North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Architectural Solutions to Internet Congestion Based On SS7 and Intelligent Network Capabilities

  • From: k claffy
  • Date: Thu Nov 06 08:50:34 1997

   
   > The operative concept in this paper is 'telephone networks'.
   > 
   >  "Architectural Solutions to Internet Congestion Based On
   >  SS7 and Intelligent Network Capabilities"
   
   I particularly liked the myopic use of the term "Internet Congestion".  
   And here I thought that they had a solution for MAE-East....  ;-)
   
   I think the paper would have been more accurately titled: "Kludges to get
   around modems that don't say goodbye." or "We never should have introduced
   flat rate local dialing. What now?"  ;-) ;-)

tony --

i almost went catatonic when i tried to read that paper --
check out sentence number One:

	The explosive growth of the internet has created 
	problems for the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), 
	which for the forseeable future will provide the majority 
	of users with internet access via dialup modems.

i love how their phrasing it like they have this 
acute perception about the market demands.  
as though we're all still using modems by choice.  
as though THEY aren't the ones limiting us to 
this silly analog crap, despite that they already 
have perfectly high quality dedicated copper pairs 
into customer premises.
the only reason Anyone is still using a modem is cause 
the PSTN can't seem to Get With The Program and 
learn how to speak Internet
(speak it, hell, they can't even Spell it 
with a capital I in this paper.  i think
we should all lowercase pstn from now on.)
(ok so that made less sense coming from me.  whatever.)

if it weren't so depressing it would be amusing, 
the attitude throughout this paper: 
that the PSTN views Internet traffic as something to 
quarantine off to its own network
(keep it away from the precious lucrative pstn)

this paper provides no architectural solution to,
nor even insight into, Internet congestion.  
not even solutions that could clearly increase 
RBOC revenues (what morons)

instead it draws Magic Sphere around the telephony network,
shielding it from the Horrible Intimidating Internet, 
without any consideration of how they might be able 
to participate in evolving the Internet efficaciously.

ok so maybe we weren't expecting some huge breakthrough 
from them, but did they have to so *Vividly* confirm 
my worst fears about the prevailing archaic pstn mindset. 

my favorite part was one of their possible solutions
for how to divert circuit calls to ISPs based on some 
numbering scheme: 

	to obtain all ISP and on-line service provider
	(OSP) telephone numbers, and configure office-based 
	'triggers' for these numbers.

oh yeah. that'll work. 
all the phone numbers of all the ISPs.  yum.

the boggling part is that they're *already* openly 
assuming the need for an additional packet 
switched network No Matter What.
and the pstn has already dedicated Always-On copper 
lines from customers to COs --
so their plan is to do some heuristics on the
signals coming in from the copper pair, 
and turn it into a transient fixed bandwidth circuit. 
brilliant leap of logic right into the abyss, 
how did they manage that.
can't they come up with a more broken model?
(no, i don't want to know)

i just don't see what's so repulsive to them about
just building a PSI(nternet)N, colocating routers,
then using the already dedicated circuits to 
customer premises to access it.
(i guess that's what @home thought too;
they seem to have at least gotten that part right)

they're adding so much Kruft to their system
just to avoid moving to a more capable one

there is something so Deeply Wrong with this picture
where's Kuhn when you need him

maybe we should get michael moore to do a movie about it
(i know, you all were planning to wait for the movie 
rather than read that article anyway. wise souls.)

k