[LINK] NBN expectations

[Birch, Jim]

On 3/11/2010 1:42 PM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> ...
> If people are expecting everything to work 10 to 100 times faster on
the
> internet once they get the NBN, they are in for a bit of a surprise.
...

If the NBN doesn't result in a raft of new high speed services we might
as well call the whole thing off. 

Of course, it will.  

There seems to me to be an open wider question about the changing nature
of connection speeds.  The Internet has been characterised
(more-or-less) by high speed servers/trunks and low speed client links
but this will change with fibre everywhere to a point where servers and
clients are much closer to parity, eg, where a relatively small bunch of
users can saturate a server or an intercontinental link (subject to
contention management, of course.)  This means that sources need only
more grunt but also to get closer to clients.  IANA comms economist but
differential data charges for domestic and international traffic seems
certain to me.  This actually happens now in the form of selected
unmetered local sources, eg, ABC's iView is unmetered, except on
Telstra.  Depending on how this pans out, it might even be a good idea
for the government to bump this process with a carrot and stick approach
to force high volume services on shore, eg Microsoft updates, YouTube
(?).  This would look after users, save the country some money, and make
better use of international links.  

A squid-like protocol that supports source server authorised access to
network cached data - including "streams" - seems to be needed too, as a
way of supporting the smaller fish.  (Does anything like that exist?)

Either that, or torrent everything :)

- Jim


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