Topic: Sonic Net

John Dvorak teases a special Sunday episode featuring interviews with Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper and Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Adams discusses how his analysis of Donald Trump as a "master persuader" cost him 40% of his income and 75% of his social circle. Jasper discusses the challenges of building independent fiber-to-the-home infrastructure.

While John Dvorak attempts to fix a peering issue with his Sonic.net internet connection, Adam Curry reads birthday announcements for listeners. Celebrants include Sir Keith Chamberlain (73), Rosalind Furness (41), and Paige Walden. The hosts struggle with technical lag and router settings during the transition.

The debate over net neutrality is complicated by the use of physical caching boxes provided by companies like Netflix and Google to ISPs. The hosts argue that having content stored locally at a central office inherently creates a non-neutral internet experience by prioritizing certain traffic.

The complex issue of net neutrality is explored through the lens of ISP interconnection and local caching appliances. Companies like Netflix and Google provide free "cache boxes" to ISPs to reduce backbone traffic, but large providers like Comcast demand payment for the massive data loads these services generate. The hosts argue that government intervention in net neutrality will likely disadvantage small players and lead to increased regulation of online content.

The hosts open the program from Tokyo, Japan, discussing technical difficulties involving Skype latency and internet routing. One host switches from a Sonic.net connection to Comcast to improve the ping times to Asia. They note the irony of the connection failing only after the pre-show ends and the recording begins.

John C. Dvorak reports ongoing technical issues with Comcast, citing significant packet loss despite high advertised speeds. He switched to a DSL connection from Sonic.net, which proved more stable for broadcasting despite lower bandwidth. The hosts conclude that cable infrastructure is often unreliable for real-time protocols like Skype due to intermittent connectivity and latency.