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"Networking is something we do, and not a service we have to buy"

Bob Frankston, write, in an email to David Farber's "Interesting People" email list, that the Internet is infrastructure for creating value:

Do I need to again cite Andy Lippman’s observation that networking is something we do and not a service we have to buy. The question is not how do ISPs recover their costs -- the question is why we keep insisting on funding our infrastructure by charging for services instead of recognizing that the infrastructure is not a profit center. It’s a means by which we create value everywhere else in society. If you run the infrastructure for a profit all you do is assure scarcity. Creating scarcity is an amazing feat considering the abundance available at essentially no cost compared to the value.

Today’s Internet is a powerful example and implementation of the far more general concept of creating solutions by focusing on the relationships between end points outside the networking without having to depend on seeking permission or buying special status from every provider along the way.

Bob's responding to Tech Review's article on Internet Gridlock, which says

The Internet is a lot like a highway, but not, contrary to popular belief, a superhighway. It's more like a four-lane state highway with traffic lights every five miles or so. A packet of data can blaze down an optical fiber at the speed of light, but every once in a while it reaches an intersection where it has the option of branching off down another fiber. There it encounters a box called an Internet router, which tells it which way to go. If traffic is light, the packet can negotiate the intersection with hardly any loss of speed. But if too many packets reach the intersection at the same time, they have to queue up and wait for the router to usher them through. When the wait gets too long, you've got congestion.

According to Bob, it's wrong to say that bandwidth is inherently scarce and congestion is inevitable.

I’ve been struggling to explain the Internet dynamic and why it gives us abundant and inexpensive connectivity. And here we find the cellular carriers themselves decrying the dangers of abundance in their own slides – more bits/cheaper bits is something that they must prevent.

Perhaps they are comparing themselves to farmers who limit the amount they grow to keep the prices up but in the case of providing connectivity the problem is that the carriers represent an artificial business that is a creation of the regulatory environment – The Regulatorium.

We must embrace and encourage abundance and not let ourselves be captive of an artificial marketplace that is unable to sustain itself in the face of any competition. Do they really believe that they are the only ones capable of creating solutions?

jon posted this at 8:48 AM
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