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The Future of the Internet
bariswheel writes "An important piece written by a Columbia Law professor addresses sensitive questions about the future of the Internet: "Is it a problem if the gatekeepers (i.e. a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? How would you take it if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail? What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only? Is there something special about "carriers" and infrastructure--roads, canals, electric grids, trains, the Internet--that mandates special treatment? Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?" Here's hoping that sites like Google Techtalks and Channel 9 remain 'free' and available for the next 10 years."
No, but they could just make it slow; cut the total throughput to Google's servers, or maybe inject some latency into every connection.
With GMail as it currently exists this might not seem like a big threat, but look at where "webmail" is headed. GMail already includes instant messenging / chat, and in a few years I could see it becoming much more interactive; instead of firing up Skype to make a VoIP call, you might just navigate to a particular web page.
AJAX and future interactive technologies could be greatly affected by network conditions, and two competing websites might be perceived very differently by consumers if one was always much faster or more responsive than the other. It doesn't take much to give something a reputation for slowness or unreliability, and that's a big turn-off to potential customers. (And not one that you can really argue against -- you as Google could say "it's not our fault, it's your cable company doing it!" to which the customer says "So, what? You're still slow and Yahoo is still fast, so I'm using Yahoo.")
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Could have sworn that these big telcos are getting government subsidies. I think currently Bellsouth gets in the area of 150 million dollars (combined) a year in subsidies from nine states. But I would have to agree that most of that money probably doesn't go to infrastructure but to buy someone a nice home in Manila.
o f-hypocrisy-whose-subsidy.html
http://lafayetteprofiber.com/Blog/2005/10/banner-
http://www.lafayetteprofiber.com/
This really brings out the lust for pure flaming in me...
As net users we pay to be connected to the internet and for the price we pay we get a speed and (in the case of us australia users) a download limit. And as companies groups like google and yahoo pay for their connections and data they send to the internet.
So both groups have paid their dues to those who control the networks...So all of this bullshit (and lets not beat around the bush here) is that network providers want to double dip without raising their existing connection fees. Now the problem with is is that companies will end up biding huge amounts just to use the net - imagine yahoo and google in a auction style fight to exist - the networks demandinig this are just creaming their pants at that thought.
To be honest as a net user paying a fair price for a service I think these people should just fuck right off and I cheer google and others for standing up to them and serving them one.
I ate your fish.
On the most recent This Week in Tech, it was mentioned that YouTube is burning a million dollars a month in bandwidth fees (yes, a million). My question is, who are they paying that money to? I'm assuming it's the very same telco that is claiming that they're not making any money off of YouTube...
This guy's the limit!
However, when Google wants to send you a video from the video search, they want really high bandwidth and really good Quality of Service. So they toss Verizon some extra cash to temporarily flip your connection to 45 Mbps and let only the Google traffic cover the extra 30 Mbps you just got.
That's not the plan. The plan is to create a HOV lane on their backbone (at the expense of every other lane) to companies that pay money to the Bells. It has nothing to do with what is in your house.
Remember big isps oversell bandwidth like crazy, so for every X number of 15 mbps customers they have 1 actual 15 mbps pipe allocated to them. What they want to do is get money from partnerships.
What this means is that if you have 10 ppl sharing a real 15 mbps pipe to the net, and 9 of them are going to Yahoo (who did pay) and you are trying to go to Google (who didn't) then your traffic would be priortiized lower than the ones going to Yahoo, instead of using fair share algorithms.
Now in bigger scales with pipes oversold way more than 10ppl this becomes really bad because if most of the customers are going to companies that did pay, my traffic could be seriously degraded even if I am only using 1 of my 15 mbps because the other people going to sites that paid will be allowed to saturate as much of their bandwidth as possible before I am even given a chance to request.
Can I get an eye poke?
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