Invisible wrote:
> Right. My point was that if companies are just left to their own 
> devices, they will all invent and deploy incompatible technologies.

Not really. One network will be bigger, and others will make their stuff 
compatible so they can connect to the network. Or you build interface 
converters.

Wow, good thing the internet uses ethernet everywhere, and we never had 
these dial-up modems, ADSL, or cable modems to deal with.

> For something like washing machines, the fact that one machine is 
> "incompatible" with another is largely irrelevant. For anything which 
> could be described as a "network", compatibility is usually a Big Deal.

Which is exactly why the companies tend not to deploy incompatible 
technologies, once a sufficiently good technology has proven itself.

The main reason the telephone networks in the USA were monopolies is they 
were analog, and you had to carefully design the routing so that long 
distance calls didn't go thru so many switches that you lost all quality.

> The other problem is assigned numbers. Can you imagine if there were 
> three different postal services, each of which assigns completely 
> different postcodes to the same addresses? 

We have that here.  Well, at least two.  There's an "address" for postal 
mail, and a "legal description" for ownership, taxes, etc.  The postal 
address is technically only for mail delivery. The post office assigns it, 
if they don't like the one the builder provided. (I.e., the post office 
decides what the house numbers are, and they may rename the streets as 
well.)  The legal description applies before any house is built that you 
could deliver mail to, and applies to things that have either lots of 
addresses or no addresses. It refers to a surveying map on file at the county.

FedEx and UPS and GPS driving directions and such all use the postal 
address. Why wouldn't they? Why would UPS go to the trouble of making up 
their own sets of addresses?

 > Even if the format of a
> postcode is standardised, you still need a single entity to assign them.

Because ethernet MAC addresses and worldwide telephone numbers are all 
managed by the same entity.

> Also, networks usually require some kind of "capacity planning" 
> activity. If you let independent parties all do their own thing, you'll 
> end up with duplicated effort.

Yes. But that doesn't matter as much.

> All of this is presumably why almost all services are monopolies.

Maybe in your country. Our services fight like cats and dogs to avoid 
letting the government make monopolies.

> (Still, I guess it's plausible that you could have a single entity in 
> charge of *planning* a service, and have the service actually 
> *performed* by several independant companies...)

Hey, welcome to Bellcore. Have a nice visit.
-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

Post a reply to this message