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RE: What's wrong with Tiered Networks?
By RandomFool on 7/5/2006 11:39:46 AM , Rating: 2
The users of today's Internet are vastly different from the 90s, today every teenager, grandparent and joe-schmo can get on and surf around the internet. If something is taking to long they’re very likely to just give up and click close.

I think one of the bigger issues is whether anything will get cheaper if the tiered networks are employed or if it'll just get more expensive for anyone who wants the fast lane. Sure, in theory, things could get cheaper but if a company has an opportunity to make more money are they going to take it? Probably. You can get free hosting now but look how bad most of it is, a tiered solution could become much like that where sure there’s free services out there but if you want to do anything useful you’ve got to pay for it.

You’ve got a good point tiered systems could work really well but it is just a matter of who's involved and what their ultimate motives are and right now I just don’t see tiered service working. To many companies and people are involved most of whom are looking at their wallets wondering how to make it just a little thicker.

RE: What's wrong with Tiered Networks?
By masher2 (blog) on 7/5/2006 12:25:07 PM , Rating: 2
> "If something is taking to long they’re very likely to just give up and click close."

I have a bridge for sale to anyone who believes a new ultrabandwidth low-latency service is suddenly going to make existing sites load slower. And I have a small nation in Africa for sale to anyone who believes that an ISP who attempted to degrade service would be able to stay in business.

Tiered networks is about adding new higher-speed services on top of existing ones. Not downgrading existing services...which, of course, ISPs are already free to do.


Poor logic. A company always has the opportunity to "make more money" by raising their prices. Why don't they do so? Competition. If a telco raises additional funds through selling higher-priced services, they have headroom to lower prices on everything else. If they don't do so-- their competitors will, and undercut them from the market. This is why all prices in the high-tech world descend over time.

RE: What's wrong with Tiered Networks?
By RMTimeKill on 7/5/2006 4:29:26 PM , Rating: 2
This is the same logic that kept gas and electric prices lower also right? At least is sure sounds like it, tiered networks are supposed to help lower our costs... deregulating gas prices was supposed to help increase competition and drive prices down, same with energy costs... Did it work? no... so why would this work? Dont we learn from history? >.<

By masher2 (blog) on 7/5/2006 4:51:54 PM , Rating: 4
> "This is the same logic that kept gas and electric prices lower also right? "

I'm not quite sure to what you're referring. The electric industry remains one of the most highly regulated ones in the nation; competition is prevented, and prices are set by government oversight boards. In the case of California, their so-called "deregulation" was anything but.

As for "gas", if you mean gasoline, the industry has never been regulated. And as a result, prices are unbelievably cheap. Gasoline produced from oil pumped from thousands of feet underground, shipped halfway around the world, and refined in multi-billion dollar facilities is cheaper than milk pumped out of your local cow, a few miles down the road. And- had we in the US allowed any new refineries to be built since the 1970s, would be even cheaper still. Its a bit hard to meet current demand with a rickety network of plants all 30-40 years old.


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