[1st-mile-nm] [FRIAM] Kicking the Internet up a notch

[John Osmon]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 09:16:00PM -0600, Bob Knight wrote:
> Am I missing something or does this dovetail nicely with something like 
> LTSP or Sun Rays?
[...]
> Or is this completely tangential?

Nope -- things are just starting to catch up to the promise we've had
for a while...  

In the mid-90s, I helped transform a single unix minicomputer into a lab
of 50+ workstations that were interchangable.  Sit down at any, and your
environment would follow (once you logged in).  Centralized storage,
interchangeable displays, and a network were the key bits.

The Sun Rays took that a bit further -- but few people were really
ready for them...

A friend was in town last week talking about a reseach project where
the I/O bus of a computer was replaced with TCP/IP.  With the
right bandwidth/latency, you don't *care* about separating the
I/O and computing equipment.

Back to 1st-mile issues -- thin clients have always been useful
where there is sufficient bandwidth.  As we get better connections,
the distinction between where computing components "live" will
blur.