Fractals of Change

“You Can’t Cross a Chasm in Two Small Jumps”

This wonderful quote is attributed to David Lloyd George by worldofquotes.com. Henry Sinnreich, among other things the world’s foremost authority on SIP, told it to me at lunch yesterday at VON. It made my day.

Certainly there’s a place for incrementalism; lots of places, in fact. But there are destinations you can’t get to incrementally. Of course, if you make one big leap and fall short, you may end up in the chasm but that’s the way it goes.

How to cross chasms came up during a discussion with Henry on why VoIP didn’t morph into something much better than traditional telephony. VoIP has been an incremental approach to communication. It HAS brilliantly succeeded in lowering the cost of telephony which has actually closed a chasm as far as many poor people who need to communicate are concerned. Cost reduction is a prime example of something that CAN be done incrementally and doesn’t require a perhaps suicidal leap.

But new paradigms (to use a pompous word) are leaps. They get there or they don’t. The Macintosh was such a leap although it followed an earlier unsuccessful attempt by Apple (the Lisa) to cross the “computer for the rest of us” chasm.

Old companies, I believe, are incapable of such leaps. Not the prudent thing to do when all your assets may end up in a heap at the bottom of the chasm. Startups, on the other hand, have a much better risk/reward ratio when they jump. They start with almost nothing to lose; it’s very hard for them to be incrementally better than established competition with an existing brand and customer base; they can succeed (even though most don’t) by taking a jump the heavy weights can’t and won’t.

It’s also a hell of a lot more fun to jump than to creep. Just one more reason why I’m glad to be involved with startups again.

Unexpected Live Performance

Several weeks ago Jeff Pulver arranged to have an excellent cameraman come to Vermont and video tape a five minute segment of me talking about VoIP being a three stage rocket whose final stage was a dud and the new future of communication which will develop without reference to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). The plan was that Jeff would use this video as an opener for his keynote at VON this morning.

You know how it with technology: the video malfunctioned. But I happened to be in the audience and Jeff asked me to improv live which I did. I don’t remember exactly what I said in the original so not sure how I did.

Of course now there’s a video of the video failing and my unexpected live performance.

You can see it here http://www.blogtv.com/Shows/96/YeTrZe3uY23&pos=ancr.

As a bonus, if you stay on after I exit stage left, you can see Jeff’s keynote and why he left a lot of traditional telco folk more than a tad uncomfortable.

My New Gig

I’ve taken a sabbatical from my retirement to be startup Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for FWD International, the service enabler featured in yesterday’s post. Enabling voice, video, and other forms of communication into and between social media sites and connecting that all with other networks is too exciting to pass up as an opportunity for going back to my roots and getting my hands dirty.

We’ve set ourselves the discipline of designing interpersonal communications with the following constraints:

Communication is permission-based. You can reach me and vice versa only with authorization which can be withdrawn. Why? Because as the price of communication has gone down, the amount of unwanted communication has gone up. in nerd terms the noise to signal ratio is rising. Facebook has fairly rudimentary communication tools but the concept of “friends” and permission-based communication between them is very useful.

Every user owns his or her directory information and decides how it gets used. Period.

Communication is between people with names, not between devices, not to or from numbers. But the names can be aliases.

There should be no islands. Not all your friends live in one city and they don’t all use the same social network; but they’re all your friends and reaching them through social networks and the rich directories of those networks makes sense. Users of any competitors we have are welcome to communicate with direct and indirect users of our service so long as the people they’re communicating with allow it.

Every communication can include text, pictures, voice (sound, actually) and video. It’s up to the people communicating and only constrained by what devices they have handy.

Any communication can be real time or not. Up to you and whomever you’re communicating with and your mutual availability.

Presence information is very important. See the point immediately above.

Charging incrementally for intrapersonal interpersonal communication is passé. Traditional phone-like billing systems cost more than they’re worth and are an impediment to communication. E-mail is at least a partial model here. That ha implications for controlling our costs, though.

Everything we do should be exposed through the simplest APIs possible. Communication will be built into zillions of sites, services, and application we haven’t even imagined. We want to be part of a lot of that communication so we have to make it easy for developers to bake us into what they’re building so that they can concentrate on their differentiation.

And there’s one non-constraint:

We’re not letting ourselves worry about downward compatibility with the POTS network – too limiting and it won’t be around all that long (my opinion). We won’t fight having someone connect our users to POTS ( see the no islands rule!); but that’s not our business and we don’t want to dumb down our design (or compromise the quality of our audio) for POTS compatibility.

No nerd could resist the challenge of putting together the design and team to make this happen. I didn’t resist so I have a new gig. It’ll last until we’re well-launched and have a “real” CTO.

If you’re at VON in Boston this week, come see the FWD team at booth 1010.

C U at VON

A decade ago the VON (Voice on the Net) show in Boston was where I and others first planned, discussed, and made deals to bring our nascent Voice over IP (VoIP) services to market. This week I’ll be back at VON in Boston meeting with people – you, perhaps (see far below) – in pursuit of a new dream for Internet communication. All it takes is a bunch of dreamers with a penchant for hard work and irrational exuberance to turn a dream into a reality. A little capital helps, too, but we’re OK on that score for now.

My new gig is FWD International (nee FreeWorldDialup). Co-investors are VoIP impresario Jeff Pulver, who founded FreeWorldDialup as well as VON, and Yossi Vardi, whose most well-know achievement was the founding of ICQ and its subsequent sale to AOL but is a man of many other accomplishments (see wikipedia) and also convenes Kinnernet  where Jeff and I were cabin mates. FWD is ably run by CEO Dan Berninger, whose business development feats in VoIP are legendary and include the launch of Vonage, a large part of the early success of VoIP pioneer VocalTec, and a big role in getting me into this VoIP stuff in the first place.

What’s the dream about?

Well, you know this telephone stuff has gone about as far as it’s gonna go; making it cheaper is still important to lots of people, especially residents of or ex-pats from developing countries, but not nearly as interesting as replacing it. With a landline you are restricted to communication via live voice (and voice mail for a small extra fee). With a landline your directory information belongs to a service provider who, in the US, charges you for NOT displaying the directory to all or sundry. With a landline you must have a service provider which is a big part of the problem. With a landline you call the number of a device in hopes that the person you want to reach is near it.

With a mobile phone, since it attaches to its owner, the chance of reaching the right person goes up. Interestingly most of use our directories (names) to dial from our mobile phones rather than numbers. Mobile phones are a step in the right direction. Since they’re really portable computers, they can even be used to communicate with text, still pictures, and video. And connections between cell phones and social networks are growing: twitter anyone?

But cell phone networks are over-priced islands. Some services don’t work across networks. The most exciting new phones come locked to specific networks (altho they’re not staying that way). The owners of the networks, who paid big bucks for the right to build over-engineered services on specific frequencies, are fighting a desperate rear guard action to keep you from bypassing their networks with VoIP in general and voice over WiFi in particular. You need a service provider to use a cell phone.

The directories of social networks like Facebook are exciting. YOU own your directory entry; YOU decide what it says about you. Most important YOU decide who has access to which information in your directory entry and who can communicate with you. FWD’s built a voice mail application for Facebook; others have built video apps and real time voice. You can communicate with pictures. You can voice tag the pictures with FWD’s Facebook app. Facebook itself supports a crude hybrid between IM and email and people are building better ways to communicate on the platform all the time. Social networks, especially their directories, are enablers of the next big thing in communication.

There is no incremental cost for each communication on Facebook or other social networks. It’s like email: you’ve got to have access to a computer and you probably pay for Internet access but, unless you’re paying for access by the byte, communicating with other people is “free”. Physical distance from and location of your friends are not factors at all in your cost.

But, so far, the social networks are largely developing as islands. Apps that work on one don’t connect to another. All your friends don’t live in the same city and they don’t all live on the same social network. They move around in cyberspace the same way that they do in physical space.

That’s where FWD comes in. We’re a service enabler – not a service provider. Just as the original FreeWorldDialup connected (and continues to connect) networks, FWD is a way to connect the participants in both social and other types of communications networks. FWD will enable any new services to add communication without development cost, to support directory services, and – most crucially – to connect their subscribers with subscribers to other networks SO LONG AS both parties are willing to be so connected.

Who should come see us in our VON booth?

• People who want to sign up for our free voice mail app on Facebook. Apps aren’t really our game but they’re needed to demonstrate and surface what we do. You can sign up here if you’re not coming to VON.

• People running SIP networks which haven’t yet peered (free) with FWD. Peering brings value to your subscribers today and positions your network to deliver much more value in the future. Over 190 networks with some three million users are peered with FWD now. Peer here if not coming to VON.

• Application developers who’d like to include our connectivity and capabilities (like voice mail and voice clients) in their products. The APIs aren’t there yet but they will be and they’ll be open. We’d love to talk to you about your needs.

• Networking (broadly writ) site developers and operators who’d like to incorporate our capabilities and help their users connect not just on the site but to all their other friends as well. Again, the APIs aren’t there yet. We’re doing some large sites like Facebook by hand now and want to be able to tell you as soon as we have the tools for you to incorporate as much of our stuff as you want in your site.

• Communication device manufacturers, especially those who want to go beyond black phone voice and cheap minutes.

• Old friends.

C U at VON.

Comcast’s Wrong Approach

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have to do a lot more than just provide a pipe from your residence to their facilities to assure that you have a good Internet experience. There is a raging debate, inextricable from the debate on Network Neutrality, both on what the proper responsibilities of an ISP are AND what methods are proper for carrying out those responsibilities.

Recently Comcast has received a serious black eye for blocking BitTorrent traffic in what it says was just a legitimate exercise in protecting most users from the few who abuse their “unlimited access”.

For this discussion to make sense, you have to know a little about what BitTorrent is. Can’t do better than the wikipedia description: “BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor.”

BitTorrent has been used to distribute copyright material without authorization. It also has a large and growing amount of legitimate use. As previously blogged, P2P at its best is a way for us users to share our disk space and computing power to obtain free or low cost access to data and/or services we want.

In an example of very thorough professional reporting, Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer, describes what AP found that Comcast was doing to BitTorrent traffic when it followed up on a tip from a Comcast user. The experiment done by AP was to use BitTorrent to transfer copies of the Bible using BitTorrent (they chose the Bible because it is in the public domain so transfer of it is not a violation of anyone’s copyright). Their conclusion:

“Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

“The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users…

“Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."”

Note to nerds: the invisible message is an RST packet, part of the TCP protocol. The correct use of RST is documented here by the IETF and does NOT include its use by any intermediary. Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed the AP results and also provided additional technical information.

Even if we give Comcast the benefit of the doubt and assume they are not influenced at all in their decision of what traffic to block by the fact that P2P protocols like BitTorrent are used to distribute material which competes for precious user attention with the content that Comcast sells, what Comcast is doing is still wrong if not illegal.

The Internet is as fantastically useful as it is because each of us can communicate with each of our friends and get data from any source using any protocol or data transfer method invented or yet to be invented which works on an IP network – I’m simplifying and exaggerating slightly but only slightly. Each of us “sees” the same Internet. Communication becomes much more constrained if each of us sees a different and perhaps incompatible Internet. You can see Google but I can only see Yahoo. I can upload photos to Flickr but you can only upload to dotPhoto. My email can’t get to you; you and I can’t share files (although we can both share with Ellen – today). Gee, almost sounds like mobile phone networks – or cable networks.

I also don’t want anyone or anything masquerading as my computer. Period. If traffic has to be blocked, there are ways to do it without pretending to be me.

Comcast’s reported response was slimy. AP quotes Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas as saying: “Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.” AP then continues: “Douglas would not specify what the company means by "access" — Comcast subscribers can download BitTorrent files without hindrance. Only uploads of complete files are blocked or delayed by the company, as indicated by AP tests.” Of course in BitTorrent, there has to be an upload for every download.

Contrast the approach taken by Comcast with that taken by Cloud Alliance, a small Vermont wireless ISP which also has to manage its network to assure that some customers don’t hog all the resources. During periods of congestion Cloud Alliance restricts the bandwidth available to all customers. It does NOT try to decide which applications users should run and which they should not. It does NOT spoof being the user’s machine. And it DOES tell the truth about its policy. I know how Cloud Alliance manages bandwidth because the method was described by Michael Birnbaum, who runs the WISP, in a comment on Fractal of Change.

For much more commentary on the Comcast fracas see recent posts on David Isenberg’s blog and a very comprehensive explanation by Susan Crawford.

More on how Cloud Alliance manages traffic is here.

Broadband Truth in Advertising – Regulation?

There needs to be a standard for truth in broadband advertising. Since the operation of the marketplace hasn’t resulted in a standard, a standard should be imposed. Note that standards are often helpful to markets AND that government often has a constructive role both in imposing and enforcing the standard. Enforcement of weights and measures was good for honest grocers who otherwise had a hard time competing with dishonest ones who could charge less per “pound”. Fuel and energy efficiency standards, even if not strictly predictive of real-world performance, are useful for comparing different models.

There are at least three dangers in a government imposed standard: it could and easily might be bent to favor powerful incumbents, compliance might be too costly for all but the largest of companies, and it could be so proscriptive that it discourages innovation. Nevertheless, in this case, especially with the LACK of a competitive market for broadband services in the US, I think we need to take the risk.

This is an example of a standard we might impose without, I think, unduly burdening honest ISPs (note that lost of my numbers are arbitrary but there need to be some numbers):

1. If an ISP advertises a speed in any direction, the speed in the other direction must be given as well and be advertised as prominently.
2. 90% of the speed advertised in each direction must be physically achievable by all customers of the service between their premises and a dedicated test point in the ISP network at least 10% of the time (not very onerous but meant to put some constraints on what maximum speed means).
3. The ISP must maintain connections to the rest of the Internet of sufficient capacity that the mean speed experienced by customers on a monthly basis in each direction is no less than 75% of the speed advertised and that speeds less than 40% of the advertised speed are not experienced more than 10% of the time averaged over all active customers on a monthly basis.

The final point is the crux of the matter and measuring it without being intrusive is not necessarily easy. Users do not always send at the maximum rate available to them and ISPs shouldn’t be penalized for this. Moreover, whatever server or other subscriber the user is communicating with may also not respond quickly enough to fill the pipe to the user even if that pipe is a s broad as advertised. This latter point MIGHT disappear in any large sample but I don’t know that.

It may perhaps be necessary to allow compliance monitoring of the third point not by actual user experience but by certified proxies (like test weights) deployed on the ISP’s network. It’s not a good idea to have users running speed tests just when they think things are slow (although I must admit I do that) because the speed tests themselves add volume to what is actually probably already a saturated network and don’t deliver a valuable payload.

There also needs to be a suitable escape hatch for startups who have no user experience to go on and for very small ISPs who won’t have a meaningful statistical base for measurement.

It is essential that the regulator neither tell ISPs what speeds to deliver nor how to deliver those speeds; either is sure to stifle innovation. Even imposing methods of measuring is dangerous since the methods may preclude or make it expensive to deploy new technologies.

Complicated once you start to regulate.

This post is about how one ISP manages his network to try to assure that users have an acceptable experience related to what is advertised.

Truth in Broadband

OK, fellow nerds, you can tune back into the discussion now. This post features a good explanation from the head of Cloud Alliance, a wireless ISP (WISP) in central Vermont, of what happens in the network of a provider when total demand from users exceeds the size of the connection available from that network to the broader Internet . After that, I expound on truth in bandwidth reporting.

Quoth Michael Birnbaum in a comment on a broadband primer post:

“Assuming that we were to purchase sufficient digital bandwidth from our supplier to handle the heaviest traffic, subscribers would receive the advertised maximum throughput, all the time. This is the "maximum information rate."[nb. Henceforth “mir”] We don't purchase that much capacity, of course, because much of it would lie unused, most of the time like a 64 lane highway. So, the "committed information rate" [nb. henceforth “cir”] kicks in when the total traffic exceeds a preset limit. Cir settings are not usually made public, but I can say they are typically less than half of those of the mir (which are the typical advertised maximum rates). This knocks in to be fair to everyone, so that no individual users get to be hogs to the others' detriment. If we have purchased a reasonable amount of digital bandwidth, the cir only kicks in for short bursts, and the subscribers return to higher throughput again. The subscribers do get to see the advertised mir but only occasionally, during the busy parts of the day. The rest of the time they are sharing at a slower rate, but not as slow as that which causes the cir to kick in. During the quiet parts, they get full speed.”

Many ISPs use techniques like this to distribute the pain when there is more demand for Internet connectivity than can be instantly satisfied. Some, I suspect, use techniques much more pernicious but that’s another post for another day. Few ISPs are as forthcoming as Michael in explaining what they do and why they do it.

It would be unrealistic (and incredibly expensive) to require ISPs to deliver the full mir all of the time. Michael’s analogy of a 64 lane highway is a good one – might be handy once in the while but most of the time is a terrible waste. But, as Michael points out, most ISPs don’t advertise their cir nor reveal how often they need to throttle users back to this speed. It is also true that, if the total demand is high enough, the ISP may not be able to deliver the “committed” information rate (cir) to all customers either.

The biggest problem, it seems to me, is that you have no idea what to expect when an ISP tells you the maximum information rate (mir) only. If the cir is a significant portion of this – say half – and if the cir is in effect only during peak hours and occasional traffic jams and if the ISP really can deliver at least the cir 95% of the time, then most of us would probably be happy most of the time with service from that ISP. That last is not a very definitive sentence.

It’s possible that, if the US had a more competitive market for Internet access, anecdotes from friends about their subjective experience would be enough to help us judge whether  a particular ISP delivered a sufficient fraction of the mir a sufficient portion of the time. Only in a competitive market where we have more than one choice could we use that information to make an informed choice of providers. Only in a competitive market would ISPs feel the pressure to advertise the numbers under the numbers and live up to them.

Since we don’t have very competitive market for broadband access in most of the United States and have no competition at all in other parts, I think some regulation of advertised rates IS appropriate even though regulation is fraught with dangers of its own. I’ll make some suggestions soon. Suggestions for regulation are here.

Kelly’s Kiku Show

The Kiku (Japanese for chrysanthemums) Show opened this weekend at The New York Botanical Garden. Daughter Kelly and her colleagues at the New York Botanical Garden have been working on the show for almost a year and it has been in planning for five years. Mary and I went down to the City to see it. You should, too, if you’ll be in the neighborhood. The Botanical Garden, which is worth a full day itself, is literally across the street from the Bronx Zoo (also one of my favorite places). The Kiku Show runs through November 18. 

The shield of blossoms in the picture is at least six feet in diameter but is nourished by only a single stalk! It was planted as a cutting late last Fall. Kelly and others carefully bent, tied and pinched the tendrils as they emerged. The plants’ growth was tracked daily and their nourishment increased and decreased to guide them towards the right size and maturity for the show’s opening. Mums are Fall bloomers and key off the hours of sunlight each day. These plants had to be fooled with artificial darkness to get them to blossom for opening day – as indeed they did.  The final selection of buds which would open and final pinching off of the others – except for some spares kept discreetly below – happened just before the opening.

Since the show runs four weeks and mums blossom for only two, a whole second cast of plants is waiting in one of the many backstage greenhouses at The Gardens. These plants were kept on a slightly slower track so they’d be in new bloom on their opening day a couple of weeks from now. There are also a few understudies in case anything goes wrong with the plants on display.

We were privileged to meet Yukie Kurashina who, according to the NYTimes article on the show, “trained with the curator of Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Japan in order to install the show at the New York Botanical Garden.” The show is patterned after the annual show held at Shinjuku.

Kelly told us an interesting story about Yukie’s apprenticeship in Japan. Normally apprentices are not allowed to ask any questions. However, because she would only be there for six month and then have huge responsibility, the rule was waived so that she could become an expert in accelerated time. Her training, including eight return trips to observe various stages of plant development, obviously worked.

Technical note: instead of the audio tour you can, if you want, call +1.718.362.9561 and use your cellphone to listen to the description of major displays. Only reason I can think to do that at the show, since the audio wand is free, is that you can leave comments on your cellphone. But it’s nice to be able to dialin and go back to listen to some of the commentary. For example, to hear about the Ozukuri described above, dial the number and press 118#. Lots of good pictures and a video on the website also.

Great Way to Make or Cap a Career

The Vermont Telecom Authority is looking for an executive director. The authority has the very tough mission of making Vermont the nation’s first e-state. Despite the tough terrain and many rural areas, the mission of the Telecom Authority is to assure that, by the end of 2010, broadband coverage and cellular voice coverage are available EVERYWHERE in the state. The broadband coverage has to be adequate and affordable – better than satellite and better than basic DSL.

Vermont is determined to make this happen. The bill which set up the authority authorized up to $40 million in revenue bonds to build enabling infrastructure (but prohibited the state from becoming a retail provider). Even more significant as an indication of how serious Vermont is about this goal, the legislature streamlined the permit process and modified Vermont’s basic environmental law, Act 250, to assure that towers can be sited and built where they’re needed when they’re needed. Such modifications don’t come easily in green Vermont. The bill was proposed by Republican Governor Jim Douglas and overwhelmingly passed by both houses of the legislature which have large Democrat majorities.

The Authority has a great volunteer Board; my wife, Mary Evslin, is the chair. They’re determined that these goals be met and are devoting much of their energy to a search for the key role of Executive Director.

You won’t get rich in this job. If you’re qualified, the pay is much less than you’re worth. There are no stock options. But it’s a job worth doing; success will lead to fame if not fortune. Other states are watching; private industry is watching (and MUST be a participant). The satisfaction from making this happen will be immense. BTW, Vermont is a great place to live.

To succeed you’ll need to be audacious and have experience in achieving outsize goals. You’ll have made a career of NOT letting engineers tell you what’s impossible. You’ll be a planner AND a doer. You’ll be good at getting other people to buy into your dream and help make it a reality.

Here’s the official notice for the job:

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Vermont Telecommunications Authority

www.telecomvt.org

The start-up Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) is looking for a leader with entrepreneurial experience. Have you put deals together? Brought together multiple partners to fund, build, and manage telecommunications networks? If so, we’d like to meet you. 

The VTA seeks an Executive Director to lead the mission of bringing wireless and broadband service to all parts of the state by the end of 2010. The Executive Director will be a visible leader in Vermont and to all states looking for rural solutions.

The position will be responsible for implementing the statutory goals of the Authority, creating partnerships with multiple telecommunication providers and communities, deploying telecommunications infrastructure, and managing daily activities for the Authority. The Executive Director must have a strong background in telecommunications, with experience in technical, business, financial, regulatory, and legal matters. A minimum of ten years telecommunications experience and a master's degree or equivalent experience and experience starting an organization is desired. 

Vermont is a lovely place to live and small enough to make a real difference in. Lead the effort to make Vermont the first e-state in the nation! Please submit a cover letter, resume and salary requirements to:

Search Committee

Vermont Telecommunications Authority

National Life Records Building

One National Life Drive

Montpelier, Vermont 05620-3201

Or email to: EDsearch@telecomvt.org

The State of Vermont is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Broadband Primer Part 3

Low latency is crucial for some uses of the Internet – and doesn’t matter at all to others. Latency used to be a problem only for Voice over IP (VoIP) and other highly time-critical applications; now it is a problem for routine web browsing as well.

Latency is the time it takes to get something from your computer to where it’s going on the Internet and to get a response back to your computer. Long latency is bad; short latency is always good. Don’t you hate it when you have to drum your fingers waiting for a web page to image and the pictures take forever to show up or perhaps don’t show up at all and are replaced by boxes with little red x’s in the top left corner? If you have a slow connection (low bandwidth – see Part 1), this is par for the course; but, if you have a reasonably fast connection, latency may be the problem.

The major cause of persistent high latency is the connection between you and your ISP. The good news is that DSL, cable, fiber, WISP (Wireless ISP) service, and even dialup all provide reasonably low latency (assuming there is not much congestion – we all see latency when there is congestion). Typically with any of these connections, the connection itself won’t add even as much as 20 milliseconds (twenty thousands of a second) to round trip times.

The bad news is that satellite service has terrible latency AND the problem can’t be fixed. This is a physics problem; not an engineering one.

As you know, your satellite dish, whether its for TV or for Internet access, was installed pointed at a specific spot in the sky. That means the satellite it is aimed at has to stand still with relation to spots on the surface of the earth; its speed has to match the rotational speed of the earth allowing for the fact that the orbit has a larger diameter than the earth. This only possible with satellites which orbit 22,000 miles high. If they are lower, they will have to move faster and, if higher, have to move slower in order to stay in orbit and not either crash or soar off into space. In either case, they would appear to move as far as your dish is concerned. Sometimes they would even go under the horizon. So 22,000 miles it is.

Radio signals move at the speed of light – 182,262 miles per second in a vacuum. Unfortunately no way to speed that up. Data goes from your computer up to the satellite, back down to the rest of the Internet, to whichever other computer you’re communicating with, back to a satellite uplink, back up to the satellite, and back down to your computer before you see a response. That’s 88,000 miles of up and down traveling so almost half a second MINIMUM latency.

So what’s the big deal about half a second? Well, a lot if you’re using VoIP since the human ear can detect delays of a fifth of a second or more. You get annoying pauses between what you say and the answers from whomever you’re talking too. You start to talk over each other. For technical reasons, delay causes echo and you often hear yourself instead of your friend. If you are trapped and need rescue or are far at sea or exploring a wilderness, VoIP over a satellite Internet connection is fine. Otherwise you don’t want to do it.

It used to be that only VoIP and other very time-critical applications like gaming were badly affected by latency. Email is not noticeably affected since you have no idea whether it took an extra half second for your email to begin to download; most of the time is in the actual downloading. Same thing with downloading files; latency is no big deal. When you’re watching satellite TV you don’t care about latency because you have no way to know the broadcast is actually a quarter of a second ahead of you and you couldn’t care less (it’s only doing one up and down so it’s not a half second difference).

It USED to be that web surfing wasn’t affected by latency. Most delay was caused by the time it took a page to download which depends on speed and not latency. Unfortunately for those using satellite access, web browsing is NOW seriously affected by latency. What’s happened is that web pages are written and designed to be as flashy and customizable as possible given the kind of Internet access that MOST people have.

When you request a page from a modern website, there is very little chance that all of the data needed to create a page on your screen will be sent at once. Instead, the first data downloaded contains instructions for various interactions between your computer and the website. The site wants to know if there’s a cookie on your computer indicating you’ve visited before (“Welcome back, Tom”); what purchases you may have made before (“Here are some recommendations for you”); perhaps what type of computer monitor you have so it can format optimally. Pictures are downloaded in batches after the text to request them gets to your computer and one graphic element may contain the request for another. Ads appropriate to you (maybe) are gathered from various sites as part of building your page.

Meanwhile, if you have high latency, many half seconds have passed while the page builds and you’re there drumming your fingers. Some parts of the page may decide that something is broken because of the long interval and simply not show up. It’s not fun.

You can say that websites should be designed knowing that some people have a lot of latency in their connection. You can say that but it isn’t going to happen. Most Internet users don’t use satellite and the designers of web pages want them to be as appealing as they can be to the majority of people who access them – that leaves you out if you have satellite access; they’re not going to dumb down the pages just because of you and they’re not going to create special versions of pages just for you; they’re way too busy trying to make tiny pages for cellphones.

Note to nerds who may have read these-nontechie posts: yes, there are low earth orbit satellites (LEOS) which, being much closer, don’t cause significant latency. They are used for sat phone service and extremely low bandwidth and expensive (altho also low latency) data. They do move through the sky and pop under and over the horizon which means that antennas which receive and send to them can’t be directional. The consequence of this is that the power required to send broadband data streams to them is very high and interference between uplinks would be a significant problem if they were widely used. Also, they’re expensive because they burn up quickly in the upper edges of the atmosphere and fall down. Maybe, though, this is where an engineering breakthrough for satellite access could occur.

See this post and comments for how to measure latency on your connection.

Broadband Primer starts here.