RE: MS and help files

["P.A. Petricone" <pap@tiac.net>]

  Matt,
  
  While it is relatively moot now, when the LD execs were in a flap about internet telephony becoming an uninvited guest to the party, their tech staff assured them that the nature of routing on the net  introduced too many reliability issues and speech artifacts to be considered LD competition. Then they cooled down and just bought the backbones. Imagine that the most critical junctions that we all transit, MAEs and NAPs are owned and run by MSF  which merged with UUNET in which MS is well vested. Ahem.
  
  Fixed IP's have NOT been eliminated. One can certainly obtain a fixed IP from most ISPs. The reason for dynamic IP was most certainly to stave off running out of addresses for critical systems running the expanding net structure that must be identifiable by address at any time and still be able to accommodate access by the occasional visitor, which is where the cow lives in ISP land.
  
  For internet telephony and things like it, the clever ones devised a method through simple CGI scripts that can provide a mechanism to announce your dynamic IP to your software and optionally to the net when you log in. The bag is full of tricks to enable reliable access behind at least one fixed IP, for example, virtual web sites.
  
  There are proposed new, larger capacity internet addressing schemes that will probably require major retooling of backbone systems (that could surely be rendered obsolete by low orbiting satellite systems). I heard of one such scheme that could provide a fixed IP address for every square foot of land on the face of the earth. Is that worth a ponder? I think some might say, 'Not enough, there is the galaxy to consider'.
  
  Cheers,
  
  _P.A. Petricone
   
  ----------
  From: 	Matt Gilbert[SMTP:mgilbert@insnet.com]
  Sent: 	December 04, 1997 9:19 PM
  To: 	Multiple recipients of list
  Subject: 	RE: MS and help files
  
  On 12/4/97 7:51 PM, P.A. Petricone (pap@tiac.net) wrote:
  
  >This may have come about in a fairly innocent fashion when ISP's were 
  >running out of fixed IP addresses from the internic 
  
  Is that what happened? I always thought the fixed IPs were eliminated 
  because they provided too much opportunity to hurt the bottom line of the 
  long distance phone industry. Didn't anyone else find the timing of the 
  end of the fixed IP and the acquisition of the Internet by MCI, Sprint, 
  etc. to be suspicious?
  
  
  
  Matt Gilbert
  mgilbert@insnet.com
  **************
  http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/1358/