Eric:
Heya. I'm not trying to be facetious here at all,
but I wanted to comment: Jack Home-User is the target
market for most "home-networking" stuff, but the reality
appears to be that Jack doesn't want to buy any of that
stuff yet.
What I mean is, in a way, the next-big-Internet thing
of post-PC info-appliance era of 'home-networking' is a victim
of the Internet's early success. For example, when Jack connects
to E-Trade to sell CSCO, there's about 5 different networks and
50 computers his transaction goes thru. For him it's a mouse
click. All of the "heavy lifting" and troublesome networking
equipment has been hidden from Jack, and he *likes* it that way.
It's a very intimidating prospect to then convince him that "now
you should *buy* some of that equipment and put it in your own
home". Errrrr...*sure* he will.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this conundrum
(way too much time), and IMNSHO the only way that Jack Home-User
is ever going to have a home-network is if his ISP bundles one
when he upgrades to a broadband modem. That is, it's not just
a modem anymore, it's one of those fancy-smancy 'residential
gateways' from someone like 2Wire. The current problem is that
those things cost $400 to build, since they're typically stuffed
with expensive OS's (WindRiver) and expensive embedded firewalls
(SonicWall) and high-end embedded processors (like Philip's
Tri-Media processor).
What this "bundled gateway" market needs, obviously,
is a gateway box that costs $50 to build because it uses LEAF
and a low-low-end 486: the casing is more expensive than the
content.
That solves the OEMs problem. But now the ISP has a
problem: it's not really in their financial interest to give
Jack a gateway to begin with. They don't meter his bandwidth
(this is Jack, not Jauque in this model ;), and since they
bundled the gateway, and it's got all these advanced features,
Jack Home-user is now most likely to call the ISP to ask for help
setting the thing up. Jack's only paying $35/mo for broadband
service, and a single tech-support call costs $20 just to answer
the phone. So Jack becomes too-expensive a proposition to give a
gateway to, and so they don't. Wither the 2Wires of the world. :)
What the ISPs want, really, is to somehow discover a new
revenue stream from these gateways and people like Jack. Would
Jack pay an extra $5 a month "maintenance service" for his new
gateway? He might, if it *really* did something valuable for him.
Could the ISPs offer such a service to Jack: a web-based remote
maintenance service which they could resell for more than they
paid for? They might, if I ever get EchoWare finished. :)
-Scott
On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Eric Wolzak wrote:
> Hello
> i try to present another user, that at least in my part of the world is
> not so infrequent (funny word)
>
> Jack Home-user
>
> A family father working in an insurance company, A man you
> don't even expect to have a computer. But he has one, and now the
> children want to have one too. He has never heard of another
> operating sysem besides Windows, he really doesn't even know
> what an operating system is. And now a fellow told him that he can
> use a floppy to connect all his computers too the internet over one
> account.
> He is very happy that the diskimage is selfextracting and he has
> got not much more to do than fill out a form on his windows
> machine to let it install the modules itself and change the
> configurationscripts automatically.
> With packages like sshd and so one he has nothing to do, even if
> he could succesfully log in, he hasn't the slightest idea what
> router# means and he doesn't want to know either.
> He is very happy that his "router "(what ever that may be) functions
> and after visiting a scanner page he is now sure: "so secure, he
> was never before "
> After a while jack, being very reluctant in throwing away money ,
> wondered if it is not possible to remote controll the router from a
> windows programm, use the router as a printer server, perhaps
> even answer the phone, fax etc.
> security is after all not that important
>
> I hope, i didn't took the wrong words for the description.
>
> for this kind of user i made the isdn install script.
> by the way this user is a compilation of users i met on another
> german mailinglist :=)
> Eric Wolzak
>
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