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

To: Sam Citron who wrote (2967)	2/27/1999 11:40:00 AM
From: ftth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hi Sam, a bit of a miscommunication I think. I was just simply answering the question of speed differences within the intranet versus going outside to the big, bad internet. It was just meant as a generalization of private networks attached to the internet. In other words, the more isolated a network is relative to the internet, the more quantifiable and controllable its performance should be. It's nearly impossible to make absolute statements about bandwidth across the internet and across time. Even averages don't make much sense because the standard deviation of the data is so large. Still, in general terms, if you're pulling continuous data from a server located somewhere across the internet, as long as every point of data aggregation has a data throughput for your stream that is greater or equal to the lowest such number within the intRAnet, there'll be no noticeable slowdown (compared to if that data were sourced completely from within the intRAnet). That said, I've never found a case where I can get even ½ the best rate within the intranet, if pulling from the internet, and more generally it's about 10:1 (but don't read too much into that number because, as I mentioned, the standard deviation is very large). Also, I didn't mean to imply that owning a co-located portal had unquestionable advantages (especially if it costs you many, many years of exponentially growing revenues to break even on the purchase of that portal), and I also didn't mean to imply the ATHM/XCIT merger automatically creates some competitive advantage (I personally don't like the deal, and I especially don't like the price paid. I'm waiting to see where they go with it). About switching to different portals… If we ignore bandwidth for a second, the switching costs to go to another portal are *mental* only, but I guess that makes it just as powerful as an economic-based switching cost. People just don't want to “learn” a new user interface and change their email (as lame an excuse as that may be, its reality). Proprietary content is a hard sell because you only see it if you buy it. They all have essentially the same basic content (which makes it an even harder sell), just from different sources. It's pretty unlikely that any single portal uses all the content sources you would choose if you aggregated them yourself, so committing to a portal always leaves you with less than you COULD have. Ease of use and convenience win out over speed capabilities for Joe Consumer at present. As you said, the speed issue matters much more in the future with REAL high bandwidth content. Mastery of the oh-so-technically-challenging concept of search engines and bookmarks allows me to essentially create my own portal--without any annoying banner ads flashing in my face or cookies to reject when I "log in." But you know what....most people will give up their freedom of choice to have someone else choose for them. They actually want the force-fed content because if they had to set it up themselves, it would never get done. It's unfortunate, but every HINT of complexity or effort must be hidden from the mainstream user in order for a product or service to have a chance at mass market success. Instant gratification rules! About Bottlenecks…. What was once termed "THE" bottleneck is actually more like an onion--peel off a layer, and a new bottleneck emerges. Once you got rid of the customer telco modem as “THE” bottleneck, the bottleneck just moves somewhere else and moved up a notch in value. Any point between the first micron and the last micron has the potential to be the bottleneck for a particular data access. That bottleneck may well be in a completely different place 5 seconds later when you transfer data from a different site (or even the same site from a different server). So in summary, I'd agree with you that unless you're transferring relatively high bandwidth content, it makes no meaningful difference currently. But, that's taking the view that ATHM is just a bandwidth provider, not a content provider (which is what I use them for). As a customer, I put my emphasis on the raw speed of the connection, and could care less about their portal (or anyone else's portal for that matter). dh