NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's New "Two Strikes and You're Dead" Internet Usage Policy -- and More
At 10:29 PM 8/29/2008, Bob Frankston wrote:
>What nonsense saying ?The Internet is NOT an effective delivery mechanism for HD entertainment??
This is absolutely correct. It is insanely wasteful to transmit content millions of times -- once to each recipient -- rather than broadcasting it. What's more, digital transmission requires far more resources than the analog transmission of yore, and requires 100% accuracy to produce a good picture. (Analog signals degrade gracefully; digital ones do not.)
>Remember when the internet was not a way do voice communications? Now it is far better than the PSTN.
Not so. VoIP has long latencies (which confuse a conversation) and often cuts corners by making conversations "one way." (Ever try to interrupt someone to whom you're speaking on a VoIP call to tell them you have to put the phone down? Very often, you can't, because he or she cannot hear you.)
The Internet's "best effort" delivery system, which allows traffic to take multiple routes with different lengths and delays to its destination, was never intended for real time communications. If you are lucky, it does NOT work as intended, in which case jitter is low. But ironically, if it works as designed, you have NO right to expect that a VoIP call will work at all.
>Don't confuse the accidents of the current system that is a repurposed video delivery system for a system that is capable of doing far better.
Actually, it is the Internet -- which is a non-real-time delivery system for data -- that people are attempting to repurpose as a video delivery system.
>You wouldn?t accept a lame idea of only one-delivery of static content to consumers.
Ever hear of broadcasting and time shifting (Also known as VCRs and DVRs)? The "end-to-endians," who are fond of placing intelligence at the edges of the network, ought to be especially enthusiastic about this idea.
--Brett Glass
[ Brett, you continue to insist on promoting the quaint -- and
utterly inaccurate -- fantasy that there are sufficient
conventional broadcast channels for what is rapidly evolving to
be an on-demand video entertainment universe, where most
consumers will be choosing from a vast array of completely
individualized on-demand choices, and the only "live" programming
will tend to be sports, special events, news, and the like.
ISPs (cable and IPTV DSL) already understand this, and are
rapidly ramping up their VOD offerings. The big question is
whether or not competing Internet-delivered services will be
allowed to be crushed in an anti-competitive manner.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]