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Hardware Firms Go Against Crowd on Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Some of the largest hardware firms in the world, like Cisco and 3M, have sent a letter to U.S. policymakers asking them not to be too hasty on mandated net neutrality laws." From the News.com article: "'It is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality principles into law now,' says the letter, which was signed by 34 companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. 'Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.'"
Well, your first sentence says it all, doesn't it?
I read three tomes by Robert A. Caro on Lyndon Johnson. At some point in time electricity company was forced to sell electricity at a lower rate, which the company strongly opposed to. The government won, and later the company had to admit that they made much more profit. This story is not to demonstrate that government always knows best, but to demonstrate that free market also doesn't always know best. Your popular belief is as wrong as the opposite. The only valid point is, look at each issue individually.
Other points not discussed in your contribution: Inertia from consumers to change provider (with all the concommitant hassle, especially now you can't take your e-mail address with you).
Another casse in point: Here in the Netherlands we have to pay for all kinds of banking services, each with their own rates. Only boring IT guys got happy because of this. I think it is completely in line with current behaviour of companies to start inventing all different kinds of things to charge for. xyz packets will be more expensive than pqr packets. You see the same thing (at least over here) with Internet over your phone. One pays megabucks per megabyte. SMS the same thing. Compared to the number of bytes required for voice it is nothing, but they are charged at a premium.
There is also the contagious nature of the behaviour. If one provider does it, and charges another provider, then the other provider has to pass on the cost, and will start doing the same. And on it goes.
I'm perfectly happy with laws that require ISPs to pass thru any packet irrespective of its type.
Charge Google? Sure! Then Google charges back for the services the ISP subscribers use.
A lot of this discussion ignores how transport really works in the Internet. Having dealt with backbone issues since 1993 (ack! that's like... 200 dog years or something), let me share some perspective (apologies for length and anonymous - have a slashdot stalker/former employee who's off his meds to contend with):
How transport works
Contrary to a constant misnomer, there is not "a" backbone. There are numerous private networks operated by companies at various lower levels of the OSI model. Some own their own fiber and cable, while others lease IRUs (irrevokable right of use) - sort of like having a 15-year lease on a condo. Some have used the model Bob Collet (original senior executive of Sprintlink and CIX board chairman) was believed to have coined of "tier 1/2/3" providers. In this model, a tier 1 provider is sufficiently geographically diverse and connects to others via multilateral and more commonly (these days) bilateral connections to other tier ones. Traffic traveling between tier 1 networks is usually handled without settlement if there is not significant disparity between networks. Settlement is a nice word for fee, incidentally. Tier 2 networks are those that predominantly connect to tier 1s for their transport, and they pay the tier 1 for it. Tier 3 in the model connect to tier 2 for their transport and also pay.
Google transport
Google buys transport from several tier 1 networks. These networks have agreements with other networks to exchange traffic with each other, each bearing their own cost to get to the place where they meet up. These networks also have lots of tier 2 and 3 customers who pay them money for access since these 2 and 3 tier networks cannot afford the cost of an international high-capacity backbone which is pretty much the requirement before someone will enter into a bilateral (I'm horribly oversimplifying). Google has paid for its transport and probably has service level guarantees of traffic performance through the tier 1 networks it pays. Some DSL outfit like Verizon may buy transport from another tier 1 provider who connects to Google's tier 1 providers. If Verizon's access to Google sucks, it should get a better tier 1 or pay for its own circuits directly to Google. Seeking to charge Google for that transport is bizarre and not how things work - sort of like making rivers run backwards (which usually requires an act of Congress).
Eyeballs vs. Content
This "Google must pay Verizon for access to their eyeballs" issue isn't new. It's been fought since some first saw it rise in 1995-1996 when some NSF-connected tier ones decided to mess with PRDB (policy-routed database) routes and limit access to NSF nodes (as the NSFNET was operated by ANS under NSF contract - separate and lengthy discussion). NSF was the content of the day and a few, such as the BBN NSF regional acquisitions (e.g. NEARNET and other nonprofit networks which were acquired by the for-profit BBN and instantly pushed into a network access battles) decided to try to limit access in order to extract more fees.
BBN got hammered then, and again learned the hard way with the whole Exodus and Genuity battles. Again, one party which was mostly consumer customer oriented decided to charge the producers of content for access to those consumer eyeballs. The result was similar to the response your local cable TV outfit would get by threatening HBO that it would be dropped or relegated to one channel if it didn't pay the cable company fees for access to their eyeballs. HBO knows consumers will just switch to Dish or DirecTV. BBN learned when numerous commercial clients dropped their T1s and switched to a network that wasn't inferior in its access.
Bandwidth Hogs and QoS?
There is a real issue here, but it isn't what the consumer broadband providers are telling you. DSL and Cable Internet have numerous QoS issues, are mostly obsolete standards incapable of provid