Stacey Higginbotham

[Commentary] Depending on who you talk to, the term 5G can mean everything from blocks of spectrum at 24 gigahertz or above to a dedicated cellular standard managed by the International Telecommunications Union. The differing definitions are a nightmare for anyone trying to make sense of what is purportedly the next big thing in communications. This is profoundly different from 4G, which was tied to a specific standard in telecommunications set by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a group of telecommunications standards bodies. But unlike 4G, 5G isn’t just for carriers. It’s for everyone, so everyone wants to play a part in saying what it means. Thus the term 5G is all inclusive.

The carriers and their equipment vendors tend to use the phrase to talk about delivering wireless connectivity using a combination of cellular and Wi-Fi services. Carriers will use small cells, Wi-Fi hotspots, cellular towers and anything else at their disposal to ensure a connection. (They used to call this “het net” or heterogeneous network.) The Federal Communications Commission and others have expanded the definition of 5G to cover the airwaves folks will use to deliver next-generation wireless services. So Google and Facebook’s plans to deliver gigabit wireless broadband using spectrum above 24 GHz also count. The FCC basically uses it to mean “future communications” and also spectrum. But slippery terminology aside, the key thing to think about when talking about 5G is that the goal of the transition is to handle more things on the network, as well as a huge variety of things.

[Stacey Higginbotham is a tech writer based in Austin, Texas]

The third annual Gig.U report shows how much has changed in the three years since Gig U. was created as a means to bring gigabit connectivity to university towns. It’s clear from the report that there are two things driving the expansion of gigabit services. The first is a willingness by municipalities to act as a partner, not an impediment, and work with providers to get fiber in the ground acting. And the second is competition. There are few cities getting a gig from one provider.

Time Warner Cable signed a direct interconnection deal with Netflix, making it the fourth of the big four US Internet service providers to sign paid peering agreements with the streaming video provider.

Time Warner confirmed the deal happened in June and the implementation has been rolling out in August.

As customers are finding more entertainment value in broadband -- either because they are spending all night on reddit or because they are streaming movies via Netflix or Apple’s iTunes -- they are increasingly questioning the value of the cable package.

And while these people may not be the dreaded cord cutters or cord nevers, they may attempt to cut the costs of cable by going for an economy package or signing up for service and then dropping it a few months later.

Together the combination of broadband data caps, contracts and cost reductions are helping cable companies transition from being in the pay TV business to being in the broadband business while attempting to keep their margins intact. It’s a thin line, but it’s one that its rivals in the telecommunications world walked a few years ago as they transitioned from wireline voice to mobile services.

As more broadband networks connect directly to each other via peering agreements, the amount of money paid for Internet transit could fall, according to a report from TeleGeography. That’s good for users of the Internet, but will cut into transit revenue at companies that range from Level 3 and Cogent to ISPs.

Of course, TeleGeography isn’t sure if this will take place.

By cutting out the Internet’s middlemen, peering agreements lower the cost of bandwidth and the cost of IP services. The TeleGeography report lays out the case for peering gaining ground over transit, and shows how it expects peering to grow. This is good for the Internet as a whole, but this anticipated shift to peering over paying for transit has led to some behavior shifts that are causing harms for consumers.

It also means trouble for existing transit providers, especially those without other lines of business. Peering, the practice of two networks exchanging traffic directly either for free or for money, has been going on for decades. Historically, networks of a certain size would sign peering agreements because it would save them money.

Instead of building out an Internet pipeline to every endpoint, two networks meet in the middle and exchange traffic. In 2012, an OECD report found that peering has helped lower the overall cost of providing bandwidth and that most peering agreements are unpaid.

[Commentary] Broadband connections are supposed to be always-on -- unlike those days two decades back when you had to dial into a service and then hang up when you were done.

The introduction of always-on broadband helped pave the way for services like Napster and Skype and is one of the defining features of many aspects of modern life in first world countries.

Unfortunately, since April my broadband hasn’t been reliable, turning on and off ten to 20 times a day for periods of time that range from a minute to several hours. Given that this intermittent broadband seems to be a common enough problem, I’d like to offer ISPs and the Federal Communication Commission a list of five things I can’t actually do with a dodgy connection:

1. Using cloud office productivity software and writing tools
2. Managing my home
3. Calling a friend or source
4. Watching a movie
5. Playing music at a party

Both my job and quality of life depend on a reliable broadband connection, so it’s frustrating that I can’t seem to get one. I’m glad the FCC is looking at this as part of its Measuring Broadband reports, but I don’t know what the answer is here, in terms of what Time Warner Cable can do.

Not content to remake the server, Facebook’s engineers have taken on the humble switch, building their own version of the networking box and the software to go with it.

The resulting switch, dubbed Wedge, and the software called FBOSS will be provided to the Open Compute Foundation as an open source design for others to emulate. Facebook is already testing it with production traffic in its data centers.

Jay Parikh, the VP of infrastructure engineering at Facebook shared the news of the server onstage at the Gigaom Structure event, explaining that Facebook’s goal in creating this project was to eliminate the network engineer and run its networking operations in the same easily swapped out and dynamic fashion as their servers.

Facebook’s infrastructure is relatively unique in that it wholly controls it and has the engineering talent to build software and new hardware to meet its computing needs. Google is another company that has built its own networking switch, but it didn’t open source those designs and keeps them close. But many enterprise customers don’t have the technical expertise of a web giant, so the tweaks that others contribute to the Open Compute Foundation to make the gear and the software will likely influence adoption.

Lots of users. Lots of devices. Lots of video. This is the formula that will lead to global Internet traffic reaching an estimated total of 1.6 zettabytes in 2018 -- or 13 times the total Internet traffic from 2008.

A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes, which in itself is almost meaningless to most people. The figure, provided by Cisco as part of its annual visual networking index, is part of an effort to track the growth of the Internet and overall IP traffic.

Cisco has been doing this for nine years, and is generally sound when it comes to forecasting the overall traffic (its more granular estimates can be less accurate). Besides the zettabytes, video and the growing constellation of devices are the star of the 2014 forecast.

Cisco estimates that video will comprise 79 percent of all IP traffic in 2018, up from 65 percent in 2013, and that people will own an average of 2.7 devices, up from 1.7 in 2013. About 52 percent of the global population, or 4 billion people, will be online.

[Commentary] When you’re curled up on the couch, set to watch the second season of Orange is the New Black, and the video stream pixelates or just stops, it’s the modern-day equivalent of the “all circuits are busy now” message one can still hear on landline phones (or one could, if people were calling on them).

And the issues behind both problems are similar -- somewhere in the network there is too much demand and not enough capacity. But unlike the days of landline phones, when one industry controlled the calling experience (telephone companies that were forced by FCC regulations to connect calls on their networks), our broadband networks and the internet itself is controlled by varied industries and there are no rules around interconnections.

This is why we’re seeing Netflix and various ISPs battling it out in the press. The only broadband that matters is the broadband you have access to at your home. In most places, that’s not a competitive market. And with fights over interconnection agreements and the possibility that network neutrality transforms into paying for priority access, consumers get screwed again.

Take it from me. Having a bunch of bad choices is like having no choice at all.

The value that comes from connecting your thermostat to the Internet isn’t that you can now control it from your smartphone, or that it’s a theoretical home for new ads. The value is that you suddenly have access to cheap information about the temperature of your home, and by collating other data points or simple extrapolation techniques, you also have access to detailed information about what is happening in the home.

This can be cool. It can be creepy. And it can be convenient. But as is always the case when we encounter technological shifts, the Internet of things is really a tool. And like a hammer is used to expand the amount of force generated over a small area (allow you to hit something really hard), the Internet of things is a tool is for cheaply delivering and gathering information.