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World of Ends

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it-starts-with-an-earthquake,-birds-and-snakes dept.

epeus writes "At World of Ends, Doc Searls and David Weinberger explain the End-to-End nature of the internet in terms so clear even your manager could understand them. 'The Internet isn't complicated. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement. The Internet is stupid. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.' and so forth."

46 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. I'd say First Post, but it probably isn't so... by soulctcher · · Score: 4, Funny

    So what I will say is that this has got to be one of the most confusing, yet clear topics I've read on /. in a long time.

    1. Re:I'd say First Post, but it probably isn't so... by cosmosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well first post or not, the whole end-to-end paradigm of the stupid network, is so simple and brilliant with economic abundance and endless innovation for everyone, except the telcos, that the only reasons we are not seeing the benefits is because of corporate welfare and monopoly power being given back to the Telcos. I say get them out of the way by letting them die fast in the free-market. We have everything to gain it. Now if only Michael Powell, FCC head, would get the simple message thru his head.

      Planet P Blog

      --
      www.enthea.org
  2. Theorem by telstar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    8. "No one owns it.

    Everyone can use it.

    Anyone can improve it."

    4. "Adding value to the Internet lowers its value."

    So the Internet is destined to fail?

    1. Re:Theorem by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So the Internet is destined to fail?

      Yes, Doc & Dave have set themselves up to be misinterpreted with those particular headings.

      It makes sense if you read the text, and see that "improve it" in item 8 doesn't mean modifing the internet in any way- only modifying protocols that use it.

      "Adding value" to the internet, on the other hand, would mean changing the internet itself, which would break old applications, and make it harder to add new apps.

    2. Re:Theorem by sniser2 · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the context of the Article "adding value" doesn't equal "improve" - that's kinda the whole point...

    3. Re:Theorem by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Think in i.e. Riverworld of P.J.Farmer, you have a river that connects all places in the world, the river is owned by nobody, everyone can use it, and everybody can build whatever they think around and over it, but if you change the river itself (contaminating water, redirecting or trying to stop it, adding to it some drink concentrate to make the water taste better, whatever), all the world loses, they can't use the same river in all the possible ways that they could before (and, if I remember well the book series, you will face a war very soon :)

    4. Re:Theorem by coyote-san · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I understood the point to be that there's been a huge disconnect between what people want and companies think they want. Or more often, what they try to convince consumers they want... and which only they can provide.

      Filtering contents adds value, right? Nobody really wants those porn sites? In reality, we all know that porn has been the driving force behind many internet protocols - in some cases people had no real options, in other cases they could go to local stores but didn't because of fear the neighbors/boss/whoever would see them and judge them.

      Music downloads adds value, right? Except the "solutions" replace an easily scratched plastic disc with an even more fragile piece of DRM-crap. With a CD, I can dub it to a tape so I can listen to it in my car. I can put it onto an MP3 player that I can take to the gym. But the "value-added" downloads can only be played on one system, for only a brief time.

      I believe that was their point - that almost everything claimed to "add value" to the internet has actually removed something people actually value. In contrast almost every time the net has been opened up (e.g., AOL becoming a gateway to the internet at large, instead of its own lake) has been considered valuable by the users.

      --
      For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
    5. Re:Theorem by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Filtering contents adds value, right?

      ISP level filtering is one of those things which some people think adds value to the internet, but really damages it. Host-level filtering, however, is a voluntary, application-level process which the host can disable at any time. This is why improvements to the internet should come at the application level (where they can be easily changed and removed if they turn out to have downsides), rather than deeper in the network (where it's harder to convince the sysadmins that you need changes made to do your work).

      (Host-level filtering may still be damaging in some cases, such as in a library whose users are forbidden from modifing local software. But that is a separate issue)

      Music downloads adds value, right?

      From the Internet's point of view, music downloads are "just another file transfer application". They are beyond the scope of section 4. They "improve" the internet by providing another use at the ends. But, as you may have noticed, DRM-based music downloads aren't very popular yet. That's because, as the authors suggested, non-open protocols lack explosive popularity.

      an even more fragile piece of DRM-crap

      I think that the majority of music-downloaders still manage to find non-DRM files. Not as much as when Napster was running, but it still seems that most music downloads wind up as MP3 files on multiple, redundant CDRs.

      Hypothetically, the RIAA might someday propose modifying the internet to make their music transfers more secure, and that would be bad.

      (If they could push DRM onto 80% of newly manufactured PC hardware, that would be very bad for other reasons)

    6. Re:Theorem by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your're right. Guess I should have said; "Destined to fail in an ideally realized internet such as this article supports." Sorry.

      However, please further support this statement
      ".NET is an application at the edge of the cloud, not in the center of it, and thus falls under section 8c "Anyone can improve it", rather than section 4 "Adding value lowers value".

      .NET requires IIS, .NET will interact with the worlds most popular browser, operating system, and applications suite. .Net will require subscriptions. .NET comes along with the MS version of "Trusted Computing. .NET will control content by its ubiquitous nature. If .NET really takes off I can't see how it'll be at the edge of the cloud. The cloud will gradually transmogrify into MSInternet with some renegade fringes.

      --

      Operator, give me the number for 911!
  3. In that case by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hope he goes for a real-world case study -- the end to end transfer of a given porn movie. Definetely something your manager can read and relate to, plus it gives you an easy springboard onto such topics as average throughput, burst transmissions, etc :)

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  4. Are they technological-age hippies? by Meat+Blaster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because (at least by the writeup) it sounds like they're delivering some sort of Zen-style analysis from within a cloud of blue smoke. How well does the sound of a hand stream over the Internet?

    1. Re:Are they technological-age hippies? by mekkab · · Score: 3, Insightful

      easy, tiger...

      He's not dissing Zen, he's using it as an adjective; specifically, he's saying "Zen style" as in, "Not zen, but a cheap knock-off."

      Its like the word "Trustafarian"- the people who classify aren't trying to be Rastas.

      Now, to swing this whole thing back towards the topic at hand:
      Infact, your complaint of the parent post, is the parent post's complaint of the article! Sweeping generalizations are indeed not technical, the imply some underlying dogma. Hence, the term Zen-style (or Zen-steeze, if you get down like that). The tip off is the "evne a manager could understand it!"- technical went out the window.

      --
      In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
  5. World Ends by Slycee · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh God I missed the "of" at first.

    Heaven help us. I found out about Armageddon on slashdot.

    ---

    1. Re:World Ends by Sgs-Cruz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On an offtopic, but very interesting tangent, that is an extremely interesting, scary thought. If a nuclear bomb went off in St. Petersburg and 50 megatons of H-bomb were headed for every major city in the US, what would Slashdot report (assuming the editors knew it was going to happen - remember, this is hypothetical). Weird.

      --

      Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).

    2. Re:World Ends by daeley · · Score: 2, Funny

      Think that's bad? I kept seeing a certain person's monogram with every, er, repetition of Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. :)

      --
      I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
    3. Re:World Ends by gosand · · Score: 3, Funny
      Oh God I missed the "of" at first. Heaven help us. I found out about Armageddon on slashdot.

      In that case, all the trolls would be trying to get "Last Post". But how would you know who finally got it?

      Earth has been slashdotted.

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    4. Re:World Ends by nurightshu · · Score: 5, Funny

      Only subscribers would know about it -- by the time it hit the front page for the rest of us rabble, the nukes would already be here.

      --
      They that would sacrifice their .sig space for that cliched Franklin quote deserve neither.
    5. Re:World Ends by PD · · Score: 5, Funny

      They'd write this:

      "Nuclaer bombs' on thier weigh"

      And we'd all be complaining about spelling errors when the big one hits.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  6. Huh by maximillianarturo · · Score: 3, Funny

    So should I sell my internet stock... or what?

  7. so, in other words.... by d0ggi3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Adding value to the Internet lowers its value."

    internet + 5 = internet - 5?

    1. Re:so, in other words.... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I do take issue with that particular writeup, although it is true in many senses.

      Today, many so-called internet users have their access mediated by firewalls and NAT. This reduces the set of internet services available to them.

      (I'd even say, as a slight exaggeration, that their ISPs had engaged in false advertising by calling it "Internet Access")

      By the original definition of the internet, anyone with access (control of one host) could send packets to any address:port combination, and open any port to inbound connections.

      This means that everyone with internet access should be able to run an HTTP, FTP, or UT server. But many people are prevented by their ISP's routing policies.

      Firewalls and NATs supposedly "add value" to the internet by making it safer for some users. But it's not made a lot safer (worms get through even today), and it has "lowered value", because creating new applications is more difficult. For example, today there is a movement towards SOAP; XML-RPC. Unfortunately, one of the motivations to promote it is to allow arbitrary, application-specific traffic to travel over port 80. To work around firewalls which only permit HTTP, we're starting to see a legitimization of tunneling commands over HTTP.

      (I'm not saying that was the original goal of SOAP- but sneaking around firewalls is one reason that some developers are eager to try it)

      So there's an example of why "adding value to the Internet" is generally bad.

      However, there are cases where it may be good. We all know that IPv6 will be a postive (someday). Multicast extensions to the internet were developed well after it was first created, and are generally accepted as a good thing, although their deployment so far is well short of universal. Multicasting is a superset of existing internet functionality (assigning a single packet to be destined to multiple recipients).

      Multicasting may turn out to have downsides, depending on how it's implemented (and I haven't followed development closely enough to be sure what the direction is). If it creates an unfair environment, where large corporations (CBS, MTV, RIAA) can create multicast streams, but individual users cannot, then it will cement inequality and make internet use move closer to resembling traditional television viewing. I feel justified in hoping this won't happen, however.

      And QoS (quality of service) is a debatable issue, not a flat-out bad one like the article suggests. IP, the existing internet protocol (not to be confused with Intellectual Property), makes no guarantee that packets will arrive quickly or in order. It doesn't state that packets will travel at the same speed as each other. It doesn't even state that a packet which is sent will ever arrive, only that the network make a "best effort" at getting it through someday.

      Since IP makes no guarantees of transmission speed, adding an optional mechanism to request QoS efforts won't break the existing protocol definitions. Yes, it may disturb some people to consider that internet packets, which used to be fair and unbiased, may someday have preference given to them based on the sender's bank account- but look at the alternative:

      • Today, internet access is filtered by bank account- if your wealth is too low, you can't use the internet at all. Allowing some packets to be more expensive to send allows the rich to subsidize the poor, who might be able to afford some access instead of none.
      • Today, deploying applications like voice, moving video, and arcade games over the internet is difficult, because your packets have latency and jitter. That's because they are competing will all kinds of email, IM, HTTP, FTP, and NTTP protocols as they move accross the network. To make low-latency interaction work better, we can either invest a lot to make the entire internet super-fast, or invest a little to recognize which packets need high speed, and bump them ahead of the lines.
      • Someday, your ISP will decide to charge you by the gigabyte. Won't you want to be able to request a reduced rate, by intstructing your software to request low-priority packets, instead of rapid-response ones? (This is analogous to last-minute airline tickets)


      Basically, there are only a few internet applications which really need low-latency response: speech, video, gaming, and maybe some forms of web browsing. Everything else, especially emails and big downloads over HTTP or FTP, would work absolutely fine with 10 or 100 times the per-packet latency.

      As long as there is a reasonable bound on how much faster a quick, expensive packet is than a slow, cheap one- say, not more that 100 times slower- QoS won't block any people out from using the internet, and it'll make it cheaper and easier for high-speed users to get going.
    2. Re:so, in other words.... by OneEyedApe · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The Internet is for the most part IP (Internet Protocol). IP sends packets in the direction of a specified destination, UDP directs the packets at a certain port, and TCP/IP makes sure all packets arrive at their destination, in the proper order. HTTP uses TCP/IP to transfer text.

      The Internet is a way for data to get from one computer to another. Latency mostly comes from the protocols placed on top of IP, such as TCP. I don't think there is a good way to prioritize packets. And implementing such a system would require discarding the current IP, and all the supporting software, and probably a significant amount of hardware.

      I think what the article was trying to say is that most people, and especially business and government do not understand the nature of the Internet. To improve quality of service, the ISPs basically have to hold to existing open standards, provide a decent line in/out, and cut down on the extraneous garbage

      --
      Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
      --Thomas J. Kopp
    3. Re:so, in other words.... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Latency mostly comes from the protocols placed on top of IP, such as TCP.

      It's true that TCP adds a kind of latency when it stops to wait for a retransmission. But UDP messages on their own have a lot of latency. For most users, most of that latency comes from the first mile and last mile links (especially if they're on dialup).

      However, there are sources for latency deep inside the internet as well. Congestion. Actually, the most commonly damaging form of congestion is when someone else on your subnet is making a large download or streaming radio, and you want to run an interactive (VNC or SSH) session.

      A non-FIFO router protocol might help alleviate this. It could recognize that the 95% of packets beloning to a big download can afford to wait until the VNC user's mouse-updates have gotten through.

      I don't think there is a good way to prioritize packets.

      There might be. It could be as simple as a single bitflag for "normal/fast". We'll never know unless we try. And we can't try until packets have a way to indicate desired QoS (the IPv6 "flow label", for instance), and more importantly, users enjoy some financial benefit, however small, for selecting reduced priority for their data.

      Of course, there are other things which need to be fixed with the internet before it presents a fair place to test QoS. In particular, firewalls and NATs already block some of the applications which could best make use of QoS, so until they're removed, there'd be little point in doing the experiment.

  8. Internet is not slow TV... by $$$$$exyGal · · Score: 2, Insightful
    There's another reason the Internet hasn't done a great job explaining itself: The Big Money would prefer to keep telling us the Net is just slow TV.

    Does anyone really consider the internet to be just slow TV? I thought that idea went out 3 years ago. Even my grandparents are googling for information when they have a medical problem or want more info about something they saw on TV. They do not think of the Internet as slow TV.

    --
    Very popular slashdot journal for adul
  9. Basically, this is right by Sgs-Cruz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Despite this article's annoying use of absolutes (I know, I know, they're effective, but I hate it when people write an article as if its the last thing that will ever be written on that subject), they're mostly right. Think about it. We can do more on the Net now than 5 years ago, despite the best efforts of the RIAA, MPAA, US Govt, and pretty much every corporate interest out there. I have a feeling this will continue into the future, too.

    --

    Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).

  10. that is not what AOL told me. by stonebeat.org · · Score: 2, Funny

    seriously :)

    --


    Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
  11. Wow! Someone making sense by haplo21112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Someone talking about the internet and actually making sense doing it....we can't have that!

    Someone who realizes that it is what it is and can't be bent to everyone and their brothers whims...

    My thought has always been that the Internet is Chaos and it works best that way....

    --
    Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
  12. Hold on by Raul654 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh God I missed the "of" at first.

    Yep, you're definetely qualified to be the new slashdot editor

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  13. The internet isn't stupid... by CoolVibe · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Internet is stupid

    Well, I tend to disagree. It tends to make people stupid though, and it's hellishly smart at that as well. Just look at this place :-)

  14. The Internet is stupid. by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, you're stupid, you big stupid!

    Signed,
    The Internet

    PS: I'm rubber you're glue

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  15. Seems a bit utopian? by cindy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "That's also why the Internet feels to so many of us like a natural resource."

    ...which explains why so many would like to strip mine it without regard for the future or for the rights or best interests of others.

  16. Hmmm... by natron+2.0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder if Al Gore realized this when he invented it...

    --
    [n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
  17. Re:terms... by telstar · · Score: 2, Funny
    "in terms so clear even your manager could understand them"

    • "You greatly under estimate the power of the dork side."
      • I'd say they greatly overestimate the power of management.

  18. The answer to Chicken Little economists by urbazewski · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Great article --- I tried to make some of the same arguments (and didn't do as good of a job) several years ago in response to proposals being put forward academic economists to "improve" the allocation of bandwidth with complicated pricing schemes and "smart markets". The efficiency fetish common amongst economists blinded them to the real strengths of the protocol --- stupidity, flexibility and reliability. (Alas, the NSF didn't bite on the funding, and I moved on to other unrelated projects.)

    We had a great working title for the project though:

    The Internet: Triumph of the Commons.

    --
    foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
  19. Excellent Article by MojoRilla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me why the original MSN failed and Yahoo succeeded. Microsoft wanted to control the content providers (making them use its own proprietary tools), while yahoo used HTTP and HTML.

    Sure, absolute control might mean they can offer more features, but absolute control also means everyone can't play. The file format of Microsoft Word was closed, and so it is hard to write programs which understand it. Microsoft gets richer, but users can't get their own data. Finally, when Microsoft sees there is no other big driver to get users to upgrade, they open up their file formats.

    The internet succeeded because of its simplicity, and because of HTML and HTTP. Almost anyone can serve HTTP. And write some sort of HTML. The protocols are simple and well documented.

  20. adding value in the sense of not adding value by feepcreature · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The collision between Anyone can improve it and Adding value to the Internet lowers its value goes away once you realise that Doc&Dave are using "Adding Value" in the sense of "not adding value at all, but changing things so that some stuff works better but the rest is worse".

    It's Humpty Dumpty logic:

    "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

    "The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

    "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master--that's all."

    --
    Paul
    Humpty Dumpty was wrong

    --
    Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
  21. Happened in industrial revolution too by argoff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A lot of people thought that the whole purpose of the industrial revolution was to use inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited controll and profits. While most people saw the invention as a great tool to end slavery, for others it was impossible to think of wealth in any other terms other than the size of a plantation, a farm, or estates. These people pushed slavery controlls to the point of civil war and were responsible for the deaths of millions.

    I think today we have the same problem with "intellectual properties". It is impossible for people to think of wealth in any other terms than the number and amount of industires and people they can extract royalties from. It is impossible for them to understand that properties are not just about government edicts, or personal incentive, but natural forces - like everyone not being able to use the same thing at the same time. Well, with information - they can. And that is the real value of the internet.

  22. I doubt if my manager can understand this by watzinaneihm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In manager speak value=money.

    From rule 6 and 4 , money moves to suburbs and adding value to internet lowers its value. So the suburbs have real low value. Now rule 5 says All of internets money grows on its edges, again edges=suburbs . So rule 4 and 6 together contradict rule 5.

    So if all these rules hold at once, Internet is real complicated, hence rule 1: "Internet is simple" is false.
    So only rule 2 holds :"Internet is stupid".

    --
    .ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
  23. Rise of the Stupid Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The "attempting to add value decreases the value" theme was very well explored in a paper called "Rise of the Stupid Network." It's at: http://www.rageboy.com/stupidnet.html

    It explains very well why networks should only get data from one place to another while doing nothing else.

    A coworker just bet me it would be less than an hour before this post was marked as a troll since I'm an unregistered user. I think it will be marked as a flame, because it's on-topic.

  24. I hope you're right.. by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dumb companies will get smart or die. Stupid laws will be killed or replaced.

    I'd really like to believe this, but then I look at corporate welfare(often the saving of dumb companies) and I look at the laws being passed by people completing out of touch(Napster's not a glamorized FTP program! It's criminal, not sharing!(Or maybe sharing is criminal!))

    It's kind of depressing.

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  25. Their position is a bit too mystical by InternalWave · · Score: 2

    The Internet is actually a thing. It's clearly defined in technical terms. They (the authors of that exposition) are blurring the boundaries between the technical and the sociological when they describe TCP/IP the way they do, for example. Yeah, IP is an agreement; hell, so is SSL. So is a file format. A technical protocol is a technical agreement, not a philosophical one.

    If they (and other pundits) want to start discussing the sociological, philosophical and economic impacts of the Internet on society, then they should coin a new term for it. The Internet is precisely what it is - a technical construct. The societal impacts of it are something else entirely, and ought not to be also called The Internet.

    Sorry for getting irritated. Slow burn over many months with the self-important and self-indulgent pronouncements of pretentious people.

  26. He's The Sphinx of Internet Culture by milktoastman · · Score: 2, Funny
    "To make the internet right...."

    "...First you must go left, that's what you were going to say, wasn't it?"

    "Not necessarily..."

  27. Hi. by Meat+Blaster · · Score: 2, Interesting
    If you weren't born yesterday (or, say, 70s or later) you'd be aware that the link between the practice of Zen and the hippie lifestyle were inexorably linked in American pop culture, both having been introduced around the same time and with no small degree of overlap what with the beat culture of the 50s evolving into the hippie lifestyle of the 60s and all. It makes for a pretty interesting read, and you can get your start here or here.

    I was referring to the "by adding value, you take away value" line in the writeup, and apologize for not making this clear. I certainly didn't mean to make digs at either the writeup or the site, I was just making a witty observation without the wit.

    HTH, and have a nice day.

  28. Much as I hate it by gr8_phk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I always thought the "information highway" analogy was most accurate. The net is simply a way to get your data from here to there. This makes it clear that the only way to make money from the net is in construction/materials (think Cisco) but like road construction I can pay anyone that knows how to do that. Or put up a toll booth, bu notice how many real roads don't have em because people take other routes. It's like infrastructure - everyone uses it, but it's not a business in itself. Get a clue, provide something of value and people will give you money for it. And remember, what used to be of value may not be today.

  29. Cluetrain Reprise by mrkurt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This site is a reprise of some of the themes that were in their book from a few years ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto. It is still available online. I think of the internet as a kind of infrastructure that nobody owns, like a highway. The potential perils are of a takeover of large companies that want to make you carry p(Assports) or "pay tolls" to cross into certain parts of it. They are the ones who, in the words of the book, believe in "engorging people with material goods so as to make them poop out dollars". The internet has another potential that is not so crassly commercial: for self-expression, for the acquisition of knowledge, to be able to connect with others wherever concerning almost anything. People have the ability to turn away from the crassly commercial, if they choose to see something else of value besides what the popular culture puts before them.

    --
    Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
  30. Re:So... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The very rich are almost always going to be better off than anyone else, that's unavoidable.

    If your structure resists preference, the rich will insist that it's good for everyone so it will be good for them.

    Or they'll just hire someone to build a completely separate structure. That'll deprive my structure of the resources they might've contributed to improving it.

    There is already a tendency for this today- large companies are transitioning their voice and videoconference systems on IP networks. But they often don't put it on the public internet, or even the same IP network their workers use for desktop applications- they actually fund separate networks just for their chat traffic.

    That kind of massive oversupply of bandwidth assures them that they'll have low latency connections when they need them- but they're not using them all the time. All those mighty routers sit quietly at night, helping neither their employees, nor the general public.

    If IP supported some kind of QoS tag, then these users might be able to meet the needs of real-time videoconferencing simply by spending $1000 to upgrade the routers on their LAN, rather than $10,000 to build a whole different network. And they'd reap many flexibility benefits.

    It's a "big tent" philosophy. The rich will want to spend money to go faster. The Internet can either find a way to take their money, or drive them away to build a competitor, which the poor won't be able to access at all.

    The fact is: not all packets need to be quick. For some applications, 3 seconds of delay is absolutely fine. For others, 3 milliseconds is unbearable.

    If the internet acknowledges this fact, it becomes a little more complicated, but much more powerful. And it wouldn't be a flag day change- the upgrade can be piecemeal.

    (Today, some people already abuse the bandwidth-conserving principles of TCP and HTTP to accelerate their own transmissions, at the expensive of everybody else. QoS tags would provide a legitimate way to do this, without interfering with other packets so much)