if we build it, will they come

Consider the instant messaging landscape in 1999. ICQ had blazed a narrow trail through a small community, and AOL Instant Messenger was the dominant player (carrying over 430 million messages a day). Yahoo was making good headway, and even Microsoft was throwing their hat into the fray with MSN Messenger.[*] All four major systems used proprietary, non-interoperable, unpublished protocols. AOL was engaged in a war with what they considered "rogue" clients, vigorously blocking any attempts at interoperability.

The entrenched players had little interest in a standard protocol. Only Microsoft -- the upstart -- was promoting the concept of a standard protocol.

In the intervening 8 years, XMPP and SIMPLE have gained significant market and mind share, and it's not hard to imagine eventual interoperability between every viable instant messaging system within the next decade or so.

It's the same curve followed by just about all popular communication technologies: proprietary versions emerge first, and prove that the market exists. Eventually, a standardized protocol for the technology is defined, and the market slowly migrates to the standard. (To see how this plays out in a longer timeframe, consider the slow but complete migration of email from isolated, proprietary islands to fully-interconnected standards-based servers over the past 25 years).

That's what XCON is doing for conferencing. I understand that it's hard seeing the curve from this end, and it's difficult to imagine what impact we might have over the next 5, 10, 20 years. But it all needs to start somewhere, and we think this is as good a start as we can come up with right now.

/a

[*] Yes, there were important predecessors in spirit, like zephyr, talk, and their ilk. I'm trying to stick with the UI modality represented by currently popular instant messaging systems.

P2P占全球夜间95%网络带宽

据国外媒体报道，德国一家研究机构日前对全球互联网流量分布进行了研究。该机构发布的报告指出，Skype软件的流量占据了VOIP流量的95%，另外夜间带宽的95%被P2P应用所消耗。Mitbbs.com

这家机构名叫iPoque，据称他们研究了一百多万网民将近3TB的匿名数据流量，调查地区包括澳大利亚、东欧、德国、中东和南欧地区，时间是今年八月份和九月份。Mitbbs.com

调查发现，网络电话占据了互联网流量的1%，而在网络电话中，Skype软件一家就占据了95%。另外，虽然网络电话的流量并不大，但是全球三成的网民经常用网络电话软件和亲朋好友聊天。Mitbbs.com

这家研究机构指出，Skype的成功，主要是它能够穿越防火墙、网络地址转换设备以及其他障碍，普通的网络电话软件对于这些障碍无能为力。Skype具有内置的多种机制，能够自动绕过这些障碍。Mit

报告指出，目前网络带宽“消费大户”是P2P文件共享，在中东占据了49%，东欧地区占据了84%。从全球来看，晚上时段的网络带宽有95%被P2P占据。Mitbbs.com

在所有P2P工具中，BitTorrent最受欢迎，在南欧地区，电驴处于主导地位。在P2P内容方面并未和去年发生变化，主要还是视频，最受欢迎的是最新上映的电影、色情电影和音乐。其中在中东，电子书在P2P内容中比例较高，计算机游戏在南欧地区比例较高。Mitbbs.com

这家机构还说，20%的BitTorrent和电驴的数据流量进行了加密，以免遭到网络运营商的封杀。