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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: How to secure the Internet in three easy steps
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Sean Donelan wrote: :Many corporate networks already proxy all their user's traffic, and :prohibit direct connections through the corporate firewalls. : :I think its a bad idea, but techincally I have a hard time saying its :technically impossible. Well, it is also technically possible to have users register using biometrics to access the Internet and that still seems sci-fi distopian enough that I'm not losing sleep over it yet. There are definitely service class distinctions between a local DSL provider and a cable provider, and provided that american competition laws stave off the converged telcos running the local providers out of business, there is still hope. It may be all retro to dredge up the dreaded road metaphor, but these cable services are really similar to suburbs. They are homogeneous areas built to serve a set of residential consumers with a limited, though uniform definition. To get to the "core" they require the use of a proprietary device or proxy to mediate their interactions with the rest of civil society. People pay a premium to be closer to the core and do so because of a vaguely articulated but strongly felt sense of "quality". The whole metaphor is irritating, but from a market perspective the economics are similar. A vast majority of people will give up the subtle quality of a real connection, for a cheaper version that serves their relatively limited needs. Since the largest market will be made of up people with these lower expectations, the only way to make money will be to serve them. It makes services closer to the core more scarce, and thus more expensive to maintain, and it will eventually only be populated by businesses that can afford the premium, and people that don't pay at all and have nowhere else to go. The Internet is starting to look alot like Minneapolis-St. Paul. -- batz
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