Creating the New Public Network

Codeine writes: "Tom Lyons argues persuasively that the incumbent competitors might be incapable of delivering an utility IP network. Competition in such commodity markets encourages the breaking of connectivity, ``Connectivity is the fundamental service of the Internet, yet it is connectivity that suffers first when network providers compete for users and services.'' Thus he proposes the Institute for the Promotion of the Internet Protocol Utility."

Comments

Where has he been?

[b.foster]

Connectivity on the modern internet has been broken for many years, and will continue to stay that way as long as it is in providers' best interest to do so. Let's take a look at some examples to see why the problem is intractable:

• The internet is global. Although America has a bit of a stranglehold on most of the network, large portions of the internet are controlled by different governments, many of whom do not cooperate with the others. Saudi Arabia, China, and Iraq all firewall off most of the American internet hosts to suppress democracy. What makes My. Lyons think that these nations would be open to creating a "new public network" that allows free and open access?
• Blackhole lists are the rule, not the exception. Remember MAPS and ORBS, who asked participants to load ACLs onto their routers that killed off the class Cs and class Bs of suspected spammers? Well, these almost always resulted in collateral damage to unsuspecting customers of spammer-friendly ISPs. This created a dark underbelly of the internet: redlined addresses that were like the bastard half-brothers of the other hosts on the network, unable to access many important sites.
• Rogue nations need to be dealt with. Some nations, such as Korea and Russia, are widely acknowledged to have a preposterously bad record in dealing with security issues. Part of the problem is that their WHOIS system is unfriendly to English speakers; part of the problem is that their system administrators are severely overburdened and do not have time to fix r00ted systems. The problem arises in that it makes sense for Western hosts and ISPs to block traffic to and from these nations, in order to protect their own interests.

Public Utility

[idfrsr]

A public utility will have to be centrally regulated.
Any such regulation, will also have to regulate things that are not in the public interest, because the public utility is for the benefit of the public.
If this were to happen, how are we going do to decide what is in the public interest? We have a real hard time even with the sample of people that is slashdot deciding what is in the public interest. We could find that many things we enjoy about the internet (its anonymity, its freedom, its ability to share information) might become regulated for the public interest. We have all heard this argument before and what is happening in Australia is a perfect example

This may sound like a paranoid rant, but I think its is something people should consider, before we make this kind of decision. Many bad ideas in the world started out as good ideas....