Birth of the Commercial Internet
Once upon a time, way back in 1991, the entire commercial Internet consisted of a single Cisco AGS router located in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. At the time that the so-called…
The Trouble with Spectrum
You can get a good idea of the problem with America’s current spectrum situation from the NTIA Spectrum Map (click through for a full-size picture.) Since the initial allocations were…
The Spectrum Bunny is Working Hard
At the spectrum event in Washington today, NTIA made a very welcome announcement: Keeping with the “spectrum day” theme in Washington, National Telecommunications & Information Administration chief Lawrence Strickling said…
Now you Know Who to Blame
Who’s the culprit for the end of the Internet as we know it? Why Vint Cerf, of course: The world is running out of IPv4 addresses, forcing the adoption of…
Getting what We Pay For
Measuring broadband speed is a tricky business. Speed testing sites like speedtest.net do a reasonable job of measuring bandwidth to a large network of test servers, but it’s difficult to…
FCC Managed Services and Wireless Inquiry
Comments were filed yesterday on the first round of the FCC’s inquiry into the role of managed services and wireless in the Open Internet issue. This particular deadline wasn’t as…
Networks and Application Innovation
One of the truisms of modern Internet policy holds that innovation takes place primarily – or even exclusively – at the network edge. This idea, buttressed by appeals to the…
Voice and LTE
Back when LTE first got started, all IP networks were all the rage in the cellular industry. People envisioned that all voice services would be provided over the IP network….
Wi-Fi on Crutches
The FCC recently announced that this month (September 2010) it will address the next step in its plans for unlicensed use of the TV whitespace (the portions of the TV…
Are “Managed Services” a New Thing?
The reaction to the Internet regulation framework Google and Verizon laid out on August 9th by the tech blogs was extremely uniform: the bloggers harshly criticized the firms, Google in particular, in very personal terms (“sellout,” “surrender monkey“, “greedy swindler,” etc.) and lambasted the agreement for its failings in terms of mobile broadband and managed services.