If you've ever been around dogs or seen dogs on TV or in movies, you are no doubt aware of how attentive dogs can look when they want something. This look happens when you are eating and a dog is sitting obediently nearby (closely watching every morsel of food move from your plate to your mouth). It happens if you are playing catch with a dog and you are holding the ball he desperately wants you to throw.
In my case, the look happens when a dog is your coauthor and he wants more space in your column. With that in mind, my column is brief so that Astro has space to fully express himself. (And yes, I do feed him from the table when he gives me that look.)
In the late 1980s, I worked as a network consultant. Back then, we were thrilled with LAN speeds of 2.5 Mbps (ARCNET), 4 Mbps (Token-Ring), and 10 Mbps (Ethernet). These networks were faster and more economical than anything we had seen, and they enabled the IT industry to progress into workgroup and client/server computing. Moreover, these LAN links provided cost and performance advantages far beyond what could be achieved with the WAN links of that era. A T-1 line could theoretically offer 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth, but the cost for a T-1 (or T-2 or T-3) line was astronomical back then.
Now let's fast-forward to today. Our LANs are running at blistering speeds of 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gbps. Our WAN links haven't necessarily enjoyed the same performance boost, but the cost has certainly gone way down. Today, we can get 1+ Mbps service to our homes, cell phones, PDAs, or laptops for less than $100 a month. What a difference a couple of decades has made! Bandwidth is now plentiful — and hot.
Now for the bad news: Although bandwidth has steadily increased over the years, we are still plagued by latency problems. Latency is the delay between the start of a transmission and the receipt of that transmission. These delays can be caused by the distance that the signal has to travel and the amount of time the transmitting and receiving equipment takes to process the transmissions.
Think of light. Light speed is fast, but it still takes a long time for light rays to travel from the sun to the earth. That's latency. Or think of dial-up modems. The time it takes for modems to translate between digital and analog signals (and vice versa) adds latency.
Latency makes centralizing all our IT services difficult because some protocols (e.g., those used for file sharing and printer pooling) are "timing sensitive." Latency is also what keeps InfiniBand technology alive, because InfiniBand offers lower latencies than most Ethernet implementations. In short, latency is definitely not hot.
I've been a good dog. I've patiently lived with the space my master has allowed me in this column. I haven't begged him for more room . . . until now. But this month, I have something worth barking about: Amazon's Kindle.
Being an obsessive-compulsive technology consumer, my master was quick to order a Kindle when it became available. The Kindle is Amazon's e-book reader, and Amazon clearly didn't anticipate the pent-up demand for this device. It sold out in less than six hours. That's pretty impressive, even by Internet standards. But then again, the Kindle is a pretty impressive device.
Why am I so impressed with the Kindle? First, let's focus on the reading experience. The display is crisp, and page transitions are quick. The device is comfortable to hold, and the page-turning buttons are easy to reach — even for my paws. All things considered, reading a book on a Kindle feels very much like reading a printed book.
To be sure, the Kindle is not the prettiest device ever designed. It certainly doesn't stand up to Apple or Sony design standards. For example, it is difficult to hand a Kindle over to someone, or even to flip it over to turn it off, without accidently hitting one of the page-turning buttons. And honestly, it is a little ugly. It has angles where you expect curves and vice versa.
Esthetics aside, the most impressive thing about the Kindle is its integrated Internet capability. Amazon teamed up with Sprint and put third-generation cellular network technology in the device. That means that you can access the Amazon.com store to buy and download e-books on the device itself. And here's the best part: There is no monthly charge for the network service. It's free! You can even use a simple web browser to access Wikipedia, search with Google, or access other basic Internet services.
The Kindle is an easy-to-use e-book with free Internet connectivity. Isn't that worth woofing about?
Sean Chandler is a computer and network consultant who has nearly 30 years of field experience. Astro, a border collie with more than 40 dog years of data processing experience, provides technical support to his master, Sean.
— Astro
Links:
[1] http://systeminetwork.com/author/sean-chandler