From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 8 09:12:54 1996 Return-Path: owner-chat Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA00358 for chat-outgoing; Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:12:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA00351 for ; Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:12:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id KAA17161; Fri, 8 Mar 1996 10:05:18 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199603081705.KAA17161@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Act Now ! To: chuckr@Glue.umd.edu (Chuck Robey) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 10:05:18 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, chat@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Chuck Robey" at Mar 7, 96 10:18:38 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > I am a little puzzled. I saw your notice on hackers, moving this to chat > (quite correctly) saying that Chuck is wrong, and message unit based > charging must die. I think I have that correctly, anyway. I'm confused, > because I was never arguing that message based charging was anything at > all, I was arguing that the internet can't absorb even a tiny, tiny > fraction of the voice traffic (that nows runs on dedicated voice > networks). I don't see where the topic changed, but if it has, to that > topic, I'm not holding any position there at all, and I don't want to > argue it. Maybe I should let this drop here. Well, I can tell you that I think circuit switching is in fact more expensive than packet switching. The message unit charges argument is just a supporting argument as a hedge against a claim that the cost of moving to packet switching exceeds the cost of keeping circuit switching (should you bring that up as a counter). My point is that I think the Internet will subsume the phone networks, even if you are right about its current capacity, since that capacity will increase over time. I'm not very worried about the internet overloading, nor about the VON paranoia, since I think both ideas ignore the economics of the situation. The voice and data networks *will* be integrated, and there *will* be people with the capability of not generating audit records for connection creation and tear-down, so billing by connection will go away. I think the ability to bill by connect + message units is the *only* reason things are still circuit switched -- it's not the inability of packet switched networks (like the Internet) to handle the load, that incents them, it's the ability of the telephone company to keep on doing business as usual. > I was started because of that Voice Over Net article that was posted, > and the (un)reasoning over the telco's response to what I saw as a > non-issue. Since it couldn't possibly happen, why would they make a fuss > over stopping the impossible (today's impossible being, of course, > tomorrow's obvious path). It's impossible today, why worry it? When it > becomes possible, it's going to happen anyways, because of all the > unregulation. I see it as a non-issue because I think it's inevitable. So at least we agree, it's a non-issue. 8-) 8-). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.