[nanog] Re: Microsoft offering xDSL access

Sat Jan 24 23:00:21 UTC 1998

On Sat, Jan 24, 1998 at 12:13:14PM -0800, Michael Dillon wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Save your breath, Karl; I've been banging this drum for _months_ now,
> > or more, in a half dozen venues, and no one's getting it.
> 
> Let's use the oh-so-lovely information superhighway metaphor for a moment. 
> Imagine a city street with lovely homes on it, large lots, beautiful
> flower gardens in front, children laughing and playing. Now imagine the
> specifications for this street and for the driveways coming off it. Those
> zoning rules and engineering plans say that the street and the driveways
> must be engineered to handle a full size semi truck. The street needs to
> be wide enough and straight enough to accomodate such trucks and the
> driveways have to be wide enough that such a truck can turn into them.
> 
> But wait, what's that sign at the end of the street!? NO TRUCKS! Horrors,
> there is a legal case here of mammoth proportions. When a street is
> designed to handle truck traffic then there must be an implicit promise
> that trucks can drive there. Who cares if the residents are annoyed by
> truck traffic. They have no choice in the matter, they are mere
> homeowners, not designers and builders of *ROADS*!!!

Yes, Michael, but, c'mon, this _is_ a weak analogy.  Happens my dad was
a traffic engineer for 20 years, up North<tm>, and I can tell you that
while you _can_ take a moving van into a residential neighborhood
occasionally, if you tried to traverse those roads on a regular basis
with trucks loaded more heavily loaded than that, you'd find that, in
fact, those streets _are not_ designed for truck traffic.

Also, the _reason_ for that is that external constraints make it
impossible _to_ design residential streets for that sort of traffic --
which is usually not the case in the environment we're discussing.

Unfortunately, that's not really the argument we're having.  The
argument we're having is that we really wish the developers would quit
advertising that the subdivision _is_ designed for trucks, then getting
annoyed when all kinds of truck drivers try to buy houses there, and
get pissed when they find out the developers _lied_.

> There are no simple answers to any of the network problems posed by the
> widespread deployment of ADSL, but one thing is sure. The solutions will
> not all come from the domain of network engineering.

Nope, many of them will come from false-advertising prosecutions by the
FTC, unless the providers get a clue.  People _want_ big hoses into
their houses... and a noticeable chunk of those people do _not_ want
them for the reason that the big marketroids _think_ they do.  If they
don't get a clue, they're going to be up for fiduciary duty lawsuits
from their shareholders... and I'll go buy a share, just for the
privilege of filing.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff             Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued
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