[GB-Today] Monday Musings

[Susan Estrada]

Monday Musings
December 20, 2004

I missed musing last week since one of my kids got what the nurse called 
"this year's flu" and spent a day in urgent care on IV fluids.  My only 
advice is this -- wash your hands while singing Yankee Doodle (one verse 
and the chorus).  You'll have fun and keep those germs at bay.  (Lyrics and 
a fab accompaniment are here:  http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/yankee.htm)


Scary Quote of the Week

"In the future I believe Internet business models will come from Japan," he 
[Mike Volpi, senior vice president of Cisco's Routing Technology Group] said.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1736757,00.asp

I don't even know what to say about this except, WHAT ARE WE WAITING 
FOR?  Let's get some bandwidth in this state RIGHT NOW!


Latency: Are We There Yet?

As the year ends, I thought I'd talk about latency.  Started thinking about 
it when I ran across this recent article on gaming (you know, those 
addictive online gatherings of people).

Here's the article that triggered my thinking:
http://news.com.com/Video+games+Not+just+for+fun+seekers+anymore/2100-1040_3-5469853.html?tag=nl

Here's a quote from the article describing how games can actually be very 
valuable training tools:  "Firefighters, for example, can use 
"HazMat:Hotzone" to learn how to respond to a chemical-weapons attack, 
George Soros wannabes can learn the ins and outs of currency trading with 
Forex Trader , and college administrators can use Virtual U to wrestle with 
angry professors and meddlesome state legislators."

So, you ask, what exactly is latency and why should I care about it?

Webopedia (http://www.webopedia.com) says latency is:
"(1) In general, the period of time that one component in a system is 
spinning its wheels waiting for another component. Latency, therefore, is 
wasted time. For example, in accessing data on a disk, latency is defined 
as the time it takes to position the proper sector under the read/write 
head.  (2) In networking, the amount of time it takes a packet to travel 
from source to destination. Together, latency and bandwidth define the 
speed and capacity of a network."

Essentially, latency is the time it takes to get from here to there on the 
network.  Latency is really, really important to a number of the newer 
applications specifically, games, voice over IP and videoconferencing.

You know how sometimes the voices and the video are out of 
synch?  Latency.  You know how your gaming guy can't fire his whatever as 
fast as the other guys?  Latency.  You know how you have to wait for a 
second or two when you are talking on a satellite connection?  Latency.

I found this article by Sean McGrath that compares latency in a situation 
that every Californian can relate to:

"Sitting in grid-locked traffic recently, my thoughts turned to parallels 
between the traffic patterns that occur in meat space and those that occur 
in cyber space.  Most of us are more familiar than we would like to be with 
the realities of traffic jams on our roads. It seems that no amount of 
extra roads, no amount of extra bandwidth, helps the problem significantly. 
When a new road comes into existence, there is an all too short period of 
blissfully free traffic movement. This is slowly but surely drowned out by 
increased traffic volume. Soon enough, the journey time from one end of the 
road to the other is as bad as it ever was.  The key phrase here is 
"journey time". We all wish to find ways to cut journey times (latency). 
Our instinct tells us that adding capacity (bandwidth) is the way to do it. 
However, the sad reality seems to be that extra bandwidth is soon consumed 
by extra volume and that the all important measure - latency - stays the 
same or even gets worse."
Read the whole thing at 
http://www.propylon.com/news/ctoarticles/040210_latency.html

So, how does this relate to the One Gigabit or Bust Initiative?  We *will* 
consume whatever bandwidth we are given.  We can see this from history.  We 
can see it in our closets, our hard drives, our kitchen cabinets.  New and 
exciting applications from healthcare to education will emerge when our 
bandwidth is big and our online 'traffic jams' are small.  Even today, we 
can see the amazing new applications that are springing up all over South 
Korea because of their large installed bandwidth and low latency connections.

Why should we settle for less that one gigabit?


Happy Holidays!

This is the last musing of the year as I plan to overindulge on the myriad 
of cookies and other sugary snacks that are arriving at our 
office.  Clearly, I will only care about my next sugar fix soon and my 
musings will become singularly focused.

I wish you all a happy and safe holiday season.  And, if you haven't seen 
the CENIC e-card yet, click here www.cenic.org/greetings/greetings.htm for 
a happy 30 seconds!

Susan

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