5G g(and Telecom) vs. The Internet

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 6:13 PM
Subject: 5G (and Telecom) vs. The Internet
To: David Farber <farber () gmail com>


A while back on IP I observed that the stories for 5G aren't coherent.

CES gave me a chance to drill down a bit more on what 5G is supposed to be.
Of course, 5G is a convenient marketing term that makes it seem like it is a
natural evolution from 4G.

What struck me is how little coherence there was in the explanation of what
it is supposed to be. I was reminded of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) which
was supposed to be necessary for multimedia over the Internet even after
Skype and Internet video already worked well. I was told 5G was a necessity
for IoT as if we didn't already have functioning connected devices.

The challenge is to explain why the Internet approach of solving problems
outside the network has worked so much better than trying to solve problems
in the network. At the heart of this is the powerful idea of a conversation.
You don't need to get everything right the first time and you don't have to
send extra baggage "just in case".

The immediate feedback allows for solving problems outside the network. The
design point of the telecommunications industry is still based on the postal
model which takes responsibility of delivering messages in one direction at
a time. It has to assure perfect delivery no matter what the cost.

Perhaps this is one reason why early cell phones were so useful even when
the sound quality was poor. You could just ask the caller for clarification
and thus get the benefit of cellular phones a decade or more before clear
digital. The TCP protocol itself depends on a "conversation" between the end
points and the facilities along the way. And when the network thwarts the
conversation by lying about its capacity we get buffer bloat. Buffering
works well for monologs but not for dialogs when we need immediate feedback.

Concurrent with CES there was an IEEE CE workshop.  I attended a
presentation on ATSC 3.0 (the Advanced TV standard). The goal was to be like
the Internet but without assuming a two-way connection because of the
assumption that the Internet couldn't handle live sports events. I tried to
point out that this is a solved problem as Akamai and others have shown but
that was simply dismissed. The irony is that panelists explicitly said they
wanted to emulate the agility of the Internet yet failed to see that the
very complexity of the standard prevented that.

For those interested I more details at http://rmf.vc/5GATSC.


Bob Frankston
http://Frankston.com
@BobFrankston



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