So what does "Madison River" have in common with "Comcast"? Both might wind up being examples of Internet service providers formally punished for blocking Internet traffic.
There are reports Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin will recommend that Comcast be fined for previous traffic-shaping practices that delayed peer-to-peer traffic. The vote is scheduled for Aug. 1, 2008.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Madison River, Comcast
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
87% U.K. Multi-Channel Video Penetration
Multi-channel video entertainment service penetration in the U.K. hit 87.2 percent in March 2008, Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, reports. To the extent there are differences between the U.S. and U.K. markets, it is the greater market share held by satellite services in the U.K. market, compared to the U.S., where cable is a more-important factor.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
RCN Will Boost Access to 50 Mbps
RCN Corp. plans to boost its consumer cable modem service up to 50 Mbps "by the end of next year," Jeff Baumgartner, Cable Digital News editor says. RCN CEO Peter Aquino promises RCN will remain competitive with Verizon, Time Warner or any other contestant in its markets.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Midband Ethernet to Grow 120% through 2011
Infonetics says worldwide Ethernet service revenue sequentially grew 33 percent to $12.5 billion in 2007, and IP MPLS VPN service revenue grew 20 percent to $13 billion.Service revenue for mid-band Ethernet, which includes the 1-10 Mbps and 10 Mbps to 50 Mbps speed bands, will jump 120 percent from 2007 to 2011, Infonetics predicts.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Hazards of Connected Life
One of the hazards of modern life is the stability of one's broadband access infrastructure. Circuits and services go down, from time to time. For some of us, that means acting as our own personal system integrators, creating fail-safe mechanisms.
As sometimes happens, my Covad T1 line died yesterday morning, an apparent software corruption to my Windows operating system caused one of my PCs to crash, necessitating restoring the machine to an earlier software load, and requiring me now to ignore all messages to install the latest upgrade to the operating system.
Today the cable connection was fluttering in and out of service. So while the T1 was down and the primary PC inoperable, I reverted to the backup PC and the backup broadband connection (Verizon 3G).
Comcast got the connection restored without me having to call in a trouble ticket and Covad's tech support has been superb, as usual. One never wants to have a service go down, and this isn't the first time the T1 has died. What matters is how fast service gets restored, and how attentive tech support is. On that score, Covad continues to rank as the single best service provider I've ever had.
Experiencing problems isn't unusual these days. Having a service provider respond promptly, expeditiously and with great courtesy is the key. Well, that and making sure you have a way to keep working while things get sorted out.
Update: the technician was unable to get the third Cisco router to work, so we are switching to a Netopia router instead. He says he isn't sure what the issue is, but the Netopia works, and the Cisco box does not.
As sometimes happens, my Covad T1 line died yesterday morning, an apparent software corruption to my Windows operating system caused one of my PCs to crash, necessitating restoring the machine to an earlier software load, and requiring me now to ignore all messages to install the latest upgrade to the operating system.
Today the cable connection was fluttering in and out of service. So while the T1 was down and the primary PC inoperable, I reverted to the backup PC and the backup broadband connection (Verizon 3G).
Comcast got the connection restored without me having to call in a trouble ticket and Covad's tech support has been superb, as usual. One never wants to have a service go down, and this isn't the first time the T1 has died. What matters is how fast service gets restored, and how attentive tech support is. On that score, Covad continues to rank as the single best service provider I've ever had.
Experiencing problems isn't unusual these days. Having a service provider respond promptly, expeditiously and with great courtesy is the key. Well, that and making sure you have a way to keep working while things get sorted out.
Update: the technician was unable to get the third Cisco router to work, so we are switching to a Netopia router instead. He says he isn't sure what the issue is, but the Netopia works, and the Cisco box does not.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
A Tongue-in-Cheek Proposal
As long as we are being obsessive about the weight of aircraft (US Airways is going to remove onboard in-flight entertainment systems), why not other measures? Removing the entertainment systems removes 550 pounds of weight.
Some other airlines had removed magazines for the same stated reason: to cut weight. We understand other weight-reducing measures, such as using lighter service carts, also are being looked at. The amount of water for the lavatories as well as the amount of fuel in plane tanks already have been optimized. Bag weight also now is an optimizable element in fuel consumption.
Each jet can save perhaps 400 pounds simply by avoiding paint on the fuselages.
Heck, why not base airline tickets on body weight as well as distance traveled, then?
Some other airlines had removed magazines for the same stated reason: to cut weight. We understand other weight-reducing measures, such as using lighter service carts, also are being looked at. The amount of water for the lavatories as well as the amount of fuel in plane tanks already have been optimized. Bag weight also now is an optimizable element in fuel consumption.
Each jet can save perhaps 400 pounds simply by avoiding paint on the fuselages.
Heck, why not base airline tickets on body weight as well as distance traveled, then?
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
$4.5 Billion Annual Data Center Power Bills
Data centers in the United States consume more than 60 billion kWh of energy each year, at an annual cost of $4.5 billion, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Energy consumption has doubled since 2000. Much of that spending is for cooling systems to deal with all the heat produced by the power-gobbling servers that are the muscle inside any data center.
Additional studies by many of today's largest corporations agree that a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in power consumption from new IT equipment is required. That, and the inability of data centers to continue to scale operations using current technology virtually assures new generations of power-efficient servers.
Some data centers already are finding that the key constraint to further growth in hosting capacity is inability to get any more power from the grid at their current locations.
Much the same can be said for end user devices, especially mobiles. Broadband mobile applications require more power consumption. That means bigger or better batteries. Since device size is crucial these days, that means better batteries.
Of course, the problem is that processors and memory advance at much-faster rates than battery technology, for example.
Additional studies by many of today's largest corporations agree that a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in power consumption from new IT equipment is required. That, and the inability of data centers to continue to scale operations using current technology virtually assures new generations of power-efficient servers.
Some data centers already are finding that the key constraint to further growth in hosting capacity is inability to get any more power from the grid at their current locations.
Much the same can be said for end user devices, especially mobiles. Broadband mobile applications require more power consumption. That means bigger or better batteries. Since device size is crucial these days, that means better batteries.
Of course, the problem is that processors and memory advance at much-faster rates than battery technology, for example.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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