From: eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Fri Oct 08 1999 - 19:35:36 MDT
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From: "David S. Isenberg" <isen@isen.com>
To: eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
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SMART Letter #28- October 8, 1999
Copyright 1999 by David S. Isenberg
isen.com -- "making problems for 'solutions providers'"
isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
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CONTENTS
> A User-Owned, Self-Organizing Network
> Why Carriers Want the Network to Know Content Type
> Conferences on my Calendar, Copyright Notice, Administrivia
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ROOFER MADNESS: Rooftop's wireless technology bypasses local telcos, and
creates a user-owned, self-organizing, service-providerless network.
By David Isenberg
Nokia's early September move to acquire Rooftop Communications may prove
brilliant - if Nokia can manage radically disruptive technology. Regardless,
Rooftop has convincingly demonstrated that the role of communications
service provider is waning, and that self-configuring, self-service networks
are close at hand.
Rooftop has produced a spread-spectrum radio plus packet router cleverly
described by its trademark, "Unplug and Play." This device gives Internet
service providers (ISPs) a link to customers that is not mediated by any
infrastructure provider. In principle, the DSL-speed network formed by
multiple devices could even run without an ISP, or with multiple ISPs -
indeed, multiple ISPs would make such a network more robust.
Network architecture emerges as a multihop, multipoint network. Lauren Hipp,
Rooftop's EVP of marketing, calls it a "peer-to-peer distributed networking
scheme, a routed mesh." Each device is both a customer's access device and a
network infrastructure node. Adjacent customers (up to a couple of miles
apart) form a skein that is a natural extension of the Internet.
TAKE HOME, PLUG IN, LOG ON
In theory, customers will be able to buy a device, take it home, plug it in,
and log onto the Internet. In practice, today's installation issues include
geography, roof rights, and how good a customer is with ladder, drill and
screwdriver.
Each customer node needs a line of sight to at least one other node, and
preferably to more than one. Unlike LMDS, a line of sight directly to a
point of presence is not necessary - this is a benefit of multihop
architecture. Even so, there are antenna placement issues; in the best case,
the antenna can be placed in a window from which it can 'see' another node -
but, more typically, rooftop is the name of the game. For longer distance
hops, a directional antenna can be used.
While suburbs with one-story houses and many tall trees might never support
a Rooftop network, Phoenix and Los Angeles are ideal environments. The San
Francisco Bay Area already supports several beta nets. The world's
developing nations often provide ideal environments - there are pilot
networks in Morocco and Guinea. "It is critical technology where there is no
existing infrastructure," Hipp says.
Adding customers improves throughput and robustness; a dense net has many
alternate routes from a customer's premises to the ISP's 'airhead.' But slow
acceptance is a palpable risk.
"The technology is promising, and looks scalable," says Bob Lucky, vice
president of applied research at Telcordia. "But it could never get started
because you need customers to create the mesh. I'd be afraid that one day
the critical person between me and my ISP would say, 'Sorry, I just got DSL,
so I'm going off the air.'"
Hipp rebuts this thinking. "We have a lot of demand," she says, "and a
jump-start promotion for interested ISPs. We're aggressive about reaching
the consumer marketplace. We have two priorities: cost and performance."
COST AND PERFORMANCE
Today, Rooftop has two devices priced for small business: a $2,000 unit and
a more sophisticated and powerful $5,000 device. Both, says Hipp, are on
steep cost-reduction trajectories. They're being redesigned for better
integration. Increasing volume will help, and components are getting
cheaper. "Radio technology is jumping onto the digital price curve," she
says.
There's room for improved performance, too. Each hop adds some 50 ms of
latency. This limits the practical number of hops to three and it severely
limits the quality of Internet telephony. But, Hipp says, "In the future, we
think we can support telephony-quality voice. We haven't tuned IROS
[Rooftop's proprietary Internet Radio Operating System] to optimize latency
yet."
John Giannandrea of meer.net, a Silicon Valley ISP, is an early adapter of
and testbed for Rooftop technology. He says that it gives new meaning to
community networking. "The network grows organically," he says. "The ISP can
get out of the business of planning network expansion."
Meer.net's wireless customers include a gourmet restaurant, Global Village
Cafe, whose owner (a former techie) wanted little to do with the incumbent
telco. Other customers find a Rooftop installation easier than obtaining
DSL - and DSL is more readily available in California than anywhere. Another
factor is that Rooftop input/output is inherently symmetrical.
Will Rooftop pose an "Innovator's Dilemma" for Nokia? The "wireless DSL"
aspect may be a bit disruptive. But the radical disruption will come as it
fulfills its potential to make local telcos obsolete. Will Nokia be able to
capitalize on this, or will it "make sense" for it to limit or kill the
product because it threatens its current customers, the world's telcos?
The article above appeared in the October 1, 1999 issue of America's
Network. Copyright 1999 Advanstar Communications.
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WHY INCUMBENT CARRIERS WANT THE NETWORK TO KNOW CONTENT TYPE
by David S. Isenberg
Nicholas Negroponte, head of MIT's famed Media Lab, in a recent contribution
to the Metamarkets.com discussion board, wrote that data networks "have no
way of knowing which bits are voice and which are something else." Yet
Negroponte once wrote (Wired 6.06, June 1998) about how some bits (e.g.,
your pacemaker reading when you are having a heart attack) are infinitely
more valuable than other bits (e.g., the twinkly background of a banner ad).
Will telcos charge according to the cost of sending bits or by the value of
those bits to the customers who send and recieve them? In other words, will
the market be supply driven or demand driven? The telecom revolution is
being fought over this very question.
Certainly the telcos WANT the network to know so they can charge according
to what people value. The rub is that the costs of delivering bits are
plummeting.
Let me put it another way. TV over Internet is around, say, 6 Mbits. Or
about 1000 times voice. If the network doesn't know the difference, then
the two extreme pricing scenarios are (a) to charge as if everything is
voice, about $5.00 a minute for TV, and (b) to charge as if everything is
video, which would make voice free by any current video pricing model. Of
course there are other pricing models, but these define two important
corners of the content-agnostic network.
AT&T is touting "facilities based competition." In other words, it wants to
control the network from the core to the set top box. One of the main
reasons for this is so it can know the content type at its origin -- if it
comes from the video hole, you can charge differently than if it comes from
the telephone hole. And you can charge a third price if it comes from the
text-terminal hole.
Furthermore, one reason why so-called QoS, quality of service, is such a
critical telco issue is because most QoS schemes require some knowledge of
content so the network can treat e.g., voice different than e.g., data.
Once you do that, the "network knows" and the telephone company charges
differently for different content types.
Negroponte is correct that the current Internet can't tell voice from email,
but there is no reason to assume that it will always be that way. There are
some powerful forces working to turn the situation around. I hope that the
content-agnostic network triumphs -- it is one of the characteristics that
have made the Internet such a great success so far.
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CONFERENCES ON MY CALENDAR
October 10-17, 1999, Geneva, Switzerland. TELECOM99, the every-four-year ITU
extravaganza that always seems to surprise AT&T's leaders. I will be there
10/9 through 10/13 posing as a wild-mannered columnist for America's
Network.
October 27-29, 1999, New York City. The New Economy Conference, with John
Browning and Spencer Reiss. Plus an array of people who believe that
knowledge is wealth, that bigger ain't necessarily better, and that there
are more opportunities and fewer guarantees at the edge. I don't know what
I'll be doing there yet, but I suspect I'll be there. Watch
www.neweconomywatch.com for the emergent agenda.
November 4, 1999, New York City. "TechBrains Seminar" with Merrill Lynch
Technology Advisory Board members. Featuring Phil Neches (founder of
database machine company Teradata), Don Norman (who wrote "Turn Signals are
the Facial Expressions of Automobiles," and other worthwhile reads), open
source spokesman Eric Raymond (who wrote the must-read essay, "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar"), and several others, no less distinguished, whose work I
don't know as well. I'll participate too. Email me if you are seriously
interested in attending.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Redistribution of this document, or any part of it, is
permitted for non-commercial purposes, provided that the two lines below are
reproduced with it: Copyright 1999 by David S. Isenberg isen@isen.com --
http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
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