TennisNet vs Internet
Two of the basic characteristics that a network has are throughput and latency. That is how much data can you get through a network and how fast does it take to get that data through.
In the old days of networking it was sometimes better to move data on a tape or disk by carrying it (aka Tennis-shoe networking) than it was to move it across the network. Throughput might be high because the disk or tape held a lot of data, but latency was also high. In South Africa, one company found it was faster to strap a USB flash drive onto a carrier pigeon than to use the network.
Intel supposedly did this carrier pigeon trick in the 1980’s with integrated circuit masks between their Silicon Valley offices and Santa Cruz fabrication facility. In that case it was throughput on highway 17 over the mountains that was the problem.
But over time the internet has gotten faster and more ubiquitous. Now we can get it on our cell phones too. At least, when AT&T’s equipment cooperates I can. There’s a room or two in our house that AT&T just doesn’t reach. We miss more phone calls when we’re in the living room.
Netflix is a case study in TennisNet, or PostalNet, vs Internet. But even Netflix has a plan to move the the Internet too. Driven by Moore’s Law, networking will eventually rule everything right?
Maybe not. Let’s consider wireless as wired networking requires too much infrastructure. Moving a signal a reasonable distance requires either power or an antenna to concentrate the power in a very specific direction. If the latter, you also need to know precisely where to point that antenna. Antennas have size requirements too. Sometimes bigger is better.
Having high bandwidth also requires more power or better antennas for the same distance. Due to these power/antenna issues, networking will either require some infrastructure of wireless cells in an area, or decent power and antennas for satellite communications.
Or another way to put it: there will always be areas where low-bandwidth is the only game in town. In those cases, Netflix postal model aka the carrier pigeon model, might work better if you need high throughput.