[nycbug-talk] nyetwork neutrality, rehashed (was: some other crap)

[Alex Pilosov]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2008, Isaac Levy wrote:

> > This is where Alex and I will disagree.  I think we need neutrality
> > badly, and I think that current ideas of neutrality don't even touch
> > the relevant part and are so narrow they should be implemented as an
> > obvious matter of course, and what we actually need goes WAY further
> > than the discussion.
> 
> This is where I believe I'm on Miles' side.  Alex, (and Marc), I respect
> your views, but I like the idea of future Government involvement and
> proactive regulation of network businesses.
Crazy talk. Regulation is only necessary in case of monopolies. In every 
other case, vote with your wallet. If noone provides service that you 
want, start providing it.

Then again, you *may* be talking about regulation of the last mile 
monopolies, in which case, I agree.

<snip>

> Technology gets faster/cheaper at an expected pace, why doesn't internet
> connectivity get faster/cheaper at the same pace? As a 'colo consumer',
> and effectively an end-user of the internet, this is what I expect from
> the net. Jokes and cynicism aside- when I see networks get saturated,
> good things are happening- big picture.
Last mile is a monopoly, that's why. IP transit *is* getting very cheap
very fast - we went from 1000$/mbit about 8 years ago to 10-15$/mbit
today, and we'll go to mid-teens soon.

> - Promote the advancement of networking technology
> - Promote transparency of infrastructure
> - Keep ISP's blind to users data, just focus on throughput
<snip>
In case of monopolies, yes, otherwise, hell no. I built my network, I paid 
for it, keep your hands offa it. 

I've went through this exact debate some time ago on nycwirelesss, so not
to re-hash this, I'd like you to read this before posting.

http://www.mail-archive.com/nycwireless@lists.nycwireless.net/msg04878.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/nycwireless@lists.nycwireless.net/msg04891.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/nycwireless@lists.nycwireless.net/msg04916.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/nycwireless@lists.nycwireless.net/msg04889.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/nycwireless@lists.nycwireless.net/msg04904.html

(particularly last one)

> - Legislate Separation of Content from Infrastructure businesses
It is not a problem.

> - Incentivize QoS honesty
>   - encourage pricing models based on speed/quality metrics
>   - provide incentives to discourage asynchronous connectivity
Market already does this just fine, thanks.

> 
> - Get the state more involved with transparently, publically, regulating
> Telcos as a Natural Monopoly
Yes, in case of monopoly.

> - Penalize ISP's for inaccurate service claims
>   - most consumer pipes are 60-80% sold speed
>   - most colo pipes (I've experienced) are 70-90% sold speed
OMG IM PINGIN 10. 

Where did you get this data? This looks like complete and utter bullshit, 
spoken by a gamer who doesn't have any idea how internet works, that it is 
not end-to-end, etc, etc etc. You know better than that.


> - Incentivize measurable infrastructure improvements
>   - reduce barriers to network upgrades
Market already does it just fine.

> But outside of legislation, social changes can have an impact:
> 
> - Hold carriers accountable for their actions
>   - Make SLA's stick, all the way through the chain
>   - Demand honesty and sane transparency from network providers
Except that most customers "can't handle the truth". Pilosoft has mostly 
clued customers, yet I doubt many of them want or need or care about the 
truth.

> - Help people realize the costs of the internet, discouraging 'the  
> internet is free' (cost) mentality
That'd help. Clearly, it'd get rid of tards who think "unlimited" means
dedicated as in "I can use 100% of my bandwidth 24x7 and not pay extra".
I'm very much in favor of carriers placing GB caps and charging per GB -
it is similar to abuse of dialup back in the day by staying connected
24x7. Unlimited does not mean dedicated.

> > It's nearly possible, and scalable, to deliver television over the
> > public Internet.  Currently I think there may be some big gaps in the
> > free software toolkit, and there may be some
> > robustness/security/control-plane-DoS problems since it involves
> > letting untrusted parties create state on router control planes, but
> > it's already very advanced and I think is quite close.
> >
> > Also I don't think multicast will be safe without QoS to prevent
> > multicast from filling your entire pipe, otherwise you could routinely
> > (albeit temporarily) DoS yourself off the Internet by subscribing to
> > too much.
> 
> Ha- interesting- I'd never really thought of multicast used on the
> internet this way.  Are you talking about some kind of end-user controls
> which affect multicast traffic filtering up the ISP chain?
Multicast is like IPv6 in many ways. Chicken and egg, nobody really cares 
enough to multicast-enable their network.

> And how do the big backbone providers, who have to run all of that
> multicast, (it has to flow somewhere, right?), how do they get
> compensated to maintain network load?
Same as every other traffic?

> > Currently cable companies are switching all their fiber to IP.  They
> > will deliver television to the set-top boxes over multicast IP.  but
> > they'll probably not let these IP packets leak out of their DRMbox.
> > They might.  They will DEFINITELY reserve the right to be multicast
> > sources for themselves so they can sell your eyeballs to others, and
> > keep your choices of TV stations tied to your choice of ISP.
> 
> Yuck.  This is exactly the kind of Content+Infrastructure nightmare I
> loathe.
Why? Nothing's wrong with that. If you had a *choice* of your cable 
carriers, that wouldn't be a problem.

> > If you're a Teliax or a Junction Networks (or Vonage), your customers
> > will get much shittier service than if they buy the proprietary VoIP
> > from speakeasy or time-warner.  The ATM QoS and unsolicited grant
> > features these ISP's are using aren't exposed to the user, nor
> > available to bits received from random sites on the Internet.  It's
> > all walled-garden bullshit.  They start with the VoIP the rest of us
> > are using, then add a layer of wallpaper so we don't realize it's
> > VoIP, and then quietly finish the job with proper QoS analagous to
> > what banks and big corporations run over their WANs.  That last step
> > needs to be cracked open by neutrality legislation.  It's about giving
> > end users full control over their own Internet access, and not
> > allowing ISP's to tie other services to your Internet service by
> > deliberately crippling their own technology.
(addressed in the emails linked above from nycwireless)

> > I think Alex will favour a system he says the british are using which
> > splits monopolies vertically.  He says they have no ILEC.  There is
> > one company that owns all the copper, but they don't provide telephone
> > service too, just copper.  Everyone is a CLEC.
> 
> Well, this model starts screwing with my simple Separation of Content
> and Infrastructure spiel- as it puts the IP layer in as a sort of
> content layer.
> 
> I can see why (hypothetically) this would be beneficial to Alex, I see
> him as constantly being stuck in-between massive telco battles upstream,
> and customers downstream.
No, it's beneficial to consumers by letting *market* decide things.

-alex