In all the technological advances we're made in the past several years there is one glaring omission: network speed. Just like traffic, no one seems to care.
But I do, on both accounts. While I like my desktop computer's processing capabilities to be fast, I'm not as concerned about my infrastructure computers, because even the most basic computers can run circles my network connections, and my network connections aren't too shabby. The bottleneck is the network connection, by a landslide. Its the equivalent of a drag racer, the world's fastest accelerating vehicle, stuck behind a Zamboni, the world renown ice resurfacer with snail-like speeds.
Fiber Optics
I misspoke in the first paragraphs, the technological innovations are there, but they aren't getting implemented. Fiber optics are available and have ben for years, but they are only getting implemented now, slowly, and sporadically. Why?
Good question. Capitalist thought would suggest that competition would promote the rollout of such a network. On the flip side, the telecom companies have argued they need protection against competition if they invest in the infrastructure to roll-out such a network, similar to how cable companies have a monopoly in the areas they serve.
Wireless Networking
In comes wireless networking with its limited distance and relatively high speed. An average consumer grade wireless network can achieve speeds of 54Mbps. Most widely-available wired "upstream" network connections achieve under 1Mbps. (Why should people care about the "upstream"? They will more and more as blogging goes mainstream.) This is an unfair comparison, because the wireless network is local - limited mostly to a single unit home, whereas the wired network connection is wide - even global.
Or is it? Enter meraki, with software to interconnect the wireless devices they sell. Could this be the bridge to faster connections? We'll have to wait and see, their product offering is still in its infancy.
Municipal Wireless?
Municipal wireless sounded like a good idea to me for awhile, but it doesn't seem to be happening.
Open Source Wireless Mesh
If Meraki isn't able to provide what it takes to wifi the world, what other options are there? There are the beginnings of some serious contenders in the wireless world of open source, notably m0n0wall and pfSense. These are firewall and router distributions based upon the highly respected FreeBSD operating system. While these distributions aren't explicitly focused on mesh networking, they are capable of interconnecting in a similar fashion, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happened at some point in the future.
At that point, I think we may start to see even more homegrown network service offerings. I can't wait!
While I'm on the subject, I did a little research on the 802.11 standards. Looks like 802.11b is slower, but can go farther and is less easily obstructed. Cool!
blah