An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial

michael.dillon at bt.com michael.dillon at bt.com
Mon Jan 21 23:35:52 UTC 2008


> There are symmetric versions for all of those.  But ever 
> since the dialup days (e.g. 56Kbps modems had slower reverse 
> direction) consumers have shown a preference for a bigger 
> number on the box, even if it meant giving up bandwidth in 
> the one direction.
> 
> For example, how many people want SDSL at 1.5Mbps symmetric 
> versus ADSL at 6Mbps/768Kbps. The advertisment with the 
> bigger number wins the consumer.

Seems to me that Internet SERVICE Providers have all turned
into telecom companies and the only thing that matters now
is providing IP circuits.

If P2P is such a problem for providers who supply IP circuits
over wireless and cable, why don't they try going up a level
and provide Internet SERVICE instead? For instance, every
customer could get a virtual server that they can access via
VNC with some popular P2P packages preinstalled. The P2P software
could recognize when it's talking over "preferred" circuits
such as local virtual servers or over peering connections that
aren't too expensive, and prefer those. If the virtual servers
are implemented on Linux, there is a technology called FUSE
that could be used to greatly increase the capacity of the
disk farm by not storing multiple copies of the same file.

Rather than moaning about the problems of being a telecom
provider, people could apply some creative technology to get
out of the telecom ghetto.

--Michael Dillon



More information about the NANOG mailing list