Google and DNS

I found this commentary on Google's entry into the DNS domain the most worthwhile (from this article in the NY Times):

“You have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet. To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naïve,” Mr. Ulevitch wrote. “They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully.”

In an interview, Mr. Ulevitch said OpenDNS was steering customers who mistyped addresses to Yahoo search results and ads. “I have no doubt they see that as a competitive threat,” he said. He also stressed that there is valuable information in the DNS layer — like where servers are located, what Web sites people are looking at and how frequently they are looking at them. “I have no doubt they will be monetizing this by increasing intelligence on people’s surfing habits,” he said.

Ulevitch runs the "Open DNS", which has provided this service for some time. He differentiates Google DNS from Open DNS here; you should bear in mind that Google is offering him competition. Finally, I think it is important to remember, as Ulevitch does here, that Google is a profit-making organization.

Importance of framing

No, I'm not talking about Time Division Multiplexing. This NOI from the FCC came to my attention (via this item in Ars Technica). I have addressed the importance of the "framing" of a topic in regulatory reform before (see this item), and I believe that this may be a similar example. Here, it seems as though the FCC is framing the debate about spectrum reform as a matter of broadband policy, which, of course, is related if wireless access is a key component of broad policy. Maybe Tom Hazlett's ideas are gaining traction after all?

Telegraph in the US

Ars Technica posted this article, which is a partial history of the telegraph in the US. The history of the telegraph involves considerably more than what is written and, taken as a whole, provides a graphic illustration of "bare knuckles" capitalism. Fortunes were won (eg. Ezra Cornell, who later founded Cornell University) and lost sSee my book Shaping American Telecommunications for more). What the Ars article does not mention is that while Gould was nipping at WU's heels, the telephone business was just getting off the ground. WU ended up making the business decision to focus on its core telegraph business and sold its telephone business to National Bell. It was a fateful decision indeed.

Mesh networks

Here is a nice article on mesh networking technology from Ars Technica. It includes a nice discussion of the historical context and a very little bit about the economics. What I found most interesting was the following, taken from an interview with NYU's Jinyang Li:

Li pointed out that current mesh protocols don't give nodes incentives to forward one another's packets. This isn't a major problem in academic, corporate or government settings where all the nodes can be assumed to have the same owner. But in open, heterogenous networks, each user will be tempted to "cheat" by modifying his own device to take advantage of other nodes' forwarding services without reciprocating. "It's still an open question whether we'll be able to solve this incentive problem," Li told Ars.

A related concern is security. Users should worry about the security implications of entrusting their packets to random strangers. Things would get even more dicey if routing protocols were enhanced to add monetary incentive schemes such as micropayments; in that case, security flaws in mesh networks could allow unscrupulous mesh participants to generate bogus traffic in order to siphon money away from their neighbors.

These are indeed serious problems that have to be solved before this approach to networking has a prayer of commercial success in anything but niche markets.

Telecom cost estimates

This is my latest installment in my continuing effort to collect information on the cost of telecom system deployment. NATOA filed these comments with the FCC that contain some case studies on fiber deployment to "anchor tenants" in communities. Perhaps you will find this interesting or useful.