quote:

ORIGINAL: SPEnthusiast

There are fiber optic cables laid out underneath ocean floors digitally weaving the global economy together by enabling information flow through them that transcends geographical as well as political and diplomatic boundaries.
[Jim] - true enough, but nothing new. The cross-oceanic fiber circuits were first laid for PSTN use about 50 years ago and later repurposed and expanded for digital transmissions.

A recent revelation made it clear to me that there is very little law and order that binds the human race together so that we can function cohesively as a civilized unit.
[Jim] - also true, but irrelevant, unless this is perhaps a warning to the public at large regarding your rants?

Current Ethernet technologies use a 48-bit globally visible MAC Address and Ethernet is so pervasive that we find PC motherboard core logics - the supporting chipsets - that natively support Ethernet.
[Jim] - oh - this again. Poor deluded person. In an earlier day, I might ask you to stop bogarting, but I don't participate in those activities any more.

I have yet to see any valid reasoning behind Ethernet being a hierarchical network.
[Jim] - that's because Ethernet is as "heiarchical" as NetBEUI; IOW, not at all.

Here's one thing that goes against that model - bandwidth curtailment.

There's so much that can be done in software that runs above Layer 2, and the limiting factor for such innovation is bandwidth curtailment. Those fiber optic cables underneath ocean floors actually opens up avenues to your PC or Mac to anyone around the planet. Layer 2 firewalls? Heck, who knows about those? The real threat is not from the Internet.
[Jim] - if the real threat is not from the Internet, why are you so afreared of the "globally-visible MAC addresses" in your "heirarchical Ethernet" theories?

Here's what's got to be done. The PC has to be rearchitected to accomodate InfiniBand. InfiniBand is point-to-point Layer 2 technology that's done right and it natively routes IPv6. By the way, I don't see any valid reason for hierarchical routing in IPv6 either. A new routing protocol must be developed to succeed IPv6, one that's based on OSPF, and one that addresses GPS-based destinations.
[Jim] - and we'll hire little gnomes to inspect each packet as it tries to enter the computer so that we don't have to worry about bugs in the software that might be exploirted by the GEICO gecko virus embedded in each packet's evil bits.

The PC, as well as the Mac, must biometrically authenticate human users by cooperating with this new routing protocol that determines that the person being authenticated cannot be at more than one place at the same time. And there must be InfiniBand HCAs integrated into PC motherboards, and into Macs as well, that offer new Tbps bandwidth capability that's coming down the pipe according to www.infinibandta.org. InfiniBand logic must be embedded on PC motherboard chipsets, the same way Ethernet is embedded at this time. And those InfiniBand HCAs must directly interface with PC memory controllers for DMA. We need to completely bypass I/O paths such as PCI-Express or HTX while doing this, since we really can't afford to be at the mercy of those standard bodies, and in addition to that those technologies do not offer enough bandwidth. InfiniBand HCAs must access memory at the same bandwidth that CPUs access memory. One obvious application that this would enable is a server virtualization hyervisor that hosts VMs that can sprawl across physical machine boundaries over the network. InfiniBand must become an integral part of PC architecture, the same way your DVD drive or hard drive is.
[Jim] - I see; a pseudo-platform for your newbie marketing efforts? I can't see why anyone would so publicly debase themselves short of losing a really nasty bar bet.

If InfiniBand is deployed in the home, it would transform home entertainment. It becomes possible to route HDMI and DisplayPort over that new routing protocol with the PC, or the Mac, acting as the hub where HD content is downloaded, or even streamed in, over the Internet and distributed for viewing and listening to different locations in the home.