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Why The Net Should Stay Neutral
Dino wrote to mention a BBC opinion piece on why tiered Internet setups are a bad idea. From the article: "What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road. This issue just the latest round of a long-running debate about how much government - of whatever type, in whatever country - should be involved in the growth and development of the internet."
Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic. The more traffic on the roads, the more you pay, and the less traffic, the less you pay. Sounds a lot like what the ISPs want to do.
The net should be Lawful Neutral :)
"We must just hope that the US government recognises that this is the case, and sets a good example to the rest of the world."
Hopefully it won't come across as sarcasm.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Public utuilities are normally regulated. The reasons for that are well established. Companies in the utility markets are not generally are not cherry pick the most profitable customers. Instead for being allowed to operate they are also required to serve the public interest in other matters. That's why you have the public access channel on cable TV , the public alert systems on radio, why rural communities have electricity, and why the power company cant simply shut off the juice to the old/infirm without certain procedures. Some of those Odious fees on your phone bill pay for things like universal 911 connectivity.
We generally strived to avoid two tierer public power or phone service in their early days. Of course deregulation did take place in the phone arena eventually did make sense but only after ubiquitous access had been achieved and was affordable.
So we have to be careful about two tiered proposals for the internet. It might be okay but it should be scrutinized from a public policy perspective not a bussiness perspective.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you were paying a little more attention to the debate you would know that Google is the one asking the government to ban this type of discrimination.
The FCC regulates the Internet, of course there needs to be some oversight. The question is whether that oversight is going to be for the benefit of Internet users or whichever corporation paid the party who appointed the regulators the biggest bribe, sorry campaign contribution.
There could be value in two tier pricing but the carriers are too greedy to make it work. see my blog essay i wrote earlier.
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That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband. Some people pay for it themselves, others have dial-up, and others choose to not have any internet access.
A major problem with this line of thinking is that after they establish that everyone has a right to use the internet at max speed, the next thing on the list will be the huge social injustice caused by not everyone having a tax payer supplied computer.
"After all, once we get away from the idea that the pipes just move bits around without really caring what data is being transmitted, it's a small step to discriminating against some forms of content and then targeting specific sites, services or users."
What if all the big ISPs start charging $0.10/min for VOIP? Or $1.00/mb from "long-distance" sites? Where does it end?non-US countries?
What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road.
The problem with your analogy is that there is some New Business-man reading that and saying. "Hey! That's a fucking GREAT idea! (If I weren't a opportunist monkey, I might have thought of it myself!)"
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It would seem to me that shortly after some big corporation tries to segregate the Net, if there is
any marginal advantage to the bandwidth carrying their segregated service, somebody will devise a way
to tunnel other services through the "premium" bandwidth. If I can send you bits, I can code my data
into those bits, steganographically if necessary, but there's no way the channel can stop me from
sending whatever I want.
So I say, bring it on. We'll have fun writing ironic tools like IPOV -- IP tunneling over Voice Channels -- betcha we can send up to 56K bits/sec on a 3 kHz analog voice link.
I'm going to take a step back and look at this purely from a consumers standpoint. I'm already paying comcast my $45+ a month to have a "blazing fast" connection so I can stream music and videos. Most news and video providing sites offer their streaming services for free, charging only for higher quality content. I fear if these sites must pay a premium to offer the same service they are currently providing free, that they cost will be passed down to the consumer.
This will undoubtedly usher in a wide variety of subscriber fee based sites and services. I'm not looking forward to shelling out another $20+ a month to view streaming content on the handful of sites I like to visit.
On a side thought, how would this affect Internet2?
I have heard for years about the "Digital Divide" that separates those with computer/internet access and those without. To offer multi level internet access would actually physically impose such a divide and make the internet a place for wealthy elitists. The low end internet would get worse and worse as companies wouldn't want to advertise to the people that don't have enough cash to get the higher level internet in the first place, thus you would get less content.
To regulate the internet is to regulate the library. Sure we can have a private internet, but to regulate the public internet is no different than regulating public libraries. The internet is all about information, nothing more nothing less. The internet is most profitable when it is filled with diverse information. How are we supposed to tell China to be a free and open society if we close and restrict the internet?
I think the problem is that the companies that want more money out of the internet have a mis-conception about the internet. It's a useful tool for me at home, but I can live without it when the cost exceeds affordability. I could have a gigabit line but I can't afford it, and when my broadband cost exceed my budget, I'll drop it and go to dialup, and if that is too costly, then I'll use regular mail. They think that if they are charging google, then the multi-billion dollar company will just give them money, but they miss that the source of the money is ultimately individuals using a service. That's why I switched from Compuserve to Prodigy, then Prodigy to a dialup bbs while out of work then to a Dialup provider for internet, up to isdn, then to DSL, then cable, then dsl, and now cable. It's all about what consumers are able to pay ultimately, not what the companies want to make in revenue.
This is the same reason why I don't buy CD's, I know that at the same $14.99 that they have been charging for the last 15 years, that they are making obscene amounts of money. So I don't buy CD's and I just listen to the radio. But they see that change in my spending and decide I must be pirating music because no one is allowed to change habits in their worldview. Their marketing machine says that once a customer always a customer. So if you aren't buying from them, you must be stealing. This is the same worldview that the telecom networks that built the backbone of the net have, if they want more money from the system, they should just ask for it and people should give it to them. They think they are entitled to it.
So let's all just cancel our internet access for a month. No one use the internet at all for anything.
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"Tesco and Waitrose" is like Walmart and ... oh, that screws up my analogy, Walmart doesn't have any significant competitors ;).
Oh no... it's the future.
I seem to remember back when Napster was hitting its stride really well, analyst were saying that ISPs were going to reap the rewards because Napster was that golden application that was going to magically get everyone to sign up for high-speed Internet. Well, people did sign up in droves to use Napster, but as it turns out, ISPs wanted customers...but NOT the customers that actually used what they paid for. Yes, taking their cue from the insurance industry, ISPs want to sell every single person on the face of the earth an Internet connection, but they don't want everyone to actually use it, just pay for it.
And now they want the customer's to not only not use it, but they want the content providers to pay them as well!
It must be nice to have a business where everyone pays you, but you don't let them actually use your service! Now wait a minute, what exactly are we paying them for?
I work at a small WISP and it's brought up constantly to filter out traffic. I always say, we sold this person high-speed internet...and this is what they want to do with it, why should we filter it?
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
... to me, anyway.
There's a conflict here between private companies, who should be allowed to structure their pricing and services any way they like, and the public good, which seems best served by undifferentiated transport. The author of the article believes that regulation is the right approach, that the government should tell ISPs how they can and cannot structure their business. I'm not so libertarian as to deny that government regulation is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to see it as a solution of last resort.
In this case, I don't think it's necessary at all. It seems to me that we already have this notion of a "common carrier", which is a carrier of information who is not responsible for the nature of the information transported. If we simply establish the rule that ISPs that attempt to favor one sort of traffic over another lose their common carrier status and become liable for the content that flows across their networks, I really doubt that many will want to take that route. Non-common carrier ISPs will be a target for copyright lawsuits, defamation lawsuits, criminal charges for child pornography, etc. Any ISP that wants to provide preferential access to specific content had better carefully control *all* the content.
Problem solved, IMO.
If only the world were that simple...
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Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic.
Closer. But the premium lanes are still doing "best effort" delivery.
Here's one closer yet:
Think of what they're building as a multi-lane highway - with railroad tracks down the lanes. Each house gets a multi-lane driveway with a couple sidings running up the lanes.
Driveway/sidings come in several standard lane counts. Theaters, arenas, and factories have very wide ones, houses narrower ones (but still plenty wide), businesses, restaurants, and so on have something in between. The wider the driveway, the more you pay (in taxes or "driveway rent" to the "road company").
You can runs trains, cars, motorcycles, trolleys, people-movers, delivery busses, computerized delivery carts, you-name-it, on the pavement or the rails.
There's a fancy computerized signaling system telling every car which lanes it can use. Lots of switches tied in with it (and signaling BACK from the trains and such), so rail vehicles can be switched around as easily as cars make lane changes.
You've got two ways to use the road:
- You can pay a small toll and schedule a non-stop run or a scheduled stream of them (if there's capacity for it). The computers controlling the signaling system moves all the other traffic out of your way when it's your slot. If you got your reservation your trip is guaranteed. No stops, no traffic jams (for you), limited number and duration of red lights, getting you to your destination when promised.
- You can pay nothing (besides your flat-rate driveway rental) and use it like a regular road. Usually you get through. Sometimes there's a traffic jam and it takes a long while, or you have to make a detour. Once in a while it's so bad you give up and go back home. Big point: You have to guess how long the trip will take, and whether it's possible.
With this road in place you call a restaurant to cater your big party: The restaurant schedules a set of reserved road slots, cooks up the courses in his central professional kitchen, puts each on a little automated cart, and the cart brings it to your house: fresh, piping hot, and just in time to be served. Course after course, just on time, guaranteed to make it.
Meanwhile, the lane the caterer's carts were using is being used by lots of other traffic, mostly flat-rate, take-your-chances-with-traffic-jams traffic, whenever there wasn't a scheduled cart/train/bus/limousine/whatever using it.
THAT's the combined system.
What's the alternative?
You build a road AND a railroad. Separately. Each with its own infrastructure. This costs a LOT more than building one system, so its total capacity is smaller for a given investment. But even worse: Cars only get to use the road, trains only get to use the railroad - cars can't run down the rails when there are no trains in sight. So much of the capacity is unused.
Maybe you rented a siding from the railroad company. If so, you only get their trains. You don't get catered parties unless you buy them from the railroad company. Your local restaurant might try that stunt using waters on motorcycles - but he can't guarantee the main course won't be caught in a traffic jam while the soup gets cold. Some shippers might use trains to haul containers cross-country and transfer them to truck beds - but once they're on the trucks they're back in the traffic jams.
THAT's the "no favorites" scenario some posters keep whining for.
The problem is that some internet services, like streaming audio and video or VoIP, REQUIRE guaranteed bandwidth, limits on packet latency, and/or delivery reliability ("Quality of Service" (QoS)). Others (like file transfer) don't - "best effort" is good enough. If you want to serve both on the same net and do a good job of it, you have to give some packets preference over others.
If some packets ar
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"non-US countries"
As opposed to all those other US-countries?
net*split*
On a more serious note, I think the Internet is fine as it is. Would you not agree that as it is, the internet is a very succesful thing? Why make such radical changes to it that could shake it up?
Oh, whoops, this is capitalism.
"Previous attempts to set up a two-tier net have failed"
Does this say anything to anyone else? Yeah yeah, it's probably like people saying to the Wright brothers, "Previous attempts at flying have failed," but this is something of a totally different scope and I think that failure is imminent.
The internet itself is a revolutionary public communications system. It is my opinion that the internet is far greater than the postal service or the telephone service. Not so much from a technical standpoint, but the fact is, so much of it is user-created and comes at little expense. It's a public form of communication, and it should be left as it is for the good of the people.