Deconstructing Code

Straightening out the story on telecom's routing game

Straightening out the story on telecom's routing game
AT&T accuses MCI of improperly routing domestic calls to Canada and back into the USA on AT&T's network so AT&T gets stuck with the fee of delivering the call. Verizon and SBC also accuse MCI of disguising long-distance calls as local to avoid paying fees on them

Posted by rshah on October 06, 2003| Comments (0)

Sprint preps 'government-grade' net

Sprint preps 'government-grade' net
Sprint's Government Systems Division is readying a new "government-grade" intranet built on Sprint's own IP backbone, with no connection to the public Internet.

Posted by rshah on April 03, 2003| Comments (0)

RIAA Sues Backbones

RIAA Sues Backbones
The RIAA has taken aim at major Internet Service Providers as part of its battle against online music sites, hoping to cut file trading sites out of America by suing America's backbone providers.

Posted by rshah on September 11, 2002| Comments (0)

Utility bills: Water, gas...Ricochet?

Utility bills: Water, gas...Ricochet?
Traditional utilities such as gas, water and heat may soon have a cutting-edge companion: the Ricochet wireless network. Aerie Networks, which bought the network for $8.25 million, has plans to let city governments sell the service in much the same way that utilities provide consumers with water and electricity, company officials said.

Posted by rshah on November 06, 2001| Comments (0)

Switch to Holography

Switch to Holography
It's not just the pipes that need fixing. The traffic switches on the Internet backbone are kludgy electronic devices with limited bandwidth. Trellis Photonics (www.trellis-photonics.com), a Columbia, Maryland-based company, wants to replace them with a cheaper, faster, all-optical switching option dubbed electroholography.

Posted by rshah on October 05, 2001| Comments (0)

Taming the Wild, Wild Web

Taming the Wild, Wild Web
Businesses are growing so frustrated by the unreliability of the public Internet--the network most commonly used for Web surfing, e-mail and other familiar functions--that many have moved their most critical applications to alternative semiprivate networks. But doing so almost inevitably means bringing more of the network under commercial control.

Posted by rshah on July 26, 2001| Comments (0)

NAP Set To Open in Miami

NAP Set To Open in Miami
NAP of the Americas promises telecommunications carriers the fastest access to Latin America and the rest of the world. The NAP in Miami's Overton neighborhood, is the first large Network Access Point (NAP) to open since the federal government mandated four as part of its exit from the Internet several years ago. It's the first ever to be "carrier-neutral," run by a consortium rather than an incumbent or legacy carrier.

Posted by rshah on June 27, 2001| Comments (0)

Broadband For All - Canada's 'New National Dream'

Broadband For All - Canada's 'New National Dream'
The Canadian National Broadband Task Force recently acclaimed universal access to the broadband Internet as Canada's "new national dream," and has estimated it will cost $4 billion Canadian dollars to deploy broadband to all Canadians by 2004. Industry Minister Brian Tobin, who pledged to adhere to the 2004 deadline, compared this commitment to Canada's "original" national dream to link its coasts by railway in the late 1800s.

Posted by rshah on June 20, 2001| Comments (0)

When private peering arrangements go bad

When private peering arrangements go bad
Cable & Wireless likely didn't make any new friends on the Internet last week when it started enforcing its newly revised peering policy. Cable & Wireless terminated private peering network agreements with 14 ISPs, including troubled PSINet, which Cable & Wireless said no longer met the ISP's peering requirements.

Posted by rshah on June 17, 2001| Comments (0)

Net blackout marks Web's Achilles heel

Net blackout marks Web's Achilles heel
Although a connection between Cable & Wireless and PSINet was re-established Tuesday night, the squabble illustrates just how fragile the Internet's series of connected, largely unregulated private networks can be. The Net has built its strength in part on this decentralized, unregulated environment, but the ISPs' fight underscores that very little can prevent future blackouts like this from happening.

Posted by rshah on June 07, 2001| Comments (0)

C&W De-Peers PSInet

C&W De-Peers PSInet
Big network providers like C&W don't peer with the small fries, and if you have a peering arrangement with one of them, you're right near the top - Tier One or Two Network provider. If C&W is dropping peering for PSINet, that means that, in their opinion, PSINet isn't classed as a Top-Tier network provider anymore. And that is the sound of the bell tolling doom for any network provider out there. That's why this is news.

Posted by rshah on June 05, 2001| Comments (0)

Bottleneck on the high-speed highway

Bottleneck on the high-speed highway
Much of the long-haul fiber-optic data networks has been built along railroad lines. For their part, railroads were happy to license the land to the network companies. But now it looks like they might not have had clear ownership of the land in the first place, putting network companies that have already laid their networks there in an awkward legal position.

Posted by rshah on May 29, 2001| Comments (0)

Role of Public and Private Exchanges

Role of Public and Private Exchanges
One of the myths about the Internet is that it's an open data exchange. In this popular mythology, the Internet is the equivalent of an egalitarian Athenian forum, where every server has equal standing, and every router shares the burden of transmitting data from place to place. Sounds utopian, doesn't it? Too bad it's a lie.

Posted by rshah on May 25, 2001| Comments (0)

Building a Better Backbone

Building a Better Backbone
Surging Internet growth has put pressure on telecom networks to keep up. Their most advanced R&D is going toward expanding the capacity of the long-haul cables that cross continents and dive under oceans.

Posted by rshah on May 15, 2001| Comments (0)

High-Speed Access Coming Soon?

High-Speed Access Coming Soon?
You're excused if you don't know this, but broadband Internet access really does exist. In fact, an estimated 5 to 6 million American households have speedy Net connections. Yet, if you're like most Americans plodding about the Internet these days, sipping bandwidth through 56 Kbps straws, you may wonder why you're not one of them. Saying they're equally concerned, legislators embarked on a mission this month to remove the clog from the broadband pipe.

Posted by rshah on May 14, 2001| Comments (0)

WILL THE OLIGOPOLY PREVAIL?

WILL THE OLIGOPOLY PREVAIL?
Will Sprint, UUNet and C&W retain this oligopoly - or will new players and new business models disrupt the balance of power? The answer will depend largely on how well challengers can differentiate their backbone offerings.

Posted by rshah on April 12, 2001| Comments (0)

Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers

Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers
After years of predictable growth, the size of the routing table and traffic in it exploded during the past six months, topping 104,000 entries in March, compared with 75,000 a year ago. Moreover, frequent updates to the routing table entries by network managers are causing instability in the Internet's backbone routing infrastructure, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on April 02, 2001| Comments (0)

Top 17 Fictions About the Broadband

Top 17 Fictions About the Broadband
While other grassroots groups and lobbyists have given up the fight against the monopolies, one activist stands alone—refusing to ignore the current state of anti-competitive activities at work in the high-speed service arena, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on February 28, 2001| Comments (0)

Peering problems with Asian ISPs

Peering problems with Asian ISPs
Asian ISPs are wasting millions of dollars routing data through the United States, because of the lack of major peering points

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2001| Comments (0)

UUNet Policy Offers No-charge Peering

Posted by rshah on January 10, 2001| Comments (0)

Fiber Optic Network as a Public Utility

Fiber Optic Network as a Public Utility
Touting Newnan as a "fiber optic city second to none in the nation," Newnan Mayor Keith Brady discussed the Newnan Utilities fiber optic system before a state audience, and pointed out the advantages of treating a fiber-optic system and sophisticated broad-band communications as a utility

Posted by rshah on November 03, 2000| Comments (0)

Michigan woos Covisint with network access point

Michigan woos Covisint with network access point
As part of Michigan's bid to keep Covisint, a business-to-business marketplace that could become the world's largest e-commerce company, the state has offered to help finance a national network access point (NAP).

Posted by rshah on October 19, 2000| Comments (0)

Internap

Internap
see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on October 04, 2000| Comments (0)

FCC's OPP Working Paper on Internet Interconnection

FCC's OPP Working Paper on Internet Interconnection
On the whole, it is a primer on a number of Internet interconnection issues (e.g. peering and international cost-sharing arrangements).

Posted by rshah on September 27, 2000| Comments (0)

ISP giants to keep smaller rivals at bay

ISP giants to keep smaller rivals at bay
Although the market for Internet service providers is expanding rapidly, it will continue to be dominated by the largest players, such as America Online and MSN, according to a new study.

Posted by rshah on September 26, 2000| Comments (0)