History [was Re: strangest systems I've sent email from]

[Swift Griggs]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2016, Mouse wrote:
> [...] That everything is now CIDR blocks is another loss; I am not fond 
> of the desupporting of noncontiguous subnet masks, even though I can 
> understand it [...]

Heh, I'm guessing you've been doing something like that for a very long 
time. I remember "Der Mouse" the Sun god from very early days of the net, 
and I suspect you are one in the same.

As far as CIDR goes, I agree. I'm glad CIDR exists but sad that it needs 
to be this way "normally". 

What I've often wondered is why there are so many IT people with the same 
sort of laments and we haven't all collectively built our own networks 
over wireless ? I remember when a friend of mine who was a HAM showed me 
his 1200 BPS packet radio setup.  I was blown away and I could envision an 
army of radio geeks interfacing together to form a civilian Internet (and 
this was before the Internet caught on). I had the same thought when 
Lucent Wavelan cards and subsequent wireless devices caught on. I figured 
we could network an entire city together using a mix of directional 
antennae for the long runs, and omnis for the distribution layers. Then 
inter-city traffic could be done with either long range elevated yagis or 
land lines paid for by the "collectives" in each city. Perhaps Karl Marx 
might have shared my vision, but the "real world" didn't. 

I wonder why... FCC rules too strict? The tech isn't as robust as I 
thought? Hidden operating costs I'm not thinking of? I'm naive, I guess. I 
thought we'd all be running our own little "cells" right now, not fighting 
for scraps of bandwidth from *horrified gasp* the dirty monopolistic cable 
companies and lyin' cheatin' phone companies. Meanwhile folks in places 
like Korea are laughing and using Fiber or Ethernet and paying pennies on 
the dollar compared to options we've got in the USA.

-Swift