Pete Kruckenberg's Perfect World

Of course, all of this leads to a lot of confusion in configuring, tracking, managing. But it'd still be cool

Posted by pete at 3:00 PM | Comments (2)

September 19, 2003

A safer, more robust Internet

Paul Vixie of various Internet project fame (CIX, ISC, AboveNet, PAIX, etc, etc, etc), has an excellent presentation on the ISC Web site titled "Towards a Safer and More Robust Internet".

Some of Paul's points:

Paul suggests the following next steps:

A thought-provoking presentation, sprinkled with Paul's unique humor.

Posted by pete at 10:42 PM

September 14, 2003

Music industry vs. Movie industry

For years, since Napster first began undermining the music industry, there has been talk about how eventually the movie industry would have to deal with the same thing.

But so far, only the music industry (RIAA) seems to be stirring things up. Even though almost every recent movie is available for free via P2P networks, often before they hit the theater, the movie industry grows more successful. While the music industry is on a decline.

This article in the Denver Post compares how both industries have dealt with growing pirating, file-sharing and copying. And shows how the movie industry has thrived in the same environment that the music industry continues to decline.

A comment about music listeners in their 30's and 40's giving up on new material hits home. As a teenager, I spent phenomenal amounts of time (and some money) finding new, unusual bands. As a college student, I had to sacrifice music to eat.

Now that I have money to spend on music again, I'm finding the radio is useless to find new artists, and I'm not about to put down $20 for an artist I don't know--so I don't buy anything. I've found it's easier (and usually cheaper) to explore different musical genres than find new artists in the genres I frequent.

Think about all that the movie industry has done to make movies accessible to people. Consider what the the music industry has done.

I have little sympathy for the music industry, just a lot of disappointment. And frustration that they refuse to make my experience as a customer less expensive and more enjoyable.

Posted by pete at 9:22 PM

September 13, 2003

Future: Free Hotel Internet?

The evolution of data network services in hotels has been interesting to watch (and participate in).

In the early 90's, traveling meant hijacking the RJ-11 out of the back of the room phone, hooking up the dongle to your PCMCIA modem, and repeated iterations of a combination of digits and punctuation (especially bad if you had to use a calling card) to get an outside line dialed up at 14.4 or 28.8 kb/s.

Hotels caught on to this. Over the last decade, they have tried installing WebTV-type Internet terminals (I saw few, and they didn't last long), added "data" ports to their phones, put outlets near the desk (they probably got tired of net-savvy customers rearranging furniture to reach outlets), and changed their local calling charges to inhibit (or profit from) Internet users (too bad no Internet dialers have the ability to hang up after 55 minutes and re-dial, to automatically circumvent the 60-minute call charge many hotels have).

Most recently, many business-class hotels have started charging a flat-rate, non-optional "convenience fee" charge of as much as $10/day for unlimited free local calling, sometimes unlimited national calling, and other stuff that used to be free or pay-per-use. And most business-class hotels have partnered with companies like STSN, WayPort, and many others, to provide in-room "broadband" Internet service for about $10/day.

The last two hotel stays I've had make me believe that in the highly-competitive hotel industry, Internet may become the one service that becomes an ammenity included with the price of your room at business-class hotels. And with a decent Internet connection, I can do VoIP for any calls that I don't want to use my cell phone for.

In Seattle, I stayed at the Watertown Inn in Seattle. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my $109/night room included free broadband Internet. Now it wasn't the fastest thing; they just had a DSL line, so things got a bit slow in the evening. But it was much better than dial-up.

Tonight, I am staying at Marriott Courtyard La Guardia. For my $3.99/day (non-optional) "convenience fee", I get free local calls and a 10Mb/s Internet connection. That's a convenience fee I'm not unhappy to pay.

(It's not a hotel, but my experience finding wireless Internet at a KOA is also relevant).

But I'm paying $3.99/day for what many hotels still charge $17/day or more. I like where this is headed. Maybe my Watertown (and KOA) experience will become more common, and staying at a hotel won't be the painful (dial-up) experience it has over the last decade.

Posted by pete at 8:54 PM

After-effects of vacationing

You know you've had a good vacation when you totally lose track of time.

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out why there was so much traffic on the town. Mike and I went to Bar Harbor in the afternoon, and it was incredibly busy. The day before, we also noticed that everywhere we drove on the island, we had to deal with a lot of traffic. I couldn't figure out why things were so busy.

It wasn't until this morning that I remembered that yesterday was Friday, so we were just seeing normal pre-weekend traffic. I was pretty excited about being that disconnected from reality.

This morning we left the cabin at 7:30am, after saying our good-bye's to Mike and his family. We have a long drive ahead, and we'd like to get to New York early enough to walk around Manhattan and eat dinner in Times Square. We hope to be in Boston for lunch, and New York by 5pm.

Last night we reminisced about other summer vacations, and decided that this one has been one of the best--though it has some tough competition. And we started planning our next vacation.

I think I'll take my time getting back up to speed from this vacation.

Posted by pete at 10:05 AM

September 11, 2003

Thinking out of the box often isn't good

In the spirit of Rich's "Found while looking for something else", I ran into this thought-provoking piece by Nicholas G. Carr today.

(Nicholas has recently become the most favorite I.T. pundit to hate, when he wrote "IT Doesn't Matter" and instantly put a whole lot of CIOs on the defensive in front of newly-enlightened CEOs and Boards of Directors. I'm anxiously awaiting his book on the topic, Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage to be released next spring.)

Anyways, Nicholas wrote back in 2001 that far too often, businesses (and the people within them) focus so much on long-term disruptive visions ("thinking out of the box"), they forget that average people (especially their potential customers) don't change so quickly. "Thinking out of the box" has become so ingrained in business culture as a capability to be sought after, rarely--if ever--is it questioned as a valid or practical approach. I've even worked for a company in the past that institutionalized the "out of the box" thought process (since ran out of money).

There are times when wild speculation is appropriate - in research efforts, scenario planning exercises and risk management, for instance. And creative thinking is always valuable. But when making day-to-day investment, operating and marketing decisions, be sure your thoughts stay anchored to the here and now.

I think the toughest aspect of critical thinking is maintaining the "meta-thinking" process: the process of thinking about the thinking process. Excercises that help focus the mind in new directions are hard enough; it's even more difficult to think about the exercise, and whether the results are relevant and applicable.

Nicholas makes several excellent points in this article, that I hope I can keep in mind: (1) the people who use a product rarely, if ever, understand or appreciate the ingenuity that went into it's design (2) it's easy to invent a fictional (aka "visionary") future, but the real success is in anticipating the next plodding step of the masses (3) no matter how much "thinking out of the box" I do, it all has to fit within the box of stuff people will buy, or it'd better make for good sci-fi reading.

Posted by pete at 9:31 PM | Comments (2)

September 10, 2003

Time to ditch Microsoft?

I've been thinking for some time now about ditching Microsoft, choosing something other than Windows for my laptop OS (I already run Linux, Apple OS X, and Solaris on other desktops).

Having to patch my laptop over dial-up modem has put me over the top. All of the enraged I.T. and security people complaining about end users not keeping their machines patched should try living on dial-up for a while (like 80-90% of Internet users do), and try keeping their Microsoft software up to date with the now-weekly multiple security announcements. That would shut them up.

I've had a Mac in my office for about 6 months now. I really like it, but it's a desktop, and I live on my laptop. Same with the various Linux machines I run/use. My laptop has been Windows for two reasons: (a) it's my primary machine, and I can't afford the time to fiddle with it, especially down-time during fiddling (b) it's the machine I use to interface the most with the mostly-Microsoft outside world, so having Microsoft (and other proprietary) applications running on Windows is just the least-painful way to make sure I can get my work done quickly. Plus, laptops are more purpose-built to an operating system than desktops, so Windows is usually required to get the most out of a laptop built for Windows (ie power-saving features, sound/light management, PCMCIA cards, etc).

But the constant worry about security (and the work required to avoid being exploited) is making a less-popular (and possibly more secure, but I am mostly betting on the non-popularity aspect) OS interesting. I'd also like to run in a Unix-like environment without all of the kludges that Windows requires (yea, there's Cygwin--like I was saying, kludges).

I could get Linux running on my Sony VAIO, without losing out on much (especially with the Linux VAIO project). With Crossover Office, I can still run essential organizational applications such as Visio, and I can run Evolution or Novell's new Java GroupWise client. For the few things (such as the Verizon CDMA wireless card) that just can't live without Windows, I can run VMWare under Linux.

Ideally, though, I think I will look seriously at a 12" Powerbook for my next laptop. It's a bit heavier than my VAIO, but I think well worth it. Either that, or a laptop that has all of the important laptop features, fully supported in Linux.

Posted by pete at 9:50 PM

I could get used to this

Get up at 7. Breakfast at 2 Cats at 8. Back to the cabin to read and play with the kids until lunch. Afternoon at Sand Beach and climbing around the rocks on the Maine coast. Dinner on the deck, then an evening sitting around talking, computing and reading. Repeat tomorrow.

Until Saturday. Then it's a 9-hour drive back to New York, then an 8-hour flight back to Salt Lake on Sunday.

Posted by pete at 9:09 PM

September 9, 2003

Thoughts on Fiber to the Home

I know I'm on vacation, but that doesn't stop me from thinking. Especially on a long drive from New York to Somesville, Maine.

The scenario:

Thought 1: Taxes to fund broadband Internet
Publicly-owned infrastructure is funded through use taxes--the costs of the infrastructure are born primarily, even exclusively, by those who use it, often in proportion to how they use it. For example, roads are funded (mostly?) through the (significant) local, state and federal taxes on gas. This case is interesting, since in most parts of the country the road use tax is indirect. Toll roads, with more direct usage charges, are a relatively small percentage of the roads in the U.S. The good and bad of these taxes is that they are pooled together to (in theory) provide the maximum benefit of roads to both drivers and communities.

Jim mentions Art Brothers' ideas on Internet bandwidth funded by per-device taxes. The very outspoken early adoptor "alpha males" of the Internet generation would stone anyone who seriously proposed such an idea. But looking at other public works, its consistent. Whether it's per-device or per IP address or per megabyte or megabit-per-second, it puts the cost burden (in a general sense) of the publicly-owned network infrastructure on those who use it (the most).

Should it be a direct "tax"? Should it be "wholesale", where the underlying costs of the network elements are invisible to the end user, rolled up in a marked-up invoice from their retail service provider? Should it be indirect, like gas tax funds roads (what is the Internet equivalent to gasoline)--and maybe that indirectness would deflect Internet anti-taxation sentiments. How much of the resulting pool should be controlled by local/state/federal government?

And a related point: often comments are made that these kinds of charges/taxes stiffle innovation. I see no indication that gas taxes or road tolls inhibit transportation innovation (which isn't to say innovation happens--I just don't see taxes as a stumbling block).

Thought 2: Is fiber too much, too soon?
I seriously wonder whether fiber-to-the-whatever is just too much, too soon. After a lot of experimentation and investment, no-one can yet point to a clear, credible answer to the simple question "what would I do with a Gigabit to my home?" The answer usually is "by the time you get it, something we don't even know about today will be there to fill the bandwidth."

That's just too visionary for the general masses. The wants, needs and interests of masses change slowly and incrementally. It's a very rare situation when everyone, everywhere, has to have the new thing, now. Of course, every new thing thinks it will be that new thing. Internet and related technologies and services have had that expectation too long. Yes, hundreds of millions have connected to the Internet in only a decade. There is no compelling reason to assume that all of those people have to have broadband now.

I think the argument for "fiber to the whatever" overlooks a fundamental issue. The problem that needs to be solved (if there is one that needs to be solved) is not "lack of fiber to the home"; it's something more like "lack of inexpensive high-bandwidth low-latency Internet service to the home." We have become so fixated on forcing fiber to the home, we don't even know what problem we're trying to solve, and if the people in those homes think it is a problem.

If we step back from the solution (fiber to the home) for a minute, and focus on the problem (lack of high-capacity, low-latency Internet bandwidth to the home), we will see that there are a number of ways to solve the problem. Fiber may (or may not) be the best long-term solution, but it may be infeasible in the short-term for financial, political and social reasons. There may be other technologies that more adequately address the current needs and poli-social-financial environment.

I'm surprised at how few municipalities are considering wireless as a solution, even if it's only an intermediate solution to build enough momentum and acceptance to justify a fiber build. Wireless networks are cheap enough that small mom-and-pop Wireless ISPs are cropping up by the thousands. Instead of funding an expensive "build it and we hope they will come" fiber network, why not invest around 10% of the fiber build cost in a re-usable, re-sell-able high-speed wireless network--maybe even in partnership with a wireless ISP and the existing fiber companies who can build the fiber backbone of the wireless network using existing assets.

Thought 3: Railroads were trying to get into the transportation business

I've heard many times the saying that "railroads missed the threat of the trucking business becaue they thought they were in the railroad business, and didn't realize they were in the transportation business." I recently came to understand that statement may be untrue, and the reasons are applicable to what's happening with telecom today.

I watched a few weeks ago an American Experience documentary on the Streamliners. The program highlighted some of the struggles of the railroads as the automobile became pervasive, and highways were built throughout the US. A point that was touched on briefly, but unfortunately was not a focus of the program, was how much government regulation had an impact on the railroad.

For one, any changes the railroads wanted to make to their existing services had to be approved by the ICC (Interstate Commerce Committee). These regulatory proceedings extended years at a time, and the ICC was primarily focused on ensuring the availability of railroad services to the general population.

At the same time, Congress was pouring money into developing new roads that were undermining the need for current rail services, and making it more necessary than ever for railroads to respond to changing customer needs.

Reading Gilder's editorial and the BCR articles, I can't help but think whether the biggest impediment to change and progress in telecommunications isn't the over- (and often uncoordinated and contradictory) involvement of government. On the other hand, I am quite certain that if the monopolistic ILECs were given free reign, they have no ability to be anything but a monopoly, and they still retain the power to develop self-sustaining monopolies. Regardless, the FCC and Congress need to be more diligent in helping the ILECs to re-invent themselves as competitors in a new diverse highly-competitive, highly-innovative enfironment.

I don't know where it'll go from here. The hope for fiber-to-the-home continues to dissolve. Intel, one of the strong (and aggressive) advocates for fiber-to-the-home, recently (and abruptly) closed their fiber-to-the-whatever group in their CTO office. UTOPIA, the most anticipated and talked-about municipal network in the nation, still (a year later than expected) has not been able to raise funding, and prospects are looking more dim than ever. Clark County, Washington is struggling more than ever, and is no longer the featured case study of fiber proponents. The only shining light I've seen recently are the three cities (Provo, American Fork, Spanish Fork) in Utah County who appear to have sustainable broadband fiber models.

Posted by pete at 8:45 PM

September 8, 2003

In the news

A few weeks ago, I did an interview with Max Smetannikov at ISP-Planet on regional peering and the work I've been involved with the Utah Community Internet Exchange and The Quilt Peering Project.

The article came out last Friday, and was also posted to the Canarie announcement list.

Posted by pete at 10:08 PM

September 7, 2003

Downeast Maine in September

Nothing quite like Maine in September. Leaves are just starting to turn, weather is cool, but clear. And a vacation being in the same location, near some of the most spectacular sites in the state.

The only draw-back, reverting to the techie I'm trying so hard to leave behind while I'm here, is a minor one, and a real blessing. There's not very good cell coverage here, no Verizon 1XRTT (closest coverage is near Portland, ME, about 2 hours drive). No unknowing cable-modem customer with an open 802.11b WAP. Fortunately, dial-up is fairly decent, with average 48-50kb/s connections.

Makes it just barely tolerable to get online to make sure the world is still there (and check schedules and locations for attractions in the area), but so insufferably slow I don't spend any more time than absolutely necessary on-line.

Posted by pete at 9:38 PM

September 5, 2003

Vacationing near the other Portland

Today I'm headed for the other coast for 10 days. I'll be flying to NYC with my family, then driving to Boston to meet up with my brother and his family, and then drive up to Somesville, Maine to stay in a cabin on Maine cost, on the Somes Sound. We're planning to spend most of our week visiting Acadia National Park.

Since I'll be bandwidth-impaired (and generally avoiding computing), I don't plan to be regular on this blog until after September 15-ish.

Posted by pete at 7:42 AM

September 2, 2003

California Coastline Web Site

This is an awesome site, with pictures of the entire California coast. 12,000 or so of them. All free.

A sample picture which happens to include Barbara Streisand's Malibu estate.

Which she isn't too happy about. Maybe people in obnoxiously huge houses shouldn't complain so loudly. The Coast was there before she was, it was her choice to build where (and in a way) you couldn't help but notice it. Maybe if Ms. Streisand wasn't before my time, I'd be more sympathetic to her perspective.

I'm definitely a much bigger fan of the California coastline than I am of Barbara Streisand.

Posted by pete at 1:18 PM | Comments (4)