increase because ATHM had more fat pipes to useful places ... and similarly for other vendors. One could imagine a "access performance index" = average speed * number of hits * size of hit ... something like that ... one could rate service providers by performance index. How fast they are at getting to the good stuff. Sounds like a business concept maybe ... I'm thinking it will be interesting to see how end-user (grandma's) perception of value/performance will evolve as broadband ramps up ... and how this perception will become a business force. And thus I find your infrastructure insights very interesting as they have a lot to do with how ATHM can lead and respond to grandma's changing impression of what the "web" is and what "good web" means.