Re: [NNagain] On "Throttling" behaviors

[rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon@rjmcmahon.com>]

It doesn't matter who is to blame. What matters is that it didn't work 
at scale despite the political, regulatory and legal attempts per the 
federal 1996 Telco Act which proved to be a naive Act even with all the 
experts, including tech leaders, trying their best.

There aren't fiber cables over the last 100 meters (or more) in the OSP 
and none inside buildings (other than data centers.)

Cat copper cable tops out at 10Gb/s and 100m, and 4M for 100Gb/s. We're 
already releasing 200Gb/s SERDES today. And optics NRE are driving power 
down to increase MTBF. The last NRE spent on 10G was done over a decade 
ago. Years in technology are like dog years.

Today, for 1Gb/s it's 300 times the energy per meter using copper CAT vs 
fiber. No comparison at 100G because 4M is too short for most things 
except for a data center rack.

China has basically banned copper and is going fiber to and through all 
buildings.

Bob
> On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 11:55 AM Sebastian Moeller via Nnagain
> <nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
>> ...
>>> 
>>> The idea of municipal ownership of access networks in the U.S. was
>> pushed in 2000 after the 1996 Telco act. It didn't work out.
> 
> My state specifically bans municipalities from building or owning
> networks involved in internet delivery.  I think about a dozen states
> do this.  In my state, I think this was a specific charity by the
> governor to his buddies at spectrum so cities didn't compete against
> spectrum....
> 
>>> 
>>> The U.S. railroads were natural monopolies. They were given
>> massive land grants to build out. They ran as private companies for
>> about one century. They lost their monopoly position after third
>> generations who inherited them used these monopolies to price guoge
>> government during WWI and WWII. That's part of the reason most DoT
>> type govt agencies today are "roads & airports" vs "roads, rail &
>> airports." Rail has been re privatized and under invested - perfect
>> for Warren Buffett but no so good for everyone else nor for the
>> climate.
> 
> I don't know that this is an appropriate conclusion.  I don't think
> that any railroads were monopolies  until the government gave out land
> grants and monies to build those monopolies and now they are
> absolutely government backed monopolies.  Yes, railroads gouged for
> use of their lines, but that was more price collusion than monopoly.
> 
>>> 
>>> Governments will respond to monopoly abuse after it occurs, not
>> before.
>> 
>> [SM] Indeed, that is often the case...
> 
> and often WAY after and only when the government itself feels the pain
> of it.
> 
>>> First, the infrastructure needs massive funding to be installed
> 
>> , however that can get done. Municipal revenue bonds & networks
>> sound nice in theory but haven't worked over the last two decades.
>> Time to try something different.
> 
> There is existing dark fiber through or within a few miles of
> something like 95% of US towns, down to tiny villages.  The government
> has already paid lots of money out to get fiber everywhere, but then
> that fiber is not readily available to purchase.  This goes back to
> the microIX model discussed on the bufferbloat list and matrix chat.
> We only need to find a way to require this fiber be sold and at
> reasonable rates to allow for competition.  This really isn't a big
> infrastructure spend because that was spent 2 decades ago.