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My former blogging student, Matt, sent me a link to his most recent article, Site Meter, How I Love Thee, “Site Meter shows not only who has viewed your blog, but how they got to your blog, even re-creating their Google, Yahoo! or other searches.” I agree. Site Meter is my Tetris

I have to admit that I spend a lot of time digging around in my Site Meter.

I feel very much akin to the last couple paragraphs of his posting, “This led me to think about happy accidents, and how each of us on this earth is connected to each other by a fragile, invisible silver thread that some call the soul, but, on the blogosphere, we are connected by more. So much more. On the blogosphere, sometimes the thread reveals itself, in the form of Iraqi sheep and Ninja balls. Or maybe I’m just easily amused.”

Passing the Net Neutrality legislation would raise the cost of being a carrier node on the Internet to a point where many of the smaller, independent, diverse networks would be priced out. The durability of the Internet is dependent upon “thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks,” many of which cannot afford mandatory federal requirements and the exposure to getting sued.

Well, what makes the Internet durable, resilient, and democratic is its heterogeneous diversity. Every carrier node — network — comprising the Internet doesn’t have to have anything in common with any other carrier node except two things: communication standards and communication protocol. Basically, if a carrier node can talk in TCP/IP and is able to communicate in basic application protocol, then it is good to go.

Why would they be priced out? For two reasons: first, in order to meet federal standards each independent carrier node must maintain a minimum data transfer rate through its network, which is very expensive to build to and maintain (currently, good enough is good enough); and secondly, each carrier node that doesn’t meet or exceed federal requirements is legally liable for the rate that data travels through its network and can be sued.

What is the Internet?

The Internet as defined by Wikipedia: “The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP). It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, and is accessible using the Internet.”

How does the Internet work now?

Each carrier node (private network) may participate in the Internet (inter-network) as much or as little as it can “afford,” which is to say how many resources (time, money, people, expertise, bandwidth, hardware, software, hard drive, memory, and interest) are available.

If a carrier node fails, it might impact the users of that network, but it won’t effect the Internet proper.

The Internet itself is built to be absolutely reliable, carrier nodes were never expected to be. The Internet as seen from “space” is “always on” while still allowing its component parts to fail. The Internet was designed that way. To be more than the sum of its parts.

Again, from Wikipedia, “Many computer scientists see the Internet as a ‘prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system’ (Willinger, et al). The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits ‘emergent phenomena’ that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity.”

The more participants, the more carrier nodes, the more heterogeneous the networks, the better.

The durability of the network requires diversity of network. Legislating “under-performing” carrier network nodes off of the Internet might make the Internet more efficient, but it will surely make it weaker, less resilient, and certainly less reliable. In the case of the Internet, the more efficient you make it the less reliable it has a tendency to be.

How would it work under Net Neutrality?

The thing called Net Neutrality is neither about networks nor is it about neutrality, it is about legislation and it is about policy. If anything, it is about lawyers and law suits and money and power. Why?

Well, the Internet cannot be treated like the national highway system, which is what the legislation wants to do. It wants to make sure that every portion of the Internet — all the nodes of the Internet — are held to the same quality standard. This would change the Internet completely. I have a lot of questions:

Who would set the quality standards?

How would these standards evolve to keep pace with the ever changing technology?

What would happen to the smaller net work providers who could not keep pace?

Would the only remedy to hurried over reaching legislation . . . be more legislation?

All I know is that it would change the Internet.

What I fear is that it will make the Internet sickly, less robust, less diverse, and less responsive to true innovation, true evolution, and true growth. The Internet has been wildly successful as an healthy, growing, emergent system and there is really no reason to inoculate it (or medicate it) against something it was designed to be immune.

Rank (by citation count): 1268
Inbound Links: 26 from 26 source(s)
Inbound Links (avg. per week): 6
Inbound Links (avg. per month): 26
Post Count: 373
Post Frequency (per week): 38
Post Frequency (per month): 164
Via BlogPulse2RSS

Its really amusing to see what search terms in 2005 resulted in a link to this blog.

I only make a couple bucks-a-day from all the Google Adsense ads I have on this site. Why do I do it?

I know it pisses you off, especially if you’re browsing with Firefox and all the Google Adsense ads flash at you and give you migraines. I know.

But since Chris Abraham – Because the Medium is the Message is my own personal blog, blogging, blogger, blogosphere, SEO, Google, MSN, Yahoo!, search engine, viral marketing, online marketing, online advertising, online influence, web statistics, blog statistics and Google Adwords laboratory, I use the ads as a way to see who is advertising where and about what.

Since Google Adsense ads are “content matching” and “content related” I can blog about this and that and then see what ads come up. Instead of “birdwatching” — or birding — I am “ad watching.”

See, there is method in my madness.

No, I don’t deny the madness. How could I?

In January 2006, almost 75% of my repeat visitors read this blog via some sort of syndicated feed.

When I think of my readership I think of people who have me in their bookmarks or come to me out of habit. They come to the “main” or “index” page of the blog to check out the latest articles.

Mind you, in January I had 179,228 visitors total so only 14% (25,179) of my traffic comes from readership, the rest comes from search engines or direct links (Wonkette, Guardian UK, I-Am-Bored, or Slate, for example).

Yes, 86% of all of my traffic, 154,049, is based on the blogosphere.

I checked my logs for January and of the 25,179 visitors who came to a “main” or “index page” of my blog, Chris Abraham – Because the Medium is the Message, only 6,466 visitors came in via a web browser, the rest read my blog via some sort of syndicated feed.

18,713 visitors came in via some flavor of feed. 8,240 by RSS 1.0, 3,830 by RSS 2.0, and 6,643 by ATOM. Last year, 2005, the numbers were startling: 21,913 via web browser, 25,407 via RSS 1.0, 9,495 via RSS 2.0, and 19,637 via ATOM. So far this month, it breaks into 4,471 via web browser, 3,261 via RSS 1.0, 2,263 via RSS 2.0, and 3,483 via ATOM.