D6 Interview: Kevin Martin and Lowell McAdam on Communications Technologies in the United States

Yesterday at the Wall Street Journal D6 (All Things Digital #6) Conference, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg interviewed FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam on a wide range of topics including network neutrality, broadband, infrastructure, universal connectivity, competitive technologies, open access, cell phone technologies and contracts, etc in the United States.

Two excellent interview videos (each a little over six minutes) are embedded below and are well worth watching/listening to.

Part 1 Video:



Part 2 Video:

Akamai Report: The State of the Internet Q1 2008

Akamai has published their first quarterly “State of the Internet” report for the January to March (1st quarter) 2008 time period. The company will continue to publish these quarterly reports using data gathered across Akamai’s global server network about attack traffic and broadband adoption, as well as trends seen in this data over time. The report will also aggregate publicly available news and information about notable events seen throughout the quarter, including Denial of Service attacks, Web site hacks, and network events.

Akamai is headquartered in Cambrige, Massachusetts with hardware distributed around the world that, according to their Wikipedia definition, transparently mirrors web content (usually media objects such as audio, graphics, animation, video) stored on customer servers. Though the domain name is the same, the IP address points to an Akamai server rather than the customer's server. The Akamai server is automatically picked depending on the type of content and the user's network location. In addition to image caching, Akamai provides services which accelerate dynamic and personalized content, J2EE-compliant applications, and streaming media to the extent that such services frame a localized perspective.

Here's some interesting highlights from the 2008 Q1 report:

• During the first quarter, Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 125 unique countries around the world.
• China and the United States were the two largest attack traffic sources, accounting for some 30% of this traffic in total.
  
• Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at 23 unique network ports.
• Many of the ports that saw the highest levels of attack traffic were targeted by worms, viruses, and bots that spread across the Internet several years ago.
• From a global perspective, South Korea had the highest measured levels of “high broadband” (>5 Mbps) connectivity.
• In the United States, Delaware topped the list, with over 60% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater.
• At the other end of the bandwidth spectrum, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands topped the list of slowest countries, with 95% or more of the connections to Akamai from both countries occurring at below 256 Kbps.
• In the United States, Washington State and Virginia turned in the highest percentages of sub-256 Kbps connections. However, in contrast to the international measurements, these states only saw 21% and 18% of connections below 256 Kbps respectively.
• A number of major network “events” occurred during the first quarter that impacted millions of Internet users.
• Cable cuts in the Mediterranean Sea severed Internet connectivity between the Middle East and Europe, drastically slowing communications.
• Cogent’s de-peering of Telia impacted Internet communications for selected Internet users in the United States and Europe for a two-week period.
• A routing change by Pakistan Telecom that spread across the Internet essentially took YouTube, a popular Internet video sharing site, offline for several hours.

There is a lot of good information in this free report - you can download it in PDF format here.

Passive Optical Networks (PONs) Podcast

Mike Q and I recorded "Passive Optical Networks (PONs)" last night. Below are the show note questions. You can listen directly by turning up your speakers and clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can get this one, listen to others, and subscribe to our podcasts by following this link. If you don't have iTunes and want to listen to other podcasts and read full sets of shownotes using your web browser, follow this link.
*****

Intro: In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems.

Podcast Questions:

Mike: Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a little but about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H)

Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network?

Mike: OK, so what’s a PON?

Mike: What are the PON Architectural Choices?

Mike: What is Centralized Splitting?

Mike: What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting?

Mike: What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs?

Mike: What are the Outside Plant Components?

Mike: What’s an ONT?

Mike: Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field?

Component and Technology Pictures:

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter: 1 Fiber In -> 32 Fibers Out!

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter with Cover Removed: Optical Splitting is done by fusing fibers

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Splitter Detail

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Fiber Detail - Note Fibers Are Numbered

Verizon FiOS CO Hindged Panel Showing WDM Modules

Verizon FiOS Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH)

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Closed

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Open

Reference List:

FiOS: Our Future
James Armstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James Todd
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2008

Passive Optical Network Splitter
Lawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen Booher
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2006

FTTH Explained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhanced services
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/
Michael Kunigonis, Product Line Manager: Access Corning Cable Systems

One Billion Web Video Viewers Predicted by 2013

ABI Research has an interesting new study out that forecasts at least one billion in 2013 viewers will access video via the web - this is approximately four times the number of viewers who currently use the web t watch video. Here's a quote from ABI Senior Analyst Cesar Bachelet:

The rapid expansion of broadband video creates opportunities across a number of market sectors..... A wide variety of actors aim to gain a share of this fast-growing market: not only content owners such as the BBC and NBC Universal, and Internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo!, but also a range of new entrants including user-generated content sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion, broadband video sites such as CinemaNow and Lovefilm, and Internet TV providers such as Apple and Zattoo.”

Technologies discusses include content distribution networks that cache content closer to the user, peer-to-peer networks which leverage users’ PCs, and hybrid networks which combine these two approaches. This is serious business for service providers - how should they react? Bachelet recommends the following:

Pay-TV providers should refrain from knee-jerk responses, or adopting defensive measures aimed at discouraging consumers from using those services. That would only produce resentment from subscribers and likely defections from their services.

He recommends an “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach, in an attempt to turn the threat into an opportunity. Here's more:

Particularly for those who own broadband infrastructure, PC-based services can be an ideal complement to their core business. They can offer access to content via this increasingly popular alternative platform. They also can offer content beyond that available through traditional channels, and they can reach a new set of subscribers.

We've seen the Internet flip some industries upside down - the one that first comes to my mind is the newspaper business which has been cut out of significant advertising and classified revenue by sites like Craigslist. We'll see if the Pay-TV people can turn this coming threat into an opportunity.

Run a Speed Test and Support Broadband Reform in the U. S.

I've written here frequently about the broadband divide in the United States - poor availability, low relative (to much of the rest of the world) speeds where you can get it and high cost. A recent post by Mike Q referencing a piece from E-Business titled The Sad State of the United States Broadband Industry describes broadband services in our country:

Although the Internet was started here, the U.S. can't seem to catch up with other developed nations when it comes to giving citizens access to high-speed connections.

For the second year running, the U.S. ranked 15th among the 30 members of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in terms of broadband availability. Denmark ranked first again in the annual OECD survey, followed by a host of European and Asian nations. Indeed, while the number of Americans with access to broadband service rose 20 percent last year, to nearly 70 million people, the most in the OECD, that amounted to just 23 of every 100 residents. By contrast, the top five countries in the OECD ranking all sport per-capita penetration rates of better than 30 percent.

Lack of modern definition and policy by the FCC, the antiquated Telecommunications Act of 1996, politics, business decisions...... lots of variables have resulted in many of our global competitors like Korea, Sweden, and Japan passing us by. FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps recently admitted:

America's record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country.

So..... what can we as individuals do? Last year SpeedMatters.org published the first-ever state-by-state report on Internet connection speed [PDF] and they are currently collecting data for a 2008 report. You can help by running a short (< 60 seconds) speed test - your data will be included in the SpeedMatters 2008 report. Here's a link to the test:



I'll be writing more about this over the summer.

My Summer 2008 "See How Paperless I Can Become" Project

I'm not sure about you but the bag I lug around seems to get heavier and heavier - I have a tendency to blame my notebook computer for much of the weight so today I took a look at what was in my bag. It is loaded with folders full of paper. Here's a shot of what I pulled out this morning - I don't have a scale handy but I'm guessing there is at least ten pounds of paper here.

A quick scan of what's in the picture indicates I could lighten up about 90 percent of the pile - around 9 pounds - if I moved the stuff I've printed out to various electronic forms to read, annotate and file.

If I make an effort could I go without paper? Maybe. I currently carry an iPhone, an Amazon Kindle and a 13 inch MacBook. I think I've got a nice combination that I can conscientiously work with to lighten my paper load.

Here's specs on the three along with how I think I can use each:

iPhone

• 4.8 ounces.
• Goes in my shirt pocket, not my bag.
• Use for email and web browsing when not near a PC.
• Also on the fly viewing of email attached Word documents, spreadsheets, PDF's, etc.

MacBook

• 5.1 pounds.
• the power adapter weighs .71 pounds.
• I also carry an optical mouse that weighs 5.2 ounces.
• Use for email, web browsing, document editing, podcasting etc when convenient.

Amazon Kindle

• 10.3 ounces
• Use primarily for for document reading, limited web browsing and I can even check my email using the Kindle in a pinch
• Also use to read my daily subscription to the Boston Globe

Power adapters and cables for the iPhone and Kindle add another 6 or so ounces - adding the major electronic devices up I come up with about 7 pounds in my bag. I also carry a composition book for taking handwritten notes and a bunch of pens and pencils, a laser pointer/slide clicker, 3 or 4 thumb drives, etc adding maybe another pound. Some things I cannot get electronically (at least not yet), including many of the magazines/journals I read - they add another half a pound or so. Summing it all up I'm looking at about 9 pounds without any extra paper documents and....... I could stop blaming my notebook computer - not bad!

I'll write about my project progress every once in a while over the summer and will be sure to include a picture or two.

My Travels with the iPhone and the Kindle Combination

Last Friday I had a meeting with Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) Video Arts and Technology Program students, faculty and administrators. BMCC has an NSF project grant titled "Creating Career Pathways for Women and Minorities in Digital Video Technology" – an exciting project with lots of excellent results!.

As usual, I drove early in the morning to New Haven, CT and took the train from New Haven to Grand Central Station . In the past I've lugged a notebook computer with me for work on the train and have brought lots of "hard copy" with me including reports to review, periodicals to read, etc. This trip I decided to ditch the notebook and piles of heavy paper and travel light - carrying just the iPhone and the Kindle.

Prior to leaving I converted a number of documents I needed to review to Amazon Kindle (.azw) format. Amazon provides a free conversion service for registered Kindle users for Microsoft Word (.doc), Web page (.html and .htm) and Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf) file formats using a unique email address. Amazon replies by email with a link to each of the the converted azw files and the user pulls the files off and transfers them to their Kindle using a USB cable. Here's a diagram outlining the free conversion service procedure:

I had a relaxing two hour train ride from New Haven to Grand Central, getting lots of work related reading done using the Kindle. I was especially happy to have a 208 (!) page document I needed to read converted and on the Kindle. Not only did I save lugging 208 pages of paper - I probably saved a small tree!

My meeting in New York went great - the group I met with had several relevant documents that I asked them to email me as attachments so I could read on the train ride back. They ended up sending me the 4 large Word documents as attachments that I received on my iPhone. I then forwarded the documents to a pay conversion service Amazon provides that delivered converted azw files wirelessly to the Kindle for 10 cents each. Here's a diagram outlining the paid conversion service procedure:

[FYI: Don't think you can spam my Kindle now that you know my free and not-free Kindle conversion email addresses - I have to authorize all conversion receiving email addresses!]

Overall an excellent experience - it was neat to move files around from one device to another while traveling 50-60 miles per hour on the train and then read them on a high resolution E Ink Kindle screen. I ended up getting just as much work done without the laptop with the added bonus of no eye strain.