Nice post Jim. I interviewed the CTO of Williams (Tulsa OK) today.
He is selling OC48s as single lambdas using Sycamore transponders at
60% of the price of the sonet equivatent. provisioning time 6 days
as opposed to 6 months for sonet. They have had the service
commercially released for 3 months. 9 months from deshpandes drawing
the block diagram of the product through alpha, and beta to
commercial release. My point is that Qwest and Level 3 last years
darling greenfield players look like old line telco's copmpared to
this. The pace of change is increasing. deshpande is the founder of
cascade and with sycamore he is repeating the same business model.
>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
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