Dewayne-Net Technology Weblog

[Note: This item comes from friend Steve Goldstein. DLH]

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein@cox.net>
Date: February 3, 2010 6:47:12 AM PST
To: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Internet backbone breaks the 100-gigabit barrier (phase shift mod. + polarization mux.)

<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527445.700-internet-backbone-breaks-the-100gigabit-barrier.html>

…

The first inklings of what the upgrade might look like can be seen in an ultra-fast 900-kilometre fibre-optic link between Paris in France and Frankfurt in Germany installed by telecoms firm Verizon. It is a foretaste of a high-speed internet backbone with enough capacity to satisfy bandwidth-hungry applications well into the future.

…

In today’s fibre-optic backbone, digital 1s and 0s are represented by switching a laser beam on and off. Lasers send dozens of separate signals down each optical fibre at slightly different wavelengths, which together can convey 10 gigabits of data per second. But this techniques has its limitations: trying to raise the data rate for each wavelength won’t work, as the signals start to blur together. The problems of signal integrity are “100 times worse at 100 gigabits than they are at 10″, says Dimple Amin of network equipment maker Ciena of Linthicum, Maryland.

The starting point for the new 100-gigabit technology was to ditch the off-and-on switching, and instead modulate the phase of the light waves – moving them ahead or behind by a fixed increment. The simplest approach is to shift the phase by 90 degrees – one-quarter of a wavelength – to distinguish a 0 from a 1. Higher data rates require a more elaborate process, called quadrature phase-shift keying, which has four possible shifts, +135, +45, -45 and -135 degrees, each representing a different pair of bits, 00, 01, 10 or 11.

That alone isn’t enough to reach 100 gigabits. To achieve that goal requires signals with two different polarisations, which can be separated at the receiver, each carrying 50 gigabits.

Even then, after passing through hundreds of kilometres of fibre, the input signal must be processed with light from an internal laser to extract a clear signal. The receivers are equipped with powerful electronic circuits, which analyse the signal and minimise noise added along the cable, says Amin. “The end points got a lot smarter and can deal with everything in between.”

Without this, “we could never have gotten into the ultra long haul” of 1000 to 1500 kilometres, says Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon’s director of network backbone architectures.

The Canadian telecoms equipment company Nortel, which built the Verizon system, has shown it can transmit signals more than 2000 kilometres in a test on an Australian network owned by Telestra. “The 2000 kilometres was a bit of heroism. For most applications we’re saying it’s more like 1000 kilometres,” says John Sitch, senior adviser on optical R&D at Nortel.

There are still some problems facing the ultra-fast backbone. Noise can be a killer if 10 and 100-gigabit channels are transmitted through the same fibre at closely spaced wavelengths. And the first generation of 100-gigabit systems can only stretch half as far as today’s 10-gigabit systems before signals are lost, Wellbrock says.

“But you don’t need to try 4000 kilometres,” Wellbrock points out. “The majority of traffic in the US is 1500 kilometres or less, and it’s less in Europe.” As first steps go, a near 900-kilometre link isn’t a bad effort.

[Note: This item comes from Dave Farber's IP list. DLH]

From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: January 4, 2010 3:41:19 PM PST
Subject: [IP] Innovation in the Wireless Ecosystem: A Customer-Centric Framework Gerald R. Faulhaber, David J. Farber

International Journal of Communication, Vol 4 (2010)

Abstract

The Federal Communications Commission’s Notice of Inquiry in GN 09-157 Fostering Innovation and Investment in the Wireless Communications Market is a significant event at an opportune moment. Wireless communication has already radically changed the way that not only Americans, but people the world over communicate with each other and access and share information. In this article, we review the wireless industry’s past performance in three dimensions: (i) the rate of innovation, (ii) how competitive the industry is, and (iii) how competitive wireless innovation is. We do so by examining the record of three key layers in the industry’s vertical chain: software applications, devices (handhelds), and the core wireless distribution networks. We find that all three markets exhibit very high rates of innovation, that the markets are competitive, and that this competition has driven innovation. As in previous work (Faulhaber, 2009a) we argue that, absent market failure, regulatory intervention is not appropriate. A customer-centric perspective should govern the FCC’s actions in the wireless ecosystem: let customers decide what they want in this competitive market.

<http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/670>

[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]

From: Michael Cheponis <mac@Culver.Net>
Date: January 2, 2010 4:49:59 AM PST
Subject: What Were the Science Breakthroughs of 2009?

<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science/july-dec09/yearinscience_12-31.html>

Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History

…

“Add to these stories the widespread paranoia across America that the world will end in 2012 because an extinct Mayan civilization from half a millennium ago said so, and that we still need court cases to decide whether or not evolution by natural selection should be taught in our public schools, and I’m left fearing the future of America’s leadership on the world stage of science and technology.

This leadership, as any historian will tell you, drives the economic strength and security of nations. The fall is not from a cliff. More like a slow, downward slide — almost imperceptible from day to day. But as the years pass America will have descended from leaders to players to merely followers as we fade to insignificance, at best hitching a ride on the innovations of others.”

Hotel WiFi Should Be a Right, Not a Luxury
Sarah Lacy
TechCrunch.com
Friday, January 1, 2010; 1:39 PM
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101568_pf.html>

I’m in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee for Christmas and on a drive between Memphis and Nashville I noticed that every $30/night hotel offered free wireless Internet access. Further, when we got to Nashville and checked into the relatively low-frills Holiday Inn Express we had better wireless Internet access than I?ve had in hotels around the US and the world?some of which I paid double to stay in.

What gives with hotel WiFi?

This is a ten-year-old technology that has improved in speed and quality nearly everywhere?in homes, in offices, in public spaces, in coffee shops, in airports?even on planes. You can even get free WiFi at Krystal, a fast food chain that?s on par with White Castle and sells hamburgers for less than $1 each. Over the past two years I?ve stayed at more than two-dozen hotels around the United States and the emerging world. I?ve noticed a trend that seems to fly in the face of basic economics and technology adoption: The pricier and fancier hotel, generally the worse quality the WiFi, if it exists at all.

On a trip to Boston two years ago my fancy downtown, five-star hotel had no wireless access. The brand new W in Santiago, Chile has no wireless access. In India, Rwanda and Argentina I?ve had to buy expensive 24-hour WiFi passes, which can add up to hundreds of dollars per stay, for a connection that was just OK. But I knew better than to complain: The quality of the connection is almost always better in emerging markets than Western Europe.

London is hands-down the worst: I?ve stayed at the Sanderson in London twice and always had a hard time getting online, and I?ve also stayed at the Malmaison where even the wired connection didn?t work. I had to go down to the lobby to get a signal. Even then it was like the early days of wireless where you wandered around holding your laptop looking for bars like you were panning for gold.

Arrington may have his silly germaphobe, fist-bump movement. MG may be determined to hold AT&T accountable for its embarrassingly bad iPhone service. Here?s my outrage: Why in 2010 do so many hotels have zero, unreliable or outrageously expensive wireless Internet access?

This is clearly not a cost issue when economy hotels like Holiday Inn and Days Inn have no problem offering free wireless access from the middle of nowhere in the South. (Not to mention Krystal.) This is an issue of greed or tech ignorance on the part of luxury hotels and consumers and business travelers need to start showing some outrage.

[snip]

Five BitTorrent Predictions for 2010
Written by Ernesto on January 01, 2010
<http://torrentfreak.com/five-bittorrent-predictions-for-2010-100101/>

A whole new and exciting year lies ahead of us, so this is an opportune time for some BitTorrent predictions for 2010. On the upside, video streaming sites will begin experimenting with BitTorrent. One of the negatives is that a major BitTorrent client will be sued by the entertainment industry for assisting copyright infringement.

The last year has been one of the most hectic in BitTorrent’s short-lived history. While the three largest BitTorrent sites – The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt – all faced setbacks in court, the number of BitTorrent users continued to steadily grow.

The new year starts without The Pirate Bay tracker, which was closed in November, and also without Mininova, which saw its site being censored and stripped down by a Dutch court. To counter these losses, several public tracker-only services have made a comeback along with multiple torrent-only storage sites.

Where do we go from here? Let’s make some predictions.

Prediction 1: The Pirate Bay will cease to offer torrent links
After closing its tracker in 2009, The Pirate Bay will further evolve by removing all torrents from its index in the new year. The site will be reduced to a BitTorrent platform that no longer stores torrent files. Users will still be able to submit torrents through a third party service such as Torrage, but instead of linking to these torrent files, The Pirate Bay will list only Magnet links.

During the second half of 2010, The Pirate Bay four will appear before the Appeal Court. They will be found ‘not guilty’ and walk away free. Shortly after this victory in court, Pirate Bay’s YouTube killer The Video Bay will be released to the public.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from reader Randall. DLH]

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40@insightbb.com>
Date: December 31, 2009 4:28:22 PM PST
To: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com, dewayne@warpspeed.com
Subject: The Ones that Mother gives you don’t do anything at all

A Pill for Psychological Pain?

Allison Elliott
College: Arts and Sciences

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 22, 2009) – Headaches and heartaches. Broken bones and broken spirits. Hurting bodies and hurt feelings. We often use the same words to describe physical and mental pain. Over-the-counter pain relieving drugs have long been used to alleviate physical pain, while a host of other medications have been employed in the treatment of depression and anxiety. But is it possible that a common painkiller could serve double duty, easing not just the physical pains of sore joints and headaches, but also the pain of social rejection? A research team led by psychologist C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology has uncovered evidence indicating that acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) may blunt social pain.

“The idea—that a drug designed to alleviate physical pain should reduce the pain of social rejection—seemed simple and straightforward based on what we know about neural overlap between social and physical pain systems. To my surprise, I couldn’t find anyone who had ever tested this idea,” DeWall said.

According to a study due to be published in the journal Psychological Science, DeWall and colleagues were correct. Physical and social pain appear to overlap in the brain, relying on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms.

DeWall and colleagues investigated this connection through two experiments. In the first experiment, 62 healthy volunteers took 1,000 milligrams daily of either acetaminophen or a placebo. Each evening, participants reported how much they experienced social pain using a version of the “Hurt Feelings Scale” – a measurement tool widely accepted by psychologists as a valid measure of social pain. Hurt feelings and social pain decreased over time in those taking acetaminophen, while no change was observed in subjects taking the placebo. Levels of positive emotions remained stable, with no significant changes observed in either group. These results indicate that acetaminophen use may decrease self-reported social pain over time, by impacting emotions linked to hurt feelings.

“We were very excited about these initial findings,” DeWall said. “The next step was to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the findings.”

[snip]

<http://uknow.uky.edu/content/pill-psychological-pain>
<http://snipurl.com/txp7j>

Is aviation security mostly for show?

By Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Incident on Detroit-bound plane led to tightening of airport security
• Bruce Schneier says politicians react to incidents by imposing “security theater”
• Trying to predict what terrorists will do next is futile, Schneier says
• He says it’s better to put resources into investigations
Editor’s note: Bruce Schneier is an author and technologist who specializes in security. His books include “Applied Cryptography,” “Beyond Fear” and “Schneier on Security” and his other writing can be seen at <http://www.schneier.com/>

(CNN) — Last week’s attempted terror attack on an airplane heading from Amsterdam to Detroit has given rise to a bunch of familiar questions.

How did the explosives get past security screening? What steps could be taken to avert similar attacks? Why wasn’t there an air marshal on the flight? And, predictably, government officials have rushed to institute new safety measures to close holes in the system exposed by the incident.

Reviewing what happened is important, but a lot of the discussion is off-base, a reflection of the fundamentally wrong conception most people have of terrorism and how to combat it.

Terrorism is rare, far rarer than many people think. It’s rare because very few people want to commit acts of terrorism, and executing a terrorist plot is much harder than television makes it appear.

The best defenses against terrorism are largely invisible: investigation, intelligence, and emergency response. But even these are less effective at keeping us safe than our social and political policies, both at home and abroad. However, our elected leaders don’t think this way: They are far more likely to implement security theater against movie-plot threats.

A “movie-plot threat” is an overly specific attack scenario. Whether it’s terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists contaminating the milk supply, or terrorists attacking the Olympics, specific stories affect our emotions more intensely than mere data does.

Stories are what we fear. It’s not just hypothetical stories — terrorists flying planes into buildings, terrorists with explosives strapped to their legs or with bombs in their shoes, and terrorists with guns and bombs waging a co-ordinated attack against a city are even scarier movie-plot threats because they actually happened.

“Security theater” refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards.

Airport-security examples include the National Guard troops stationed at U.S. airports in the months after 9/11 — their guns had no bullets. The U.S. color-coded system of threat levels, the pervasive harassment of photographers, and the metal detectors that are increasingly common in hotels and office buildings since the Mumbai terrorist attacks, are additional examples.

To be sure, reasonable arguments can be made that some terrorist targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because of the numbers of people who commute daily.

But there are literally millions of potential targets in any large country — there are 5 million commercial buildings alone in the United States — and hundreds of potential terrorist tactics. It’s impossible to defend every place against everything, and it’s impossible to predict which tactic and target terrorists will try next.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn’t truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn’t make any sense.

Often, this “something” is directly related to the details of a recent event. We confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on airplanes. We tell people they can’t use an airplane restroom in the last 90 minutes of an international flight. But it’s not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning.

If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we’ve wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we’ve wasted our money. Terrorists don’t care what they blow up and it shouldn’t be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our current response to terrorism is a form of “magical thinking.” It relies on the idea that we can somehow make ourselves safer by protecting against what the terrorists happened to do last time.

[snip]

Find this article at: <http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html>

[Note: This comment comes from friend Charlie Brown. DLH]

From: Charles Brown <cbrown@flyingcircuit.com>
Date: December 29, 2009 10:56:11 AM PST
To: pozar@lns.com
Cc: Brown Charles <cbrown@flyingcircuit.com>, dave@farber.net, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Subject: FCC Brings On “Distinguished Scholar in Residence” shakes up the broadcasters…

Tim,

Mr. Benjamin uses a First Amendment argument to undermine the constitutional authority of the FCC, for the express purpose of assigning private property rights to the radio spectrum. This appears to be part of the continuing effort to build a legal framework to implement the economic arguments laid out by Mr. Coase (economist) to monetize the radio spectrum via market mechanisms. It seems reasonable to describe this phenomenon as “deterministic”, in the sense that the legal theories are designed to fit the “perceived” political imperative.

I interpret this as technocratic preparation for moving spectrum from the broadcasters and sell it to the cellcos. “Decisions based on facts”, as our fearless leader likes to say. Mr. Benjamin also states that auctions are the most efficient process, among other specious assumptions.

In considering the potential outcomes, The Supremes have always backed the FCC in these matters and we can count on Congress to continue its wanton desire for auction proceeds. This one could easily go over $1 million per member of Congress, not counting gratuitous local air time for political campaigns, legal/lobbying fees, and myriad forms of soft money.

However, there is another perspective: the common law rule of “priority-in-use” to govern spectrum allocation. Those who do the best job of productively utilizing the spectrum get the rights, whether it be a neighborhood, city, town, rural community, or other non-boundary definition. Before the FCC and the broadcasters there was common law.

Consider the case of wireless microphones as representing the “priority-in-use” legal theory under common law. The recent “white spaces” ruling provided wireless microphones with default, primary status as incumbent services. To my knowledge, these devices were never licensed by the FCC. Also, consider that the database requirements for white spaces devices enable a “command and control” system; privately owned and operated geolocation services. In effect, authorization services.

Since the public interest groups are too busy missing the point with Net Neutrality, they don’t seem to understand how to use spectrum politics to achieve a “bit commons”, the most efficient and politically acceptable outcome in my view. IANAL, but there seems to be a cogent, defensible legal theory based on the First Amendment and common law. It seems a straightforward argument that the radio spectrum as a “public good” and “communications medium” is vectored directly to the First Amendment. E.g., the public service obligations of the broadcast licensees.

The First Amendment was always relevant in this debate, if not for the reasons Mr. Benjamin has stated. It’s the elephant in the room.

Charlie

From: Tim Pozar <pozar@lns.com>
Date: December 28, 2009 4:47:32 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net, ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com

Subject: FCC Brings On “Distinguished Scholar in Residence” shakes
up the broadcasters…

Not sure if folks saw this announcement:

<http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/12/fcc-distinguished-scholar-in-residence-1.html>

Brett Glass on Lessons from Laramie: Broadband Innovation on the Wireless Frontier

18 years ago, Brett Glass — an electrical engineer, inventor, and technology columnist — established LARIAT, the first terrestrial wireless Internet service provider (WISP), in Laramie, Wyoming. What’s it like to roll up your sleeves and roll out high speed connectivity to underserved and unserved areas with, literally, one’s bare hands? What are the logistics? What are the challenges? In this talk, Brett explores these questions and others.

Produced 22 Dec 2009: <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/12/glass>

[Note: This item comes from reader Brett Glass. DLH]

From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>
Date: December 22, 2009 9:19:30 PM PST
To: “Dewayne Hendricks” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: No One Is Going To Save You Fools

At 07:43 PM 12/22/2009, John Quarterman wrote:

Bob is right about the right’s story, and that works for the right, because the right is about tribal us against them.

This isn’t a “right vs. left” issue. People on the political left have every bit as much to lose — if not more — than those on the right if the Internet is regulated.

But to win on matters like net neutrality a more inclusive story is needed, non-zero-sum, participatory, about community.

No, it is not. To make an effort to “win on network neutrality” is, in fact, to enlist in a tribal war — in which the billion dollar content providers are attacking ISPs of all sizes (and not just large ones; it would harm small ones like me far more). You’d be fighting on the side of Google, and Amazon, and Microsoft. Who are far more dangerous than even the largest telecomm companies, because they are completely unregulated.

By supporting their cause, you would be their fool (as described in the article mentioned in the subject line above), manipulated by their propaganda into doing their bidding.

Because that’s what the Internet enables: participation on a scale never before seen, fueling innovation that increases the size of the pie for everyone.

Unfortunately, as Dave Farber has said many a time, “network neutrality” regulation would choke off the very innovation which is most important to increasing the size of the pie: innovation by service providers.

This is all relevant to net neutrality. What industry spends even more lobbying Congress than health insurers? Telecoms.

And what company has far outspent the telecomms in contributions to the current administration — giving nearly a billion dollars to the Obama campaign and enlisting many so-called “public interest” groups to do its bidding via large contributions? Google.

Hell, we’re even trying to help the telecoms!

And all telecomm companies are obviously evil. Sure.

On the path they’re on, they’ll end up being like GM when NTT comes in and sells 100Mbps FTTH that actually works for a reasonable price. 50 years ago Motown was the industrial leader of the world; now Detroit is a ghost town. On Internet time it won’t take that long for the duopoly to gut themselves and us if we let them.

There is not a duopoly, and will not be — unless the “network neutrality” regulation you advocate is passed. If it is, it will destroy the small competitors which are trying to grow to compete with the telephone and cable companies, leaving a duopoly.

You are working against your own cause.

So let’s use the Internet to stop them.

…because we’re all evil, right?

Perhaps we should use the Internet to expose the REAL truth about this matter, which is that network “neutrality” regulation (which is not, in fact, neutral at all) would do great harm to innovation and hence to everyone on the Internet except for a few large content providers.

–Brett Glass