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BellSouth Wants to Rig the Internet
PlayfullyClever writes "A senior telecommunications executive at BellSouth, said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates. Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer. William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc." Next up, well dressed men go door to door collecting their monthly "protection money". 'It sure would be tragic if your users started getting 1500ms ping times, wouldn't it mister dot com?'
Of all the low-down dirty extortionist ideas ever hatched. No one's stopping him from using QoS routing right now but what he's proposing is pure opportunistic greed. I suppose it doesn't matter to him--he makes enough money that he can afford to throw away an extra $200/mo. should policies like this ever become commonplace. As for the masses: Let them eat cake!
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Would this not take away their status and the protections of common carrier status if they start playing with what/who goes through their system?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
At least you could have removed all the caps in the sentance "Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer" and fooled me... sheesh...
-everphilski-
the European Court of Justice would not allow such an arrangement, article 81 is very harsh on vertical arrangements like this.
...ah that's better.
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
While we're at it, why don't we just sell the internet to Microsoft or some other big corporation and be done with it?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I can imagine the new generation of Spam now. "M4K3 YUR S1T3 L04D F4S73R TH4N T3H C0MP371710N"
Bell South is damaged. Adjust your routing tables accordingly.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
As long as ISPs get penalized for every piece of SPAM they allow to float around, for every SPAMmer they allow to operate unhindered using their services, for every shady business or phishing site they allow to run unabated, and when Satan can skate on his swimming pool.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I pay the isp to access the net. I should get to pick and choose what I access without the ISP boasting some at the expense of others.
Dear Bell south you are looking a lot like Sony and SCO. Not a good thing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
FTS: "Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, "
As soon as they do this, then they should become legally responsible for all content that crosses their network.
Either ISPs are passive conduits, or they are not. If they can easily differentiate between packets from different sources, and filter those packets for different handling procedures, then they can take responsibility for not allowing 'illegal' packets on their network.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If an ISP or backbone wants to give up all of its common-carrier rights, including immunity when some l33t haxxor plants death threats to the President or worse on Yahoo, then maybe.
Otherwise, no.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This would give Yahoo the leverage to say to BellSouth: if you want to have ANY major search engine/portal in your network, better provide unrestricted access to our domain.
Net result: Google owns their own 'Net, Yahoo pwns BellSouth.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
This Internet will never work. I'm going to start my own.
[sig]
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The requested URL was not found.
If you want to buy this page load, mail the $404 in cash in an envelope addressed to
BellSouth Corporation Headquarters
1155 Peachtree St. NE
Suite 404
Atlanta, GA 30309-3610
It could work out for the ISP if there is no other ISP choice for the customers to get equivelent internet access from. Sadly, in many areas of the US, only one high speed provider exists and you are stuck with them no matter what. Given a choice? I don't think people would use an ISP that offered that type of "service".
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
ISPs who do this sort of thing will, undoubtedly, be replaced by ISPs which don't. Consumers simply won't tolerate it, nor will web services.
The only real danger is the growing monopolization of Internet access, through cable and DSL, but yet we watch as wifi-based Internet access spreads and their market crumbles beneith their feet.
More fuel on the fire, BellSouth, it'll only help speed your own destruction.
an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.
I assume they would want to use some form of QoS to control traffic. However there would be a few problems that would arise from this. Let's say for instance Yahoo uses a seperate backbone from Google. Would this ISP then force Google traffic to slowdown? Or how about if Yahoo has more hops than Google? There are so many factors that affect Internet traffic that for an ISP to fully control them would be quite difficult. On most high-bandwidth ISPs where links hardly get clogged, one would certainly have to force low priority sites to slowdown.
Listen up BellSouth, I AM YOUR CUSTOMER, not Yahoo! or Google. If you can't give me good access to the sites I am interested in visiting then I switch to Cox's cable modem. And if they can't show me the speed I crave then I look for other options.
This is exactly what happens when governments grant monopolies. BellSouth has been taking their customers for granted since they spun away from the AT&T motnership, which also took us for granted. After all, where can we really go? Like most regions of the US with broadband, we have government monopoly A (BellSouth) or government monopoly B (Cox) and while they can be played off one another just a little, they co-own the Louisiana Public Service Commission that makes the rules and aren't above conspiring together to keep their cost down and the users downtrodden.
The baby bells must be broken again. They can keep the monpoly on the copper or fiber but must NOT be permitted to own or operate any of the higher level protocols or have any business entanglements with anyone who does. I'm serious, we need a seperate company that JUST owns and maintains the physical plant and leases space on a totally non-discrimnatory basis in the CO to as many companies that want to install voice switches, DSLAMS, etc. as can fit into the building.... and have rules so a carrier can even pay to make the building bigger.
Democrat delenda est
Everyone said for decades that phone companies "don't understand the Internet". They understand it all right - they just don't like it. So now we've got SBC saying they want to charge companies like Google to route their traffic, even if Google is already paying another company to which Google is directly connected. And BellSouth is saying they want to charge companies like Google more to carry their traffic according to the specifications. Verizon (rhymes with "NYNEX"), typically the most evil of the RBOCs, has yet to announce their vicious attack on Google's profits, but it surely will be greedy and based on some kind of preferential treatment - or threat of witholding it.
It's obvious that these telcos are jealous of Google and the big bucks connected with it. They want their cut, not by competing to provide better products, but by threatening to make their products worse unless their extortion money is paid. Back in the 1990s, they tried to force extra fees on dialup customers, on ISPs, based on lies about phone switch capacity. They tried selling ISDN from clueless salespeople for ripoff prices after unpredictable and interminable installation delays. Then they screwed up DSL deployment on a bigger scale. All along they succeeded in buying up and regulating out the competition, while everyone said they didn't understand the Internet. Which diverted investment to companies like Google, as well as the smart entrepreneurs. Now that they've consolidated American bandwidth into the bottlenecks that they monopolize, these old dinosaurs are moving in for the kill. If there's not enough competition to let Google and mom/pop choose an equitable Internet like the one we've built these last 10-20 years, we need to snap the neck of their new monopolies with legislation. There's no reason we have to let their loophole victories over past monopoly remedies and market corrections choke off the developments that have happened despite their vile presence in the landscape.
--
make install -not war
I think they should do it. Cut the bandwidth. 50% for the web, 50% for gopher.
Million Dollar Screenshot
Yeah, except that's not the same thing at all. ISPs are businesses that can set (almost) any conditions they want. If you don't want to do business with them, fine.
Within 100 miles of where I live, there are places where the ONLY high-speed, low-latency, affordable internet option is DSL. ALL DSL must go through the local phone company directly or indirectly.
In other words, the phone company has the "independent" DSL providers by the balls, which means they have you by the balls. If they get abusive a la the Mafia, you are stuck.
Unless of course you choose to go without high-speed internet at all. Even the Mafia would stop bothering small businessmen if they "chose" to close their businesses rather than pay the mob.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
This is probably the most eloquant justification of antitrust law I have ever seen (despite the fact that I largely detest FDR for his shameless manipulation of the legal system).
But back on topic, this does sound to be shady in a large number of ways. I personally doubt it will fly any better than a pig.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet) sent a deposition to the US Congress on this legislation. See:
o ut_on_internet_neutrality/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/vint_cerf_speaking_
Vint couldn't attend in person since he was recieving the Presidential Medal of Freedom that day for his DARPANET/Internet pioneering efforts.
This link was widely disseminated in the North American IPv6 Task Force and IPv6 Forum where I believe most members strongly support Vint's views.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
On the other hand I recently heard an argument here in the UK that said that one of the arguments against forcing ISPs to cache all email traffic for later inspection by law enforcement in the "war on terror" is that the volume of spam makes it uneconomic (and the bad guys are using untraceable untappable voip anyway).
It appears that the Internet remains a magnicifently untameable beast still, despite pointy headed attempts like this to control it.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
BellSouth proposes an end-run around whatever deals or features your ISP may offer by selling packet priority to the highest bidder. Your ISP will not see any of this money, neither as direct kickbacks or as reduced service costs. Moreover, your ISP will now suck more, because their packets will receive lower priority.
There's a reason Judge Green drew a very firm line between content and carriage -- to prevent precisely this kind of extortionate behavior.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
You have already welcomed them most likely.
QoS, priorities and ToS have been known for more then a decade. The fact is, till recently they have been used mostly in third world and beyond where the bandwidth is scarce, fiber is unheard of and you have to use something like this to achieve a competitive edge. I have used it myself as far back as late nighties. Similarly, we had customer facing web based helldesk, customer facing link statistics, customer facing web ordering system for extras and specials etc as far back as late nineties.
None of these were widely used around the civilized world till recently because it was cheaper to invest in more hardware and bandwidth to achieve similar results.
This is no longer the case.
Very few if any new fiber is layed in the ground and the router CPUs/ASICs are finally catching up for the bandwidths used in telco land. Further to this, the players are few and largely evened up so they have no choice, but to look into network intelligence as means of gaining a competitive edge. Some have already rolled it out. Many laughed at the first ones like Level3 which at the time had a rather primitive QoS system with 4 queues and 4 types of traffic. Nobody is laughing any more and network policy devices are the most looked at item in labs trials for all new roll outs.
Our QoS overlords are coming and will here to stay.
And once you have provided a MaBell telcohead with the tool expecting them not to use it is rather silly. From there on it is only a matter of how much do they use it. If they overuse it they risk getting smacked by a threat to lose their common carrier status as well as a few anticompetitive investigations. How do they consider this risk is a different matter.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
If you ARE going to prioritize traffic, prioritize according to:
1) how fast the bits have to get there
2) how tolerable a dropped/not-to-be-resent packet is
for #1, it's usually but not always:
*real-time infrastructure alarms or updates such as those that might be sent by an overloaded router or announcements of changes to routing tables.
*streaming applications like web-radio
*interactive applications like web browsing and chat
*urgent email and file transfers
*everything else
for #2, it's usually but not always
*Anything where one more dropped packet will cause the end result to go from "usuable" to "unusable" whatever that means for a given application. Example, streaming video may tolerate 1 lost packet if the previous n packets arrived safely and on time before the static becomes too annoying for the user.
*Anything sent over a reliable protocol, where delays will cause resends
*everything else
Note that some of these are "loosely defined" and hard to impliment in any meaningful way without industry standards. How will a router know what my personal tolerance for noise on a TV show is?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In the real world, if you create a good product or provide good information, you have the opportunity to make lots of money.
0 4&ext=mp3
If the Internet was similar to the real world, all Internet Providers would be paying content producers money for the information the Internet Provider's customers use.
Unfortuately, with the Internet - it is opposite. Say you have a really good site and you gather quite a bit of traffic, unfortunately you pay your Internet provider by the megabytes of traffic your visitors use. A good slashdotting could bankrupt you - all because your providing good information.
If you want to listen to an excellent interview of how the Internet came to be how it is today, Nerd TV's interview with Brester Kahle (Internet Archive Founder) is definately worth a listen.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/player/?show=0
Yep. I'm not sure if I was on some kind of blacklist, but Roger's would drop about 10% of the my openvpn UPD packets and bittorrent downloads were severly hampered too. This caused my VoIP conenction running over the VPN to continually drop packets causing enough audio problems that the service was unusable.
Roger's is evil for doing this. They are controlling who their customers can connect to, much the same as if they blocked or distorted telephone calls to Telus.
Re: Telco Throttling RevealedIf a major ISP ever did this, I don't think it would take long for popular sites to start filtering for their IP space and redirecting to an informative page about the lousy ISP.
Picturing the bedlam in the call center is making me smile.
Docs Searls of Linux Journal wrote an interesting piece a few weeks called Flushing the Net Down the Tube where he talks about this happening.
The providers don't want to be just the guys that rent the pipes because there's not enough money in it. They'd like to be able to control content and charge for extra services. Sprint's music downloads is an example where this is already happening. (You can get highspeed music downlads but only through their vendor lock-in service.)
According to Searls' article the providers have watched companies like ebay and google make fortunes on the Internet using their pipes. They feel left out and want to get in on the action. Expect more of this.
Bellsouth already have some rather 'dubious' business practices. For instance, the City in which I live has proposed that our local (City owned) utility company will provide fiber in the home to all our residents. Bellsouth have been raising every type of spurious legal claim possible to try and block this measure, even though it was widely supported in a referendum (forced by Bellsouth!). Currently, Bellsouth provides DSL service in this area and Cox provides cable. It is a basic duopoly. Needless to say, the rates are much higher than elsewhere. Earthlink does provide cheaper service. However, one can only use Earthlink if one has local telephone service from...you guessed it,...Bellsouth. My phone service is provided by AT and T. They cannot provide DSL service, because it is blocked by...you guessed it, Bellsouth. I complained about this situation to the FCC. However, the day after I lodged my complaint, the FCC made a ruling saying it was just fine for Bellsouth to behave this way. So, these new 'ideas' from Bellsouth appear to be part of their on-going plans to hold on to their near monopoly situation. I think that it stinks. I cannot wait for the city fiber to arrive at my house.
A traffic prioitization service already exists. It's Akamai's whole business model: They buy pipes to strategic locations with many service providers, cache servers near the customer and route requests to the best-choice server. You buy space on their servers and your data gets to the customer faster.
What Mr Smith wants to do is, well, asinine. He wants to allow the data pipes on his network to fill to 100% and then prioritize the traffic based on who pays. This suggests such a flawed understanding of the technology that as the chief technology officer, he should be fired.
See, here's the problem: For a router to make a priority-based switching decision between packets, it has to have more than one packet cached in memory waiting for free space in the outgoing pipe. But, if you havn't started transmitting the first packet by the time the second packet finishes arriving then you've already lost the speed game. Fast service means that you don't hold on to the packets. You send them out the next link as soon as you get them. Any other architecture would result in transmission speeds that are two to three times slower, even for the highest priority packets! Duh!
So if you don't want your network to suck rocks, you still have to keep the utilization below 80%, and if you keep the utilization down then except for rare bursts of traffic the prioritization function will never be used.
As a search engine, why on earth would I buy priority on your network knowing that either A) it almost never gets used or B) your network is piss slow either way? Answer: I wouldn't.
Fire Mr. Smith. He doesn't understand the technology he's charged with overseeing.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This sounds like a great idea. The moment they start looking at every packet that crosses their network, they will be responsible for every illegal activity. Every person that is on their network that gets a virus should sue them. Every piece of kiddie porn should warrant a case against them. If they are stupid enough to give up their Common Carrier status for a few bucks, they should be sued out of existance so that someone can come in that actually serves the customers, rather than screws them.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm sure the Bells have been paid back many times over for their investments in building out the infrastructure, and for which they were given monopolies. Lets organize a law to create state agencies that get to take over and maintain the phone and cable lines and poles and conduits for a monthly utility fee, just like happens with highways or other city run utilities. If companies want to run their own fibre after that, great, let them.
It would need to be clear that this is a critical national infrastructure and was critical that it be maintained and upgraded. There would be grants from an appropriate Federal agency to assist with this, much like they assist with highway and other projects today.
This would even the playing field between providers of all types and remove all of the conflicts of interest. Heck, while we are at it, lets take back the power lines too, let the government be responsible for distribution of power and let power companies actually compete on supply and service.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
won't go sift through their country club buddy's garbage. What's the point of lobbying?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...I wonder why he doesn't try it on his phone systems first?
"Hello, Coca-Cola? Yeah, listen, I just wanted you to know that we just cut a new deal with Pepsi, that gives their phone calls priority on our systems. Yeah, it's an exclusive deal and all. Basically my engineers tell me that any call of yours routed through our systems will receive a 10% degredation in signal quality and experience approximately a 3 second delay in connection. I'm sure you understand, just the cost of doing business and all. If you're interested, perhaps I can tell you about our new Super Platinum plan, which would give your calls Level 2 High Priority, ensuring that....hello?"
Edward Whitacre, the CEO of SBC, explicitly discussed the idea of charging Google for access, or blocking Vonage's audio packets; it's a consistent corporate message. I discussed Whitacre's statement at length back on 1 Nov -- see http://www.pebbleandavalanche.com/weblog/2005/11/0 1/blog-20051101T0531.
The prioritization scheme is unneeded. If a web site is too slow, upgrade the link (it probably is not a bottleneck on the server processing, but it may be a bottleneck on the client).
Thats just it, they're not bottlenecking this on the server side. They're threatening content providers by telling them that if they don't pay extra directly to them, then Bell South customers will have to wait longer for their content. You could operate off of 10 OC3s directly from 3 different Tier-1 companies, but if you don't pay up to Bell, their DSL customers will be wondering just where the hell you got that 28.8 modem from in this day and age.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Then all the Small ISPs that don't do that crap will start taking their customers away because they're tired of paying the same price for slower and unreliable service....oh wait, they're doing that now. Guess that's why I've gown 15% in the past 6 months.
I think you're falling into the trap of seeing everything in black and white generalizations.
Try this:
A Most business' main goal is to maximize profit for its shareholders, [snip]
I think it is possible for profit to be the priority, and yet have ethics inform ones path to profits. If your code of business was taken to the extreme, then we'd see Steve Balmer literarily put hits on Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Think Moscow just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
If a publicly held company states their commitment to ethics and what exactly those ethics are on it's prospectus, there really need not be a conflict.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Jerks. Pure corporate jealousy.
and mr. Bell South Bigwig should have a little visit from one of Washington's finest.
particularly if his little plan interferes with DHS/FBI/m-o-u-s-e plans to get in line first and look over everything else that moves by. that little project never seems to go away, and always seems to have priority over what the moneygrubbers want to do....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The telephone industry (one of the four main "Dinosaur Industries (c), TM, inc., whatever") seems to still believe they still have the power to dictate our free will with ad nausium. What they don't get is that their days are numbered. The days of telemarketing, vaccuum cleaner salesmen, and snake oil are over.
People are starting to get that the American dream is nothing more than a Rich Man's Big Rock Candy Mountain and Joe Blows Nightmare.
Joe Blow is not going to sit there and let the Phone Company turn the Internet into Television.
Joe Blow doesn't watch television anymore because it sucks.
Joe Blow refuses to be dragged back to his seditative state, constant FUD, and mindless consumerism.
The Internet has put the Dinosaur Industries in check, but they refuse to be driven to extinction.
If Ma' Bell wants to strangle you with the phone cord, strangle her with the Cable.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
But they are clearly missing that they can suffer from the same effect too. Imagine this:
Web sites could even take adds: tired of slow access via Bell South? Switch to Earthlink for faster searching!
I bet it looks like less of a moneymaker if they consider that.
The person who owns the lines can't sell directly to the consumer, however anyone else can act as an intermediary.
That's a good theory on paper -- but they tried something similar with utilities and it has been a miserable failure in my humble opinion.
In NYS when they deregulated the electric industry they forced all of the utilities to sell off their generators and to become "distributors" of electricity. The net result you ask? All of the power plants were bought up by out of state interests and now they have the public and the distribution utilities by the balls.
In a telecommunications scenario I fail to see how having a single monopoly that owns the fiber/copper but doesn't deal directly with consumers would be any better then having a regulated utility that owns the fiber and deals with the consumer. I know a lot of people don't like regulation because it doesn't mesh with their idea of the "free market" but I don't see any other choice for a life essential service -- unless new technology charges the paradigm.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
BellSouth
William L. Smith
President, Interconnection Services and
Chief Technology Officer
675 West Peachtree, Suite 4515
Atlanta, GA 30375
Bill.Smith@BellSouth.com
Voice: 404-927-1900
Fax: 404-529-0014
Give him a call & let him know what you think
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.