On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Mark Measday wrote:
> Jim,
>
> It is a commonplace, I think, that if you can disprove the phone system analogy
> below with sufficient force, or a sufficiently powerful replacement analogy, you
> win. However, noone has done so.
I have to disagree. The Internet's amazing and continuing growth has
shattered the complacency of telcos and governments alike. What is a
commonplace is that by 2001 most telecoms traffic everywhere will be
data, not voice. By 2005 voice will be a tiny fraction of the bandwidth
in use, and all of the equipment, practices, laws, and regulations
developed over the last century of voice telecommunications will be
obsolete and irrelevant. No matter how hard the bureaucrats try to
stuff this huge and growing elephant into the straitjacket that they
developed for the mouse that they are used to, it just ain't gonna fit.
> The US PTO, the large telcos, the lawyers and bits
> of government involved, have to hang a hook on some regulatory precedent to give
> them a feel for they territory they are dealing with.. They see phone system
> deregulation and the games that can be played with the numbers and 1-800 names as
> that precedent. They're reasonable people, but not visionaries. Give them a series
> of hooks and they will hang their coats on them in a civilised manner. However,
> revolutionary rhetoric leaves them cold.
So? The awful truth is that THEY DON'T MATTER. People who can't see
what's in front of them -- bureaucrats, businessmen, technologists, and
politicians who insist on seeing the world in terms appropriate to the
mid-20th century -- are going to retire, go broke, or get the sack.
Maybe in some places and some contexts they will succeed. All the
evidence is that this just means that those places will stagnate until
finally it becomes totally obvious even to the most blind that their
policies are wrong. Then the blind bosses will be replaced.
> To cite two of the worn, but valid clich�s
> that are known territory, (i) the best solution does not necessarily win, aka
> Betamax; (ii) well-intentioned people working consensually and democratically do
> not produce good solutions aka OSI. There's probably about to be (iii) technical
> innovation is always stifled by the genius that produced it aka In ternet, unless
> the creative energies of the people who actually shepherded the system into
> existence can be marshalled to demonstrate the difference of that system from the
> metaphors that are being forced upon it.
There are lots of applicable cliches. The 20th century began in a
world dominated by vast empires, highly structured societies,
armies in elaborate uniforms run by crusty old men steeped in
honourable routine. At the century's end all of these are gone.
Change at a blinding pace (accompanied by a lack of respect for
precedents, rules, and regulations) has done away with all of them.
The collapse of the old telcos is obvious. The telcos that are
thriving today have become ISPs. They aren't resisting change, they
are driving it. The comfortable regime of trans-Atlantic half-
circuits, with each country's monopoly vying with the other to
see which could charge the higher price, is gone: over the last year
or so aggressive new carriers have driven prices down by more than
80%. They are now rolling out data networks across Europe. Prices
are plummeting and the old monopoly telcos are on the defensive
everywhere.
My analogies are very different from yours. The Internet is the
future, it is irresistable, protean, it will transform everything.
The world that you think will curb the Internet is the past, rigid,
static, and we can see it crumbling before our eyes.
> MM
>
> > Jim Dixon wrote:
> > >
> > > > I find the analogy with the phone system (as you present it) not fully
> > > > applicable, as the phone number is a "key" in the system, and therefore
> > > > unique due to the way that the system is built, while the domain name is an
> > > > "attribute" of the unique key (the IP address), and therefore could be
> > > > duplicated.
> > >
> > > I don't want to dwell on pseudo-technical side-issues but:
> > >
> > > You are simply wrong. You have domain names that map into multiple IP
> > > addresses (round-robin DNS) and Web servers with many domain names mapping
> > > into one IP address. The DNS is not 1:1 and it's not 1:N. It is N:N.
> > >
> > > The telephone directory system and the DNS are two very different things;
> > > a telco background does not qualify you to pontificate on Internet issues.
Insofar as you are commenting upon this, you seem to have missed my
narrow technical point. Roberto Gaetano asserted that an IP address
uniquely identifies a domain name. This is not true. Sometimes a name
corresponds to many IP addresses (as in round-robin DNS) and sometimes
an IP address corresponds to many names (some Web servers permit many
names to be associated with one IP address). The domain name system
is not really like the telephone system.
[ It may be helpful to point out that VBCnet acquired a telco license
early this year. ]
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of Council Telecommunications Director
Internet Services Providers Association EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk http://www.euroispa.org
tel +44 171 976 0679 tel +32 2 503 22 65
