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Ärende: FidoNews 25:40 [02/05]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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                   FidoNet - Where to next?
                   Russell Tiedt, 5:7105/1

Comments on the future of FidoNet ...

Bandwidth is becoming ever cheaper, and being made available at more
and faster rates. Which is fantastic, except that the technology that
is enabling this expolsive growth, in available bandwidth, is going to
obsolete POTS technology, in a very short period of time.

How so, you might ask, well VOIP (Voice Over IP), is way, way cheaper,
than POTS, things like SKYPE, are already pushing that envelope, but
it is also way, way cheaper for the Telecomunications Companies to
transport your voice communications over digital IP infrastructure.

To put it simply, you make a standard analogue call to your exchange,
where it gets converted to digital, then gets converted  again using a
codec so they can compress it, then gets routed to the closest digital
node to the destination number being called and then the codec used
decodes the call to digital, then it gets converted back to analogue
... , these codec are to a greater or lesser degree "lossy" ...

Along the way, these conversion codecs are getting less and less modem
data transmission friendly, so in short order, you will not be able to
use a modem to transmit data, as is the norm now.

This is happening in Europe, the Netherland and Germany that I am
aware of, at an ever increasing rate, as this new technology is rolled
out. A friend and neighbour of many years, who is now resident in
London, tells me that a similar trend is starting to appear in The
United Kingdom.

Here in South Africa, I now have an ADSL line, at 384kbs, with a 3
gigabyte cap,and to use voice over my ADSL line, I need to install a
special filter. Now here comes the rub, when I had an analogue only
line, I could, in the dry season, get reliable 48-50 kbs connections
without any problems. Now with the filter in the path, over my ADSL
line, the fastest reliable speed I can achieve, is 28.800 kbs, not
bad, just a bit more than half of what was achievable previously with
the very same modems. Talking to others operating in a similar fasion,
they say I am lucky. And by all reports, things are not going to
improve, for data transmision over POTS data modems ...

BANDWIDTH, the municipalities here have been licensed to provide voice
telkoms in their own municpal or metropolitan areas. They are laying
fibre by the kilometer as fast as Telkom and NeoTel, if not faster,
this will firstly free them of having to pay Telkom/NeoTel for POTS
and data bandwidth, it will allow them to sell cheap unlimited
bandwidth to all persons living in their area of jurisdiction, but
limited to their own network - how does unlimited gigabit connectivity
within your metropolitan area for less than a $1 US grab you. And best
of all more than half of the costs for this municipal fibre network is
being paid by provincial, and central government.

Soccer World Cup 2010, is going to place demand on international
bandwidth like nothing before it, and that is why Telkom/NeoTel are
laying fibre as fast as they can, an added benfit, is they are
reducing their exposure to downtime, and reducing their operating
expenses due to them having to replace hundreds of miles of copper
wire which is stolen weekly. No sure if FIFA is subsidizing any of
this effort, they might, I don't know ... , not that it matters.

Then we have cellular data networking getting cheaper and faster,
currently 3G, 4G on the way. They are supporting POTS data
transmission, if your handset has that facility ... , but they are
currently more expensive than POTS ... , and a little slower than
current ADSL, but that will change when 4G arrives, then Telkom/NeoTel
will simply up the ante again ...

The fly in the ointment is, fibre is only being laid in the densely
populated areas, the outlying areas are still going to be served by
POTS over copper, and for the lucky, cellular networks, but even then
the best they are likely to get is EDGE data transmission, no 3G, no
4G, at least not for another 10 - 15 years ...

Next, is the worlds most loved vendor of computer operating systems,
namely MicroSoft.

Microsoft Vista, is not what the sale droids, say it is, and even
MicroSoft have tacitally admitted this, but they have promised to do
right with MicroSoft Windows-7, the successor to MS-Vista. It took
MicroSoft till version 5 of MS-DOS, for them to deliver a solid
product, then it took them till Windows 3.11 for the next solid
product, then they promised us WIN95 in 1995, then delivered on those
promises, with the release of WIN2000, which lacked driver support, so
the re-released it as WINXP, which has been the best 32-bit MS-Windows
OS to date, then they released MS-Vista, which is to put it mildy, a
"dud", I personally don't want it for free, even if MicroSoft give me
a copy autographed by Bill Gates himself.

So far, the reports on Windows-7 that have reached here, are both
encouraging, and a cause for concern. First the bad news, Windows-7,
will not support 16-bit DOS applications, it will not support Windows
3.1 applications, it will not support WIN95/98/98SE/ME applications,
nor is it expected to support all WIN2000 applications. MicroSoft
claim that the reason for this is, that this is the only way for them
to remove the bloat, reduce the resource usage, and finally make
MS-Windows, a safe secure operating system.

The good news is, that a minimum install will only require 250-260
megabyte, yes, megabytes. It has not been stated what this minimal
installation will or will not support.

Now, how are these developments going to impact FidoNet;

A hobbiest network so many profess to enjoy, but are not prepared to
change or adapt to a forever changing world, not to mention, their
beloved software and let go of their "trusty" old modems ...
I predict, that within the next 5 years, 3/4's of the world, including
both Zone1 and Zone2, you will not be able to make a POTS data modem,
to data modem connection.

I further predict that within the next 5 years, 80% of the software
being used in FTN networks will be of no value to anyone, except those
who hoard computer parts to keep theit old relics functioning, and who
can run an operating system that is IPV6 capable on these old relics.

Ooops! seems I forgot to mention that IPV6 will become the norm within
the next five years ... , IPV6, which promises to give each and every
one of us our own personal static IP address ... among other things
...

The bottom line is, that the collective leadership of FidoNet, have to
prepare the network, for a large paradigm shift, or they sit and wring
their hands in dispair, and watch the network they have invested a
great deal of time, energy and effort in, die, because it cannot or
will not adapt to the changing technological world in which we exist.

The 64 million dollar question is, will FidoNet make a paradigm shift,
or will it go the way of the Dinosaurs ...?

Or do the members of FidoNet, feel there is no longer the need or
requirement for a P2P comunications network, in such an enviroment ...
?

I am not going to debate this with anyone, the technology is here, and
is being implemented, as for MicroSoft, anyone who implicilty believes
anything they tell you, are fools, and they have proven on way too
many occasions to say one thing today and totally contradict
themselves the next day ... , and the day after, deliver something
totally different from what THEY PROMISED everybody ...

Russell



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