Slashdot Mirror
Australia Investigates Peering Practices
Anonymous Sniper writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today announced that it will hold a public inquiry into whether an Internet interconnection [peering] service should be regulated. This would mean the big National ISPs would have to pay smaller ISPs for traffic originating within their networks, which means everyone's routing tables would become more efficient, and cheaper for the smaller ISPs. This would also set a significant international precedent. Horray for the ACCC and Allan Fels - the same people who made Region-Free DVD players legal here."
I thought it was going to be an article telling me I can't get no more warez
So long as any regulating does not remove our right to seek and destroy those who run horrendously poor peer's like Sprint.
I know i didnt get this, so i think this is the important info:
"There are some apparent curiosities with current interconnection arrangements. If I am connected to a smaller ISP and I send an email to my friend at one of the four larger ISPs, the larger ISP will generally charge my smaller ISP for sending the email. However, when my friend at the larger ISP sends me a return email, my smaller ISP will have to pay the larger ISP once again".
ya, that dosnt sound real fair
Anything that goes to help out the smaller guys is a good thing. After all, the big guys gobble the little ones up, and then give crappy service for an ever increasing price.
Perhaps this will let these beloved little IPSs survive just a little bit longer.
Anything to keep the internet how it should be is a good idea, and it is nice to see the Aussie gov't protecting capitolism by leveling the playing field. After all, more compeition = better experience for every consumer.
Hey australia, put down the pipe and step away from the crack.
Nationalize your network and get it over with.
Anything that leads to a more distributed internet is a Good Thing, IMHO. Lack of centralization is the biggest reason why the net has been successful, but recent trends are disturbing (eg: ICANN). OTOH, the US-centeredness of the internet has decreased greatly since the early days, which is good. Another thing: with the growth of permanent connections worldwide as against dialup, more and more of the average Joes will host their webpages on their own machine (like me :)), as against uploading it to some free server, which would typically be in the US. So maybe things are going to get better.
The small ISPs aren't paying for the large ISPs backbone, and the usage flows both ways through it.
:-)
You don't GET PAID driving down a toll road one way, do you?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Slashdot poster.... in favor of regulation...... brain melting....
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
What's the big deal? Most people pee into a toilet or urinal when they have to go. What they ought to be investigating is why so many people don't wash their hands afterward. Now that's something worth looking into.
This is just more commie market regulation.
Everyone knows Free Markets means Freedom!
Market regulation is bad right?
No, market regulation is neither bad nor good...it is simply a necessity, much as police are a necessity when large numbers of individuals are involved. Like civilized society, markets need rules too. When properly formulated and enforced, regulations ensure that everyone has a level playing field.
Regulations can be good or bad, or neither, or both simultaneously. It all depends on how well the regulations achieve their goals...and whether you agree with them.
Remember the slashdot story on African ISPs having to foot the connection bill? The fundamental problem is that peripheral networks foot the bill to connect to larger networks, which foot the bill to connect to themselves (via backbones) and which connect to yet larger networks.
So why should governments regulate this? What kind of abuse is going on? If the edge players did not buy the connection, they would die.
Large players (e.g. AOL and MCI) are the ones vulnerable to bankruptcy for spending too heavily on infrastructure, that is quickly out of date.
Mac Refugee, paper MCSE, linux wanna be
Consumer Lapdog, not watchdog.
We all know everytime someone says it, Allan Fells says it's bullshit.
Does this mean that ISP's with a huge number of Geek users will try null-routing slashdot and sites like it to prevent having to pay the cost when someone elses site gets slashdotted?
Australia really needs some not-for-profit (government sponsored?) peering points (IX's) like they do here in the UK (Linx, Lipex). Having large ISP's in control of the peering game will inevitably make the rules unfair.
...National ISP pays YOU!
...Michael pays to reject better stories in favor of Australian ones!
He announced intention to retire at the end of his contract.
On Slashdot, roads troll you.
BGP already provides some of these benefits for smaller ISPs by allowing peering relationships. Let's say there is a parent ISP A, with smaller ISPs B and C in a transit relationship to A (in other words, they pay A). If B wants to send to C, it normally has to go through A, and both B and C end up paying for it. If there is significant traffic between B and C, they may decide to set up a peering relationship, sending packets directly between one another and bypassing A. Many peering relationships are set up such that B and C don't pay each other anything, since they both end up saving money by bypassing A.
Also, if you think about it, if A charges B for anything going from B to A and B charges A for anything going from A to B, you end up cancelling much of the money they make from one another. Granted, the larger ISP will most likely come out ahead, but it still needs to pay its bills. So it raise prices anyway in order to recoup the money that was cancelled out. In effect, the amount that the larger ISP charges will be unchanged, but there is extra work involved in keeping track of all this information. To make an analogy, does it make sense for you to charge your ISP for packets that go one way and not the other? No, you're paying them for the connection that they provide.
Finally, how do we determine in what situations do charges apply? If an e-mail goes from A to B, it seems logical that A should pay. But if B makes a request for a web page and the web page is transferred from A to B, should A still pay? If we make different payment rules for different protocols, this will become a mess.
In summary, I don't see how this regulation will effect anything except to make everyones lives harder.
Complicating things is the fact that probably the biggest content host in Australia (no names, no pack drill) steadfastly refuses to peer. Of course, they're owned by $tier_1_ISP. If they peer, they give away the traffic. If they don't peer, they charge money for the traffic. What do you think they're going to do?
Sounds like a good idea now. I'll have to wait till I'm sober to make a "reasonable" decision.
Kids, when I got on the internet here in Denmark, there was no world wide web. You paid for an expensive account on a unix box you could dial into. You could then access Gopher, Veronica, etc. Not that it made it less interesting, because the noise-floor on the "sigal" was very low
Anyway, there were only one place to get connected in the beginning, then came providers and the problem that our local(inside the country) traffic, got routed half across Europe only to end up on the other side of the street. Then in 1994 came the DIX, Danish Internet eXchange point. Horray. So all a provider has to do, is to get a connection to the DIX and they can make peering agreements with other providers to route to each other networks via the DIX.
Now if you visit their site, you can see the prices clearly stated on the page(divide by 7 to get $(damn is going down)).
I(of course) can't see how the entire network in Australia is built, but I'd say a Exchange point would be good. I can't imagine forcing someone to pay for traffic the way the article mentions here, can be good.
But if you set up a exchange point in a major city where everybody is represented, and the cost to get connected to it, is the cable and a small fee to keep it running. Even smaller ISP's can join.
But then again I can't get the complete picture by just reading one article.
my sig
Oh well
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Why is market regulation a necessity? Your analogy with policing is a false one. The best reason for policing is to stop people from interfering with my life, e.g., through theft and murder, whereas market regulation interferes with my life. Not only are these things different, they're opposed. One increases my freedom to live my life unhindered and the other actually decreases it.
Market regulation and trade restrictions are only "commie" if you're an American, whereby you pretend you don't have any (even though you do, heavily), force everyone else to abolish them, and thus stuff your own coffers even further.
Just ask anyone with a deregulated, privatised electricity supply. Adelaide Australia (electricity up by more than 30% for Christmas), and California.
And I don't think deregulating our airlines (Australia) helped either. They're either about to drop out the sky like they do in the USA or we're only going to have Qantas and only football teams are going to be able to afford to fly, because the airline sponsors the competition. The internet tickets may be cheaper but the I have to fly now/tomorrow tickets, which used to be the cheapest are now more expensive than ever before.
And banking, how that has gone to shit in Australia. The banks are making huge profits, laying off lots of staff and slugging the hell out of their customers with less than multimillion turnovers. The only way to get your money out of them is to become a director or exec and then quit. Sigh. Even the shareholders are getting a raw deal out of this highway robbery.
Bring back regulation, I say!
My understanding with Australian internet traffic is that there are already different rates/costs and limits for upload traffic than for download traffic, especially if you have a "permanent" connection. (anyone else get dropouts on their adsl?)
Also when I was in NZ they had a different rate for traffic downloaded from outside the country ie USA or Australia to traffic racked up within the country.
I think some web site hosting cost more if lots of people download (upload from your server)your site too. That's why you see some sites with pleading messages not to directly link to their url, ie they'd prefer you copied their picture to your site and let your website incur the cost of people sucking onto their computers.
actually I'm having a hard time thinking of anything where regulation has made the cost go up, as much as deregulation or privatisation has. Even our bus tickets are more expensive. And don't get me started on the UK Rail system. Yikes.
cost of living up, take home pay down.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
As to pork barrelling, that still occurs, but pork is aimed differently to that in the US. Our arliamentary system, particularly when you throw in proportional representation in the Senate and IRV in the lower house, are quite different to the US's presidential system, and trying to explain the different dynamics to people who've never had exposure to it is kind of complex.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
When it comes to using a monopoly position to screw competitors out of the market, Telstra makes Microsoft look like an amateur. About the only difference is that rather than Microsoft buying politicians, the government owns 51% of Telstra.
And like Microsoft, the only way it's ever going to improve is if somebody takes a hacksaw to Telstra. They should seperate the retail business into a seperate entity, which pays the network provider just like all the other telcos.
Labor actually suggested this on the quiet (after they got themselves into a horrible mess over telecommunications policy) but I doubt they'll ever actually implement it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
No, he's right, and the circular reasoning you espouse, based on a spurious premise (external rules, and agencies such as police, governments, etc.are "necessary") is precisely what is holding back the advance of civilization.
--rgb
And there are many regional IXes, besides things like the AUSBONE. WAIX, the Western Australian IX, is a good example of this done fairly well. Almost every ISP with a presence in the state has a presence, as well as several other big transport providers (Singtel, Comindico, etc).
:) is difficult at best. The WAIX has several fairly well maintained lists of resources, many which local ISPs list on their websites. This provides user incentive.
... and that is pretty much Australian Internet Exchanges 101... from my uneducated point of view of course :)
There are a few main problems with Australian peering. First, certain big, nasty corporations profit too much from providing rip-off transit services by refusing to peer with IXs. Secondly, said companies have really stupidly designed broadband solutions involving tunneling most traffic interstate -before- providing endpoint connectivity. Thus local peering is impossible thanks to stupid design. Minus one for incentive.
The second issue is one that this will hopefully help address - BGP size. Unfortunatly, Australian BGP feeds are notoriously poluted thanks to various hacks and tricks in our national transit networks. This causes everyone a headache, as keeping a full BGP feed on a router (for both routing -and- accounting puposes) is expensive. Route tables are pretty memory hungry, and most backbone infrastructure is still driven by Cisco routers. Extra ram is not cheap, assuming you have the grunt to hold the table anyway.
The third problem is consumer oriented. Australian ISPs -have- to make money currently because Transit is expensive here. Even with this change, transit will still be far more expensive than in most other places in the world. While solutions to this are being worked on (new links and companies trying to bypass the traditional monopolies), this means Australian consumers are almost always traffic capped and either shaped or billed after a 3-6gb allowance.
It's not 1gb, but it's still a pain. Now, the problem is that in Western Australia we are lucky. Most ISPs give free access to the WAIX for their customers. This is fast and a major cost cutter for everybody. The IX has a lot of excellent resources - mirrors abound for everything.
However this does not happen in most other states. Or to a limited extent. Part of this is the age-old ingress/egress problem (just because a traceroute going OUT, eg a http -request- goes via a IX, the charged incoming data usually won't) presenting both confusion and billing problems. This leads to the second part, where most IXs, eg AusBone, do -not have a well maintained list of freely peered resources available-.
Billing is a pain for ISPs in other states as it's very hard to tell if something is freely available, and providing this as a marketing ploy (technically IXes are good... netadmins will be happy, finance may be happy - but given the outlay for ram for BGP, etc, -somebody- has to convince marketing it's a good idea
AND A MAJOR GROWTH POINT. Users, if provided with a list of resources available at a freely exchanging peering point, are more likely to try and convince their providers to participate. It's simply.
Unfortunately, Allan Fels announced a while ago that he will not be seeking another term at the end of this year (it is a rather demanding job). The Liberal (i.e., pro-corporate Reaganite/Thatcherite, "what's good for big business is good for Australia") government announced its candidate for his replacement, a former leader of a business organisation. It remains to be seen just how much the new tory ACCC will champion the little guy, or whether it will adopt a more "laissez-faire" approach.
This is just what we need! Now, instead of being threatened with de-peering for exceeding their traffic quotas, which is usually due to SPAM, we'll get more spam since the smaller ISP's will now get paid to generate all that traffic.
ACK!!!!
What the hell are you people thinking?????
HDGary secures my bank
No one here in America is pretending that we have no regulation. No, in fact we make a grand show of deregulation. Deregulation is of course not the repeal of regulations but a power grab by the regulatory agencies. They will always be deregulating as long as they exist. It's sort of a standing wave in the technological pipeline.
I can think of a few right off hand. For example: the UK railways system (brilliant until it was contracted out - now it's unsafe and expensive), the energy market in just about any deregulated market (yay 18% jump in energy costs in Toronto), the Canadian aviation market (when the Fed let AC buy Canadian and didn't bail out C3000, all meaningful competition ended and fares skyrocketed), the payphones (payphones used to cost a quarter when Bell was a regulated monopoly - now they're open and cost up to 40 cents). I could easily go on, but I won't (because it's boring).
And then there's the theoretical reason why prices should go up when unregualted, especially in an industry that requires huge amounts of overhead and capital. Companies are naturally greedy. Their duty to their shareholders/owners is to create the most revenue at the least cost to them. therefore, they raise prices until the market won't hold it anymore, and then they lower them a bit. Sure, competition will try and keep things in check, but in industries where it'd difficult for a new company to break in without sizeable investment, where is the imperitus for the companies to meaningfully compete, and not to just cartel the prices up? Contrast this to a regulated system, who's goal is to ensure a "fair" price for the consumer.
In a privatized/unregulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost by any means, and the power lies with the corporations. In a regulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost, while maintaining a "fair" price, and the power lies with the government. While the government may not be "the people," for the most part (Bush excepted, see Chirac or Schroeder for a decent example) they're closer to the wills of "the people" than the mega-corporations are.
Cue The Sun...
why do you hate america so much. [it's a joke, don't be mislead by the fact it's not funny]
Gee i wonder if you're the same exact person, just decided not to sign in, eh?
See, what I wrote is in direct response to the original posting regardless of what the article is about you half-wit. And if you're too damaged to see that then you have no business using a computer.
Now, moron...you better go, your bus is leaving.
why run from Vincenzo?
Why is market regulation a necessity?
Because hundreds of years of experience with markets has shown it is. Read your history and economics textbooks.
Your analogy with policing is a false one.
No, it isn't, and you don't provide any justification whatsoever for saying it is false. You could at least try to convince me.
The best reason for policing is to stop people from interfering with my life, e.g., through theft and murder, whereas market regulation interferes with my life.
Market regulation also has its benefits, just as police can also restrict your freedoms. Large businesses depend on government setting marketplace regulations to ensure that all companies know the standards of behavior. Again, regulations aren't inherently bad.
Not only are these things different, they're opposed. One increases my freedom to live my life unhindered and the other actually decreases it.
Give me some examples. I can certainly come up with some good examples of how market regulation can benefit you and the marketplace. Again, just because some regulations aren't in your interest you have to avoid "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" and declaring them all to be bad.
No, he's right, and the circular reasoning you espouse, based on a spurious premise (external rules, and agencies such as police, governments, etc.are "necessary") is precisely what is holding back the advance of civilization.
I'll ignore for the moment that this sounds like flamebait, but are you really espousing anarchism as a political model for advancing civilization? Please explain how civilization would work WITHOUT rules. Even the most primitive civilizations have rules, typically lots of rules.
for one sweet moment there I thought the ozzies were going to research urination style. With their famous appetite for XXXX/Fosters/VB it felt about right.
Maybe you live in interesting times
Geekee
I've been reading Michael Moore's book "stupid white men", and there is a lovely chapter in it for you called "idiot nation" and the supplementatry chapter "Nice planet, nobody home".
From the penguin australia edition c2002 of his book, chapter entitled nice planet nobody home, pg138 he says that (I've paraphrased a bit)
califorinia's electricity was supplied by regional monopolies, rates set by state legislation. Deregulation was proposed as a way for the companies to recoup what they'd spent on nuclear power plants (What? isn't california an earthquake zone, what the hell are nuke power plants doing anywhere near there?)...
Deregulation came into effect in 1996, including a state funded bailout to the electricity companies ($20 billion USA). 4 years prices frozen at above average cost (so you're already paying more). the deregulated companies did not build more power plants but preferred to buy power from interstate at daily spot market. "outrageously inflated prices". If you haven't got a contract for the power, what are you going to say no I don't like the price today, I think I'll turn the state fridges off?
But it gets better: The power was available. The independent (?) system operator had access to 45000 megawatts, more than enough power to cover summer peak (for you northeners, a/c seems to use more power than heating), Power companies hold back 13000 megawatts by going off line. The result is they get more demand and higher prices. Interestingly LA still has public ownership of its electricity supply and they do not go off line (read blackout).
Still I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to use more electricity unless it is generated by a renewable source.
And I can't recommend the book for the faint hearted or for fans of George Bush, it will just frighten you.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Obviously citing a couple of examples cannot prove that regulation is bad in general but for what it's worth, here are two:
The first one is minimum wage regulation. Suppose I am unemployed, but in a free market, and several people offer to employee me at £3.00 per hour. If I'm unhappy about this I might approach each potential employer and suggest I'm undecided on which offer to take up, but for £3.50 I will take it on the spot. Now if all of them refuse that might suggest it isn't worth their while to employee me at that rate. My options are to grin and bear it, or stay unemployed.
If the state now makes it illegal to employee a person at less than £4 per hour I now have no options. It isn't worth their while to employ me at that rate. It's illegal to employee me at a lower rate. I stay unemployed.
Another example from the E.U. is that it is illegal to price fruit and vegetables in imperial units, which strikes me as ridiculous.
Peering practices?
So that's what they call it in Austrailia?
Here in the US we call it Peeping Tom practices.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Anarchy is the absence of rulers, not the absence of rules. One obvious difficulty with anarchy then is the question of which rules should be followed. A solution could be to adopt a fixed set of rules. An example could be law as set out in a religious text. This is one way a society could have lots of rules without any centralised political authority. Another example is medieval Europe which was quite anarchic compared to modern times, but relatively law abiding thanks to the tradition of written law passed down from Roman times.
1. So now you're arguing FOR rules when before you argued AGAINST them? I'm getting dizzy....
2. Rules get ignored if there is no organization (formal or informal, police or posse) that adequately enforces them. I just had this discussion with a friend who moved from his old neighborhood to a new community with strict homeowner's rules and enforcement to escape the drug dealers and trogolodytes who kept him awake at 1 a.m. tuning up their off road vehicles.
3. Please provide an example of a modern country within an order of magnitude of the size of Australia that has been able to exist for more than a generation without a centralized political authority.
In any case, none of this is even slightly relevant when it comes to maintaining order among telecommunications providers. Capitalism is a game played to win, and every game needs rules to ensure all are satisfied that it is won fairly.
Obviously citing a couple of examples cannot prove that regulation is bad in general...
Let me say one reason for rules is that there are people and organizations that will do unacceptable things (and often feel obligated to do them in the interests of their stakeholders) in the absence of rules to the contrary. Can we then agree that rules *might be a necessary evil*?
You site as examples rules that affect wages and labeling requirements for commerce. These are arguably bad (or misguided or selfish) regulations but certainly don't serve as arguments dismissing the value of laws such as those against price fixing in the absence of a competitive marketplace, or ones that keep large chemical companies from freely dumping carcinogens into waterways, or ones that set minimum standards for the packaging and shipment of explosive and caustic substances.
I know that currently it is popular to imagine that modern society got where it is without laws regulating business, or that people won't do the kind of harm with corporations that individuals can do with knives and guns. But history tells us that businesses DO need regulation, and that their power and resources allow them to cause pain and suffering to a great many more people than a single individual with a baseball bat.
Moreover, many business laws are much less dramatic than that, most serving to make business transactions more orderly and efficient. Businesses often ASK government to pass regulations to clarify what is acceptable corporate behavior and to ensure that the rules are applied equally and fairly to all competitors. This is what I meant earlier when I spoke of "providing a level playing field." Such rules are often mutually beneficial--not harmful--to business interests. Read up on the subject of Game Theory on how cooperation with enforceable rules can maximize the benefits to all the partners in a relationship.
2. I agree there needs to enforcement. I'm just not sure enforcement need be centralized.
3. I can't provide an example, I don't think one exists. I'd be interested to see it tried but it doesn't seem to be a very popular idea.
I guess I don't think life is fair, or ever will be. I just want to be left in peace.
Finally, this should give the smaller ISPs some relief.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed
from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
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