Broadband

Johnson’s Law of Network Capacity: You can’t be too thin, too rich or have too much bandwidth.

The map above shows the availability of broadband Internet access in the area where my house (the X if you are a stalker) is located.  On this map, provided by ConnectMinnesota, pink indicates high speed Internet service provided by cable modem (my house), lavender shows DSL connections, and yellow indicates no service a'tall. Were it available, fiber broadband would be shown in gold.

I spent last Friday attending a public meeting/hearing of a "task force" that has been charged by our governor to make recommendations concerning broadband distribution in Minnesota - how much should be provided, who should provide it, and how can it be made affordable. And just how important is good Internet access to the economic development of an area anyway. Several intriguing questions were raised:

• Is broadband an essential utility (think electricity, clean water, etc) or a market service (cable television, cell phone service)?
• How do you define broadband in terms of capacity?
• Traditionally people have accepted lower upload than download speeds. Is Web 2.0 changing this?
• Should the government subsidize broadband access in areas where population densities are too low for commercial providers to supply it profitably?

I am no policy-wonk so I have little to say about these issues. My testimony, unsolicited, lasted about three minutes with the only point being that Internet bandwidth needs by schools are set to balloon - and very soon.

Just a little historical perspective... Our district first established a (SLIP) Internet connection and created a wide area network in early 1994 with 2400 bit "hang-up" modems on regular dedicated telephone lines. 2.4KPS speeds were fine since we had only a few users and text-only Internet interface. Our WAN now runs at 100MPS and our district's connection to the cloud is 42MPS. With judicious caching and packet-shaping we don't get a lot of complaints about Internet speed from our 8000 or so users. (We do have "rush hours" like everyone else.)

But I am growing concerned about even the short-term adequacy of our pipe to the cloud for a number of reasons:

• We are seeing increasing state requirements for more online testing, shorter testing windows, and tests that are media-rich.
• We are increasingly using ASPs (Application Service Providers). Our school website and data warehousing/mining solution run on servers outside our WAN. We are looking at external hosting of our e-mail and calendaring services.
• Video and audio conferencing tools like Skype are so simple and specialized equipment-free that more teachers are using them.
• Use of multi-media resources like YouTube, TeacherTube, TED, and iTunes are the rise.
• Our textbook series are nearly all supplemented by online resources - again, many media-rich.
• The coming one-two punch of affordable netbooks and cloud-computing will drive up bandwidth needs. What happens when every kid starts using Zoho or GoogleDocs?

Yes, I know file compression schemes are getting better, but I'll be there is some corollary to Moore's Law that predicts bandwidth needs of individuals/organizations. There are two worries schools should have: does one's region have the infrastructure build to double or triple the broadband speeds when needed? And, if available, can your institution afford the increased capacity?

(PS - 7-20-09 Another factor that might impact the need for more-better broadband would be a large and permanent spike in gas prices. At say $6 a gallon, I predict we would see a sharp rise in shortened school weeks, more online classes, etc.)

My home Internet speed sucks!

Comments

[Greg Carroll]

if the bottom graphic is your home speed you are in Nirvana compared to NZ. At home and school I get 5328kbps down just now and 517kbps up on the same sort of speedtest.
We are in the dark ages here ... most people would be on about 3000kb/s down on 'good' broadband in NZ!!
cheers
Greg

[Doug Johnson]

HI Greg,

So is this why my son in Wellington never e-mails???

Good to have the perspective! Thank you.

Doug

[Richard]

Hi Doug,

I run a US broadband site, a UK mobile broadband site and an Aussie broadband site and was wondering if you be interested in adding a free broadband speed test facility to this post so you and others can run a live speed check? We host it so it doesn't take up any resource and it's very easy to install. You can download it for free here if you are interested http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/free-speedtester/

Thanks,
Richard

[John Pederson]

http://www.muninetworks.org/content/connected-nation-captures-minnesota

Here's what happened (politically) to that task force in that last few weeks.

Federal broadband stimulus funding defines "broadband" as 768k down, 250k up. You are "served" if somebody can advertise that they offer those speeds in your area. The same people that have kept the speeds slow and their profits high have been chosen to define the problem on your behalf.

Why consider libraries when there is a Barnes and Noble on every corner? In fact, let's make sure that nobody is allowed to build libraries in the first place.

There obviously is no problem with broadband in Minnesota. :o)

[Doug Johnson]

Hi John,

I think this is known as letting the inmates run the asylum.

Doug