March 2008 Archives

Just bumped into the Broadband Cowboy in the lobby here. He's getting ready to set up the wireless internet for Freedom to Connect, and has a keynote at another conference later this week on the history of unlicensed wireless.

Hendricks sent me some homework but if what he says is true, and there's no reason to believe it isn't, the FCC knew in the 1980s that:

a) Non-interfering wireless deployment in TV whitespaces is possible
b) Unlicensed spectrum is better than licensed
c) Most spectrum should be unencumbered, except for military and science use

and then the political people at the FCC overruled the science.

Once I've had time to read the evidence, I'll have more for you.

And if you're in the DC area, do drop by F2C at Silver Spring MD, and try to make the conference on wireless spectrum on Friday at George Mason University. I'll be at F2C; I am unable to attend the George Mason historyfest.

A comment from our ISP-Wireless list:

We pay about $150.00 per megabit per month for our bandwidth. We resell a 2meg x 1meg "best effort" connection for $39.95 per month. It would take precisely 10 simultaneous users pulling their full 2 megs down to completely fill our pipe. By rights if we allowed them to do that we would expect them to have to pay approximately $300.00 per month for the bandwidth plus whatever it costs to run the shop and pay salaries amortized across 10 users. Let's say that is another $300.00 per month.

For $600.00 per month we will sell you a 2 megabit *COMMITTED
INFORMATION RATE*. There are local businesses who do that with us. We have not found any "hobbyists" or "home users" willing to do that but if you know of any please let us know.

Slashdot is reporting that ORDB has been set to block all e-mail. The service stopped working in 2006, and the new settings appear to be intended to force administrators to remove it from their filters.

It's a very bad way to force you to act; but you still have to act.

(This story found thanks to the experts on our ISP-Webhosting list.)

The people of Sebastapol, Calif. must read more European publications than real science. Fear of Wi-Fi is pervasive in Europe, abetted by a fearmongering press which, I assume, sells papers by touting fear instead of science.

Only the government broadcaster, the BBC, appears to be immune (though the trade press is predictably snarky on the subject, especially the Hand that Bites IT).

Now Wi-Fi fear has appeared in the U.S. The O'Reilly blog notes (h/t BBR) that an online petition recently killed Wi-Fi in the town of Sebastopol, Calif.

Comments such as, "I have had health challenges, and my body cannot handle wifi...it gives me headaches and makes me very sick" make you wonder about the people of the town (or perhaps this petition is a snark gone wrong). Broadcast radio and television deliver orders of magnitude more radiation than Wi-Fi. Even cell phones deliver 20 to 30 times the 0.1 watt power limit of the wireless internet. But nobody is calling for the elimination of radio and television, or even cell phones. They fear Wi-Fi but not other, more powerful forms of radiation.

It's fear of the new. It's a medieval witch hunt. It's a visceral attack on innovation.

It's perhaps the greatest fear that ISPs have: that the phone company will provide them an inferior internet with which to compete.

It's happening in Canada.

This time, Cogent's the bully. In the past, when Cogent got into a peering fight, it fought with other tier 1 providers who felt that Cogent shouldn't belong to the exclusive club. Tier 1 providers have "settlement-free" peering between each other, meaning nobody pays anyone else for network access.

As you can imagine, this can save a lot of money.

Cogent is the company that other Tier 1 providers love to hate because it has the lowest prices, 100 Mbps for $1,000 per month (yes, that's $10 per Mbps).

Now, GigaOM is reporting that Cogent is no longer linking with Swedish backbone provider Telia because Cogent wants payment from Telia for peering.

Here's geek confirmation from the NANOG list.

BroadbandReports has been following the story of a company called Phorm that promises to enable ISPs to sell ads by tracking user behavior, such as searches and websites visited.

Last month, BBR asked readers, Would You Trust a Former Spyware Firm With Your Privacy?, as it learned that the company used to be called 121 Media and had peddled spyware.

It's not the law of Kentucky yet, but Kentucky state representative Tim Couch has filed a bill that would prohibit people from posting to websites under any name but their own -- and require that their home address be appended to the post.

This astonishingly ignorant law is intended to prevent online bullying, but even its author admits that "enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge."

He doesn't want the internet for himself. Brad Templeton, chair of the EFF and all around interesting ideas guy, just got back from the Benevolence Intelligence Learning (BIL) conference and was dissatisfied with the internet provided there.

Yes, this one's from Fark. Consumerist has found a service that claims to be able to remove links to defamatory websites, and then contacts the company by IM. Consumerist's first question is great:

"Do you like the 1st amendement?"

And it goes on from there. It's amazing what some people will promise to do for you from behind the firewall of a professional looking website.

ISPs, have you ever heard from a company that calls itself, "Complaint Remover"?

Wired provides a few photos of the inside of internet exchange One Wilshre.

It's crowded!

Of interest, also, is the following comment:

In Telco Installation for 39 years, the pix are a great example of gross neglect of adhering to basic industry standards. And I mean from a reliability point of view. A disaster waiting to happen. What a mess.

I hope your cables look better!