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!

Grateful for Gary

If affluent children enjoy beautiful campuses, arts programs, interesting literature, modern technology, field trips, carefree recess, and teachers who know them, I suggest that we create such schools for all children. What’s good for the sons and daughters of the billionaires should be good enough the rest of the children, too. Gary Stager

Gary Stager gets on my nerves. Often. But it most often it is his pugnacious style, not his conclusions, that irritates me.

But then there are worse things than having an author irritate one now and again.

His article 'School Wars" in Good Magazine, a mainstream "life-style" publication should be required reading by - well - by everyone. He does a slam dunk on the impact business-driven politics have had on education over the past 8 years or so in the U.S.

The voice of the professional educator is rarely heard in the popular press. We are very prolific when it comes to writing for each other, but few of us make the effort to preach to the sinner and not just the choir. Gary's doing missionary work for education.

Thank you, Gary. Keep up the good work. Continue to irritate us.

Chris's observation

Inspired by Chris Lehmann's blog post, The Beatings Will Contiue Until Morale Improves. Thanks, Chris.