With rituals completed, fifteen Barre Rotarians sat down to a lunch of hamburgers, fries, cole slaw and pudding.  President Liane was first on her feet to announce:

Caroline self-fined for eating a French fry before the bell rang. She also gave a Happy Dollar in recognition of the stellar performance of the Rock City Chorus featuring Barre Rotarians Tom Babic and Dick Shadroui. She also announced:

 

Scott passed around postcards listing the performances of the Stellaria Trio (a string quartet). Locally they will be performing at 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 3th at the Plainfield Town Hall Opera House, at 7:10 p.m. on Saturday February 23^rd in Barre  and on June 14^th at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier. 

 

President Liane, in an attempt to liven things up and prompted by Karl, proposed a fine of one-and-nine on me for publishing a photo in Granite Chips of her showcasing her double chin. Several came to my defense and the fine did not pass. A fine was also proposed on Tony for his inactivity as a catalyst for others proposing fines. He defended himself by blaming his wife Cindy for medicating him. Fine passed.

Tony proposed a fine on everyone who had not taken a guest lunch card from Scott. Without much of a defense from anybody, the fine passed.

Tony spoke to the importance of participating in this year’s the Rotary Foundation giving campaign. The goal is 100% participation.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karl introduced Michael Birnbaum, our speaker.

Michael is GM and a principal owner of Cloud Alliance, central Vermont’s own fixed wireless ISP since 2005. He recently launched Kingdom Fiber, a fiber-optic ISP serving the NEK. He is Plainfield’s delegate to the CVFiber Communications Union District—a municipality founded to bring advanced broadband to 15 central Vermont towns. Before he worked in telecom, Michael was a VISTA volunteer in Chicago, a student at Cornell Engineering and Goddard, a potter in Greece, and a carpenter and snow plower. Retiring after 30 years as a rural letter carrier in Barre and union steward for Vermont, he found no company would bring internet to his home in Plainfield. He joined a community effort, which, long story short, led to his next career. Michael understands that communication and the infrastructure to facilitate it, is the key to economic and cultural vitality. His mission is to reverse the shrinking and aging trajectory of Vermont’s population. It’s personal—his three children love Vermont, but left for better opportunities. When he's not working (too much) or hanging with his wife (too little), Michael likes to race small sailboats on Champlain and around the country.

 

What follows are the highlights of his presentation.

 

Michael began his presentation by listing the topics which would be covered: digital building blocks, the Internet, broadband, wire line broadband, wireless broadband, ISPs and “cellular.”

 

What is a digital communication network?

A network of equipment enabling transfer of digital information carried by electrical signals or by electromagnetic waves.

 

What is the Internet?

A network of networks— the interconnection of billions of local area and wide area digital networks

 

What is the Internet Protocol?

Network node ID, location numbering system IPv4—4.3 billion addresses (232)

IPv6—340 billion billion billion billion addresses (2128)

 

What are the Web and the Domain Name System?

Predominant information tool used over the Internet from circuits to packets (ARPANET in 1969); Tim Berners-Lee (at CERN in 1989) hypertext transfer protocol (http); hypertext markup language (html); domains (e.g. barrevtrotary.org) domain name servers (DNS)

 

Who makes up the Internet?

Micro nets; small, local nets; regional data centers; national nets; large, international backbones.

 

 

What is broadband?

High-speed, digital, communication channels .

 

What are typical broadband services?

Data voice (VoIP);video security; telemedicine; long-distance education; Internet of things (IoT)

 

How is broadband measured?

Through put/capacity (bps, kbps, Mbps, Gbps); data transfer (kB, MB, GB, TB); delay/latency (ms, μs); jitter/packet-delay variation (± vs. average ms).

 

For more of Mike's presentation click on Read More.....