Who Will Fix the Internet? No One, Apparently 370
blackbearnh writes "It seems like everyone focuses on the latest and greatest killer Internet applications, but the underlying infrastructure that all of them run on is showing its age. That's the claim made by a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor. IPv4 is relatively ancient, and even stalled improvements like IPv6 aren't significant enough to matter, according to some researchers. With no one 'in charge' of the Internet, it's almost impossible to get any sweeping technical improvements made, especially since there's no financial incentive on the part of the ISPs and telecoms to invest in basic infrastructure. CalTech Professor John Doyle puts it this way: 'To the extent I've been working in this field for the last 10 years, I've been mostly working on band-aids. I'm really trying to get out of that business and try to help the people, the few people, who are really trying to think more fundamentally about what needs to be done.'"
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:3, Informative)
False.
This is an urban legend that is not true either now (porn made the net boom), or back in the past (porn killed Betamax cause they chose VHS). If you look at the actual video output the porn industry is only ~5% of sales. The dominant force is Hollywood, followed by the school market, then local TV studios, finally business, and porn is a distant last place.
Re:A useful source? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. It's a very respectable source indeed. Also, Christian Science (promoted by Christian Scientists) is entirely different from the science promoted by Christians (who are a different group).
Ignorance is bliss, personified. (Score:5, Informative)
Ignorance is bliss, and you, sir, seem to be positively rolling in it. CSM, strange as it may seem, is generally regarded as being of surpassing quality (vastly superior to your "mainline" news channels and rags).
The irony is that most religious people I know revile the CSM as being liberal, ungodly, and in all manner of secular.
Re:I Thought We'd Been Through This? (Score:5, Informative)
@&%*@... &*(&%(*... NO CARRIER
Fixed that for you :)
Re:Christian... science ? (Score:1, Informative)
Historical, essentially. The Christian Science Monitor is so called because it's associated with the Church of Christ, Scientist, sharing the same founder. A bunch of mid-level crazies who are strong believers in the power of faith healing. The paper tries to keep it's distance from it's patron church, well aware that to be seen in their association would threaten it's credability.
Re:We need more competition (Score:4, Informative)
If we allowed more competition,...
It's not merely an issue of allowing more competition. For example, here in California cable TV is not a state-granted monopoly. And yet, you will find close to zero overlapping cable TV regions. Why? Because it makes little economic sense to the operators to do that. One operator, having paid for infrastructure, can lower prices in its region to below what a new competitor could afford, because the new competitor, having to lay down duplicate infrastructure, will be taking it over the barrel on paying for its new infrastructure. So the new operator just shies off from the whole thing. It's really a kind of willful collusion, but there's nothing evil about it. It's just good, obvious business sense.
At best, you can hope for the phone company, the cable company, and maybe some new third leg of wireless operators to form some kind of three way competitive market for delivery services. I don't think this is nearly enough, however, for any thing at all resembling competition. Markets with relatively small numbers of participants tend to engage in huge amounts of tacit collusion. Basically, it's very easy for the various players to watch each other's prices, set similar price points, and become lax about the whole thing. The victim is the consumer.
Real competition occurs in thriving markets where new competitors enter with innovations that lower the fundamental cost basis of their products. This forces competitors to adopt similar innovations or die. This seldom happens in small markets with a static set of competitors, because they're all set in their ways, and know the others are set in their ways. I.e., they can happily never change a thing and GET AWAY WITH IT.
So basically, don't hold your breath on any kind of real competition occurring here. While I'm a big fan of competitive markets, I'm a big cynic on this market. On a bad day, in a bad mood, I think we should just regulate the entire thing.
C//
Re:Christian... science ? (Score:3, Informative)
It's called Christian Science Monitor basically because the founder was also the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist and she demanded that it be called that. Despite it's name, the paper is 95% secular and is actually known for its fair and balance reporting, especially for avoiding sensationalism (ironically in this case). Their staff has even won a handful of Pulitzer Prizes over the years.
Re:Christian... science ? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
To quote an article [ipv6tf.org] I once read that addressed what you are saying:
The long and the short of it is that NAT is only a band-aid... it is not a scalable solution. NAT can only be "good enough" as long as the above issues remain unimportant to a majority of people.
Re:The Whole Point if the Internet... (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose IANA could start handing out IPv6 addresses only from now on, that'd shake the industry up quickly enough...
They won't have much choice in ~700 days [ipv6forum.com]. It's so close, I don't think there's much point bringing the date forward.
Re:The only thing "on hold" is the USA, not IPv6 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
To add to the other good replies to your message.
"Recalling" those "huge" blocks (and note that there is no legal justification for any entity to be able to do so) would also only be a band-aid. If you "recall" all of the /8 blocks that are globally assigned that are likely underutilized, you only extend the lifetime of IPv4 by a handful of years.
Many people point to NAT as a way to prevent the depletion of IPv4 address space, but what most of them don't realize is that NAT (despite the huge problems that hitch along for the ride) has *already* served that purpose. We're *still* running out of IPv4 address space, even with ubiquitous use of NAT (including being hobbled by the problems that it brings). If NAT hadn't seen widespread use already, we would have run out of IPv4 address space years ago.
NAT creates problems, and it doesn't even fix the problem that people are positioning it to fix (ie, the depletion of IPv4 address space). We're still going to run out, we still need to transition to IPv6, even if you "recall" those big blocks and make everyone use NAT. Taking the steps you suggest only extends the horizon of the problem, and only extends it by a relatively small amount.
Re:Christian... science ? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone cares to tell me what the words 'christian' and 'science' are doing together ? I mean, do they live in a universe with different rules with different science or what ? No, I'm not thinking about the evolution denier idiots, I assume this refers to run of the mill christians. So why the specification ?
Your average 'run of the mill' Christian believes that Science is a set of rules and theories about a universe created by God.
Science for it's part, hasn't found anything that flat-out irrefutably contradicts a universe that has been intelligently designed...and it has found no irrefutable evidence that it has. Personally I don't see a conflict between the words 'Christian' and scientist anymore than I would see one between 'gay' and 'scientist'.
What are they going to do? Cover up the 'gay' gene if it gets discovered?
Re:The only thing "on hold" is the USA, not IPv6 (Score:3, Informative)
Most of Asia are already using IPv6.
Yes, fractions of a percent, just like the US who "has its head in the sand."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_deployment [wikipedia.org]
Re:The only thing "on hold" is the USA, not IPv6 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly you don't know what the Christian Science Monitor [wikipedia.org] is. The CSM is not only widely regarded, winning numerous (ironically) Pulitzer Prizes, but given it's awesome "Fuck you, you lying douche bag, Joseph Pulitzer!" origin, it's positively punk rock.
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:3, Informative)
Net traffic is Bit Torrent, then email, then porn, then the rest...
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Informative)
IPv6 means I have to get permission from someone else to IP my personal devices.
None of my routing equipment supports IPv6.
The "globally unique address model" isn't a perfect idea. See point 1.
NAT generally does not break the Peer to Peer model.
NAT helps enforce security and QoS applications.
NAT is preventing significant costs.
etc, etc, etc.
I know IPv6 gives people a giant bonor, but the internet is not facing imminent demise. The FUD surrounding the issue is mostly bullshit and it's not helping.
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:1, Informative)
>>>Porn is the reason VHS won out over Betamax
False, false, false, false, false. I don't feel like retyping my previous post (above), but in brief when Betamax and VHS were released, Betamax could only record 1 hour while VHS could do 2 or 4 hours. When consumers saw this, they naturally thought "4" sounded better than "1" so they bought VHS in droves. (They also probably thought - 'How do I tape a 3 hour football game on a Betamax tape that's only 1 hour long?' And therefore picked VHS.)
But if you really think porn is the reason for VHS success, then provide some accounting numbers to *prove* it. Show me the numbers. Although I don't see how you will do that, because I've got ancient Betamax tapes with porn on them, which pretty much invalidates the whole theory.
Re:Let the porn industry take the lead... (Score:3, Informative)