Jack:
Heya. Some quick comments:
> Ah, but therein lies another conundrum... if you let your users do the
> valuable and interesting stuff, there will be two problems -- decreased
> reliability and increased support cost due to decentralization of core
> features (mail, web proxy, etc), and
It's an interesting question: what services stay centralized
and what moves into the edge of the network? Or, if you add network
storage into the equation, what services move *outward*. Mostly when
people talk about that shiny new era of "home-networking" that's
coming Real Soon Now, they speak of two mass-market 'killer apps':
VoIP and video on demand. Me, I think it's going to be something
else entirely. In any case, my point here is: I think these apps that
Jack Home-User will want to run in these new boxes are going to be
these bright-and-shiny new ones that don't really exist yet. I don't
think Jack will want to run the "legacy" sorts of services that other
target characters would. Durn you, Jack.
> ...increased vulnerability to security
> issues. Thence ultra-restrictive Terms of Service documents like
> @Home's. I have an inside view of this due to the local @Home abuse
> manager being a friend of my wife's -- they don't particularly want to
> prevent their users doing interesting stuff like mail service,
> masquerading, etc. Unfortunately the people doing it tend to drop in a
> RedHat box without thinking about the consequences. They get nailed
> within hours and become spam and porn relays with ultra-fast upstream
> connections, and @Home has to struggle to stay off the MAPS RBL and the
> FBI's top 10.
Huh. That's a very interesting motivation of the broadband ISPs
that I hadn't fully considered.
> I don't think it'll be too long before the big ISPs all take steps to
> prevent their users from doing their own DNS, mail, web servers, etc.,
> and end-users wanting to do that will have to go back to the mom-n-pops
> where service is more expensive but higher quality.
When you consider the plethora of broadband flavors and vendors
connecting the Jacks of the world, it seems that the forces of
commoditization will drive the ISPs to bundle more and more each year.
This is as you suggest, where ISPs will offer AOL-like walled-gardens
when it comes to things 'home networking'. That is, "don't worry about
mail, web, firewalls, device-discovery and auto-configuration...we'll do
all of that for you automagically -- in fact, sign here and agree you
will *not* worry about it".
But even in that Jacktopia, *some* monetizable, pay-as-you-go
services will be installed in the access device at the very edge of the
cloud. I think the ISPs will need that, and year-after-year one more
services will become commoditized, joining the bundle and falling off
the "pay-as-you-go" list. Like when you had to pay extra for voicemail
on cellphone plan...
> ...You might have an
> insight into this that I'd like to hear -- aren't you the guy who used
> to run the Bay Area ISP best.net?
Yeah, that was me. Suuuuure it was. And James Best, from the
Dukes of Hazzard, was my mother-cousin-sister-uncle too. ;)
Ahem. :)
-Scott
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