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Avoiding Internet Centralization

mnot.github.io

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Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#101

Post by serverholic »

tzs wrote: post #98
justinpombrio wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Starlink is especially good, because it can compete with all of the cable companies at once. No one will have a monopoly anymore. Hopefully a lot of people will suddenly start getting better service, which I hear is common when competition rolls into town.

Starlink will not have enough bandwidth, even after the full constellation is deployed, to compete with even one cable company in a major metropolitan area. Starlink is designed for places where there is not a high customer density.

Do you have any resources to learn more about this?

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#102

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

user_named wrote: post #83
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. As just one counterexample, consider the mycorrhizal fungal networks that mediate access to nutrients among trees--they've been doing their job without centralized intervention for billions of years. If it seems like everything that we build is centralized, it might just be that we're bad at building things that last.

The tree is the center.

These networks handle the exchange of resources (nitrogen, phosphorous, etc) between trees. So far as I know, there's no reason to believe that there's a "leader tree" or anything like that.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#103

Post by goodpoint »

immibis wrote: post #95
goodpoint wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...for an arbitrary definition of "practical". There isn't a single world-wide authority that assigns names to people or companies, or plate numbers to cars or airplanes. It's partially federated and we accept the tradeoffs.

Humans can use ad-hoc disambiguation where needed - "it's the A1 Computers down by the lake" - but computers can't handle one name resolving to two different sites. When a1computers.com is registered twice, it won't automaticallychange one to a1computersdownbythelake.com and the other to a1computersbytheairport.com.

> computers can't handle one name resolving to two different sites

There's plenty of ways do to so: by configuration, by quorum, by bookmarking pet names on first use, or by asking the use (what every search engine does when people look up e.g. "netflix")

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#104

Post by tzs »

serverholic wrote: post #101
tzs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink will not have enough bandwidth, even after the full constellation is deployed, to compete with even one cable company in a major metropolitan area. Starlink is designed for places where there is not a high customer density.

Do you have any resources to learn more about this?

Just random Googling. Google for things like "Starlink aggregate bandwidth" or "Starlink satellite bandwidth". Here's one article looking at this [1].

Each satellite is visible under idea circumstances from about 3% of the surface of the Earth at once. At an eventual 12000 satellites, that would mean 360 satellites would on average be visible from a given spot. The orbits are such that there will be much less coverage in the far north or far south and much more in between, so let's call it 1000 satellites on average visible in a given area that they will serve.

The next generation satellites are supposed to have 80 Gbps bandwidth to the ground. That's enough for 800 users simultaneously downloading. But most users most of the time are not going all out.

Let's try to estimate what average use is. Most Xfinity users have no trouble staying under their 1.2 TB/month cap. I've read somewhere that the average usage is only about 1/4 that. That would correspond to an average usage of around 1 Mbps, 1/100 of the speed of a Starlink connection. Using that, we can handle 80000 users per satellite, or 80000000 users for the 1000 satellites visible on average.

Taking into account the ground area in which a satellite is visible, we can work out the maximum ground density of customers at that usage level that stays within the bandwidth total. It works out to about 11 users/square mile (4.4 users/square kilometer).

In summary, Starlink should be able to deliver a decent 100 Mbps 100x oversold internet service in places where over the area visible from a satellite (about 7000000 square miles or 18000000 square kilometers) the customer density is under 11/square mile or 4.4/square kilometer.

The US population density is 94/square mile (36/square kilometer). California is 2.5x that, Florida and New York around 4x that.

The density it can support is probably actually a little lower than I got because I'm assuming that any satellite visible from your location can be used. My understanding is that the antenna is aimed in a good general direction at setup, and then uses a phased array to track satellites as they come and go. I'd expect that this limits you to satellites that are in front and not too far to the side of where the dish is pointed.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200928/09175145397/repor...

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#105

Post by preseinger »

goodpoint wrote: post #103
immibis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans can use ad-hoc disambiguation where needed - "it's the A1 Computers down by the lake" - but computers can't handle one name resolving to two different sites. When a1computers.com is registered twice, it won't automaticallychange one to a1computersdownbythelake.com and the other to a1computersbytheairport.com.

> computers can't handle one name resolving to two different sites There's plenty of ways do to so: by configuration, by quorum, by bookmarking pet names on first use, or by asking the use (what every search engine does when people look up e.g. "netflix")

I'm all for embracing the invariants of eventual consistency, but an internet addressing system without an authoritative (i.e. centralized) truth is practically useless.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#106

Post by preseinger »

sweetbitter wrote: post #66
preseinger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Practical addressability requires centralization by definition. How could it work otherwise?

If we go for human-readable and decentralized with reasonable security, we can look towards 'petname' systems, like the 'Address Book' software popular on the I2P network. Petnames are the subjective binding of public keys to shortened names, where a user resolves domain names to keys according to a combination of their own personal list (which can be easily expanded with specially-formatted 'address helper links') a…

You're suggesting each user maintain their own DNS lookup table?

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#107

Post by preseinger »

goodpoint wrote: post #86
preseinger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Practical addressability requires centralization by definition. How could it work otherwise?

...for an arbitrary definition of "practical". There isn't a single world-wide authority that assigns names to people or companies, or plate numbers to cars or airplanes. It's partially federated and we accept the tradeoffs.

We're talking about name resolution on the internet. Some source of authority is required to keep the overall system sound. Said another way, if two people query the same name and get categorically different answers, or reliably non-deterministic answers, the system is unsound.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#108

Post by preseinger »

wmf wrote: post #59
preseinger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Practical addressability requires centralization by definition. How could it work otherwise?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle for an exploration of the tradeoffs.

From the PetNames site,

> Each name set consists of three elements: a key that is global and securely unique (but not necessarily memorable); a nickname that is global and memorable (but not at all unique), and a petname that is securely unique and memorable (but private, not global)

An essential component of a practical addressing system is names which are global, memorable, _and_ unique. Colloquially, I need to be able to say "Google dot com" over the phone to someone, and their experience using that name needs to be identical to mine. A system that doesn't provide this property doesn't solve the problem.

Re: Avoiding Internet Centralization

#109

Post by hansel_der »

serverholic wrote: post #50
walrus01 wrote: post #11

Something not really covered is this concept: "Maybe don't let one telecom company acquire too much control". Look at the history of everything that was acquired by either Qwest/CenturyLink or Level3, and then the merger of Level3. You can't tell me that the existence of Lumen, the combined Centurylink-Level3 entity is good for anyone, except for their shareholders. It's the very definition of too much centralization…

Starlink should help with this by bypassing traditional networks.

why?

wireless is only radically different from a consumer perspective and the capacity is nothing to write home about. It's the coverage and latency that bring value.

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