-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On ietf@ietf.org Hmmm. Very interesting material here on economics and traffic analysis. I remember when I heard as a young teen Kruschev and Kennedy agreed and primarily designed Intelsat, that anything upon which those guys agreed with certainty must be wrong. (doesn't really matter who decided this. The point is a framework for a thought experiment about Internet economics). Now, the argument I recall WAY BACK then; (ex post facto to me, but this also doesn't matter), is that the earth was DEFICIENT in that the moon wasn't a good enough natural reflector for unlimited telcom traffic by using it as a reflector. This is the thought experiment I (either) recalled or dreamt up during a discussion. -So- to remedy this deficientcy, institutions of a non profit and non discriminitory nature (Intelsat) came to be as an alleged no profit, dogooder driven institution. Of course it got, fat, overpriced, arrogant and bad at technology. "The Communications Satellite Act of 1962 was passed and the new organization came into being in March of 1963 with a charter to establish in conjunction with other countries a global communications satellite system to serve the needs of all countries, especially the underdeveloped, and to hopefully, through its creation, contribute to world peace and understanding. http://www.clarkeinstitute.com/lecture4.html Of course, the underdeveloped world never got anything whatsoever, but an endless expensive committee blundering along for 11 years and subsidizing a lot of probably entertaining travel: http://www.peak.sfu.ca/cmass/issue1/access.html Anyway, nothing new there. I leave it to you to decide on the "peace and understanding" part. Also "serve the needs of all countries", is a bit of a hint, too. How about the people in them? But, *if* the moon allowed reliable low attenuation telecom; (or if the atmosphere simply permitted it by some other physical law unmediated by humans). Its nearly impossible to understand if Internet would be sustainable. Without a rare resource; (transponder, fiber, etc) to allocate via a cost, its possible the initial anarchy would yield to some licensing system; but whatever system it would be would still leave it brutally overutilized and barely functional. And investment to make alternatives would be impoverished, as they would always face the prospect of competing with a free system. The only reserved parking spot carefully considered is the *last* spot. Now in the book "Technologies of freedom"; the mightly intellect of Illithel de sola Pool is even stuck on resolving much of this. Now; you PROBABLY EXPECT SOME ALLEGED MASTER PLAN <insert here> from a smarty pants guy like me, but, ah no. Instead the possibilty Global Crossing, Worldcom, etc fiber operators will operate the businesses without replacing / sustaining the investment, and the emergence of Low Earth orbiting satelittes carrying TCP/IP for next to nothing; (or nothing as part of some value added package). Is going to happen. The reference condition for any theory of telecom should be that transport itself doesn't cost anything, and its all still sustainable. This has hints in it: http://www.isen.com/ AKA the "rise of the stupid network". (1) But the reference condition is a network so stupid its: infinite in bandwidth, instant, 100% available, secure, and free. "We first encountered this formulation in the September 2001 issue of Roxane Googin's High Tech Observer. She wrote, "The perfect network is perfectly plain, and perfectly extensible. That means it is also the perfect capital repellant, [which] implies a guaranteed loss to network operators, but a boon to the services on the 'ends'." http://netparadox.com/ I promised no master plan, but it seems like its at least possible to have an endless stack of value added services absorb the infrastructure costs. Maybe there should be a structural floor for all the infrastrucutre services, and it simply be replacement at life end for the hardware? I don't know. When Atomic energy was proffered, it was going to be "electricity too cheap to meter", so this reductio ad absurdum tends to show up; and when done on a large scale (aka California power), hurt people. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't napped quite so much in economic's class, sometimes. )But the room was always so darn warm) ! Regards, Dan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBPZjvs39JwDiUknlyEQJssACg1PIsvGInVXFjAM3JDXWQFlcmcRIAnihi KLRKHlazq57TnvrBTY922cew =CC3l -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----