[MLB-WIRELESS] bandwidth issues for the future/internet acces s

[Adrian Close]

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Tony Langdon wrote:

> This is going to be a lot of fun.  I can see the development of a lot of
> multicast based technology.  Multicast voice and video, maybe even multicast
> internal news servers - one way to stop USENET bandwidth bloat :)
>
> It's a very bandwidth efficient way to address multiple people.

This is kind of off-topic but possibly interesting to many:

If you have a science-fiction bent (and I'm guessing many of us do), read
Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" and "A Deepness In The Sky" for
some interesting ideas on USENET on an interstellar scale.

Fire Upon The Deep stuff:

Aliens civilisations make "first contact" via galactic USENET!  :)

Deepness In the Sky stuff (a semi-prequel):

For example, consider what you might do if you want to establish
interstellar trading routes without FTL.  You want to be damn sure your
client civilisation still exists when you get there after decades of
sub-light travel in stasis, otherwise you have a hold full of expensive
junk, no-one to sell it to and a big hole in your bottom line.  So,
multicast your basic technology info across the light years to ensure that
people also have the knowledge to maintain enough civilisation for you to
trade with.

Oh, and what do you for a network connection when you're travelling at
relativistic speed, many light years from anywhere.  You have a shipboard
net, "USENET" read-only feed and that's about it.  When you hit a planet,
you have access to a much larger network and a whole bunch of people.
This smacks of IPv6 site-local and other addressing schemes to me...

And then there are some interesting ideas about what happens to the
computing code base many years from now.  No-one understands all of it.
Some of it, no-one understands.  But you keep using it because you have
come to rely on it for basic functions.  Code bloat in the extreme...

I could ramble for hours but I'll stop now.  If anyone is interested in
borrowing the books or chatting about this stuff, drop me a line.

Adrian Close			email:	adrian at close.wattle.id.au
1 Old Gippsland Rd.		web:	http://www.close.wattle.id.au/~adrian
Lilydale, VIC, 3140, Australia	mobile:	+61 412 385 201

Echelon teaser: MD5 RX-7 SSL Kiwi TRD DEADBEEF Bubba


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