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The Cost of a Tiered Internet
An anonymous reader wrote in to mention a Popular Science article about the money issues involved in a tiered internet. From the article: "With a tiered Internet, such routing technology could be used preferentially to deliver either the telecoms' own services or those of companies who had paid the requisite fees. What does this mean for the rest of us? A stealth Web tax, for one thing. 'Google and Amazon and Yahoo are not going to slice those payments out of their profit margins and eat them,' says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that monitors media-related legislation. 'They're going to pass them on to the consumer. So I'll end up paying twice. I'm going to pay my $29.99 a month for access, and then I'm going to pay higher prices for consumer goods all across the economy because these Internet companies will charge more for online advertising.'" Update: 05/26 16:54 GMT by Z : The article is hosted on CNN, but is original material from Popular Science. Post updated to reflect this.
Obviously, the situation already exists, so a simple ban wouldn't be enough. But in Microsoft's antitrust case, they considered splitting them up to fix just such an issue. The ISPs in the US have similar monopolies, right? So cut them up. AOL Internet and AOL Portal, or something.
No way we should pay twice for them to profit twice though. Screw that.
A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and wrote my first and only letter to a federal rep. Here in Oakland county, Michigan that happens to be Thaddeus McCotter. I decided on a fax because I've read that letters are given greater consideration compared to phone calls and emails, and a fax is better (faster) than the postal service due to postal security concerns. While the letter addresses my concerns from the viewpoint of a VoIP company founder, net neturallity is of major concern to anyone who is starting (or thinking of starting) any Internet-based company.
Congressman McCotter:
I am not politically active and have never contacted a federal representative in my life. However, I am taking the time today to write you because I am very deeply concerned about pending legislation intended to counter recent actions by large telecommunication companies that will hugely detrimental effect on the American citizenry, your constituents, and myself personally.
As things currently stand, big phone companies and cable conglomerates have what is called "common carrier" status. Meaning that they are required to treat all phone calls, Internet traffic, etc. identically. In exchange for keeping their hands off, carriers are given special tax breaks and are normally exempt from being liable for the content they carry (Comcast can't be held criminally liable if someone downloads child porn using a Comcast cable modem, for example). This is how things have been since 1934. However, Congress is moving in the direction to give the big phone and cable companies the power to regulate the 'net as they see fit. They will be able to pick favorites and decide who's traffic they carry--or don't carry at all.
December of last year, I founded Bright Idea VoIP here in Novi, Michigan. We're an Internet-based telephone company that provides voice communication services to small-businesses. I frequently explain it as "Vonage for companies with 5 to 100 employees." This technology is known as "Voice-over-IP" (VoIP) is currently one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet. There are hundreds of companies like mine popping up all over the map. I am not rich by any sense of the word; I am simply a computer geek with a great idea who is trying to earn my piece of the American dream. And it's paying off... The company is growing very quickly. I (and my small, but also growing, group of coworkers) are working hard, but enjoying almost every minute of it. But for us to continue to thrive, or just to survive, we need a level playing field.
If AT&T, Verizon, or another large competitor of ours gains the ability to turn off or slow down areas of the Internet, our service will grind to a halt and I won't be able to do a thing about it. If they start to charge me a special "priority access fee", I'll have to pass that cost onto my subscribers. Suddenly the largest appeal of VoIP is reduced, making it less of a threat to the big telecom companies. The net effect is that I will be out of business within a year. And it's not just me... it's the thousands of other Internet innovators. We'll never know the next Google, eBay, or Amazon.com if the established 800 lb. gorillas get the power to decide who stays and who fails. That's not capitalism and that's not the American way.
With the lifeblood of manufacturing jobs in the metro Detroit area rapidly disappearing, your district desperately needs your help in promoting innovation and job growth in the technology sector. I ask that you please support Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey's "Network Neutrality Act of 2006", and that you see through the well-funded smoke screen of large telecom lobbyists.
I didn't even get a form letter back in return. Since he's up for relelection this
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
It brings tiers to my eyes.
i'm sure that given this new income, the phone companies will lower
their rates and it will all balance out.
FTA: "Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. "A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx's makes sense," he says.
He's looking at it incorrectly though. Absolutely I should, as a consumer of a service be able to choose different levels of service, for example, dial up, "light" high speed, or torrent-downloading-freak high speed. However, using his Fed-Ex example, since when does the shipper AND the receiver pay for the service.
no one will pay extra to use the web... we already have $30-$60 a month. paying more just means I'll cancel or find another service that charges a flat amount.
I'd rather quit using the internet before I subscribe to a stupid pay model like this.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Simple, if they don't want to be a common carrier, hold them accountable for anything that is transmitted.
Either be a common carrier, or be charged with a felony every time a kiddy porn image passes through their network. Hold them accountable for criminal digital acts including hacking, DOS attacks, defacement, etc...
Either they are a common carrier, or they aren't. None of this cake having and eating.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If a bakery is making money by selling cakes that were baked using gas, shouldn't the gas company get a share of the profits?
They're being very up-front: they want more money. There's nothing "stealth" about it.
I am not a sig.
Please keep internet free, nobody is willing to pay again beside paying connection fees. That will be end of internet as it is ... as somebody said here, I have tiers in my eyes :)
Pixel image editor - http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Creating a tiered internet does not mean that users pay twice... It means that users pay more to the online content provider instead of paying more to their internet service provider. The economics of the article are not exactly correct.
Now, don't get me wrong, tiered internet is still bad, because it squeezes out smaller content providers who can't pay for extra bandwidth. But opposition to a tiered internet isn't about paying less, it is about making sure that Internet isn't like cable TV or radio, or other mediums where a handful of companies or the government control the whole thing. I, as a consumer, want to get the web site that I want, and I want to get it fast, and I don't care if that web site is google or something very obscure.
I don't mean the idea of net-neutrality, but rather the idea of service providers charging content providers extra.
That is, as long as there is competition in the Internet bandwidth space. I don't know what it's like now, but back in '99 or so there was quite a bit of competition as these companies were fighting to get the business.
So google.com has a internet connections coming in from AT&T, and AT&T says "You have to pay us extra because you are google". What's google going to do? They're going to call around and find someone else to provide the service.
Unless all the ISPs get together and collude on rate structures, which would be illegal, competition is going to solve this problem.
Frankly, it's just about the dumbest idea that the communication companies could have ever come up with. Not only won't it work, but they're giving themselves a black eye by looking greedy.
Compuserve is dead. There's a lesson to be learned from that. If you want to be an "online service" where people pay you to make their content accessible, you'll join Compuserve.
If I could place a bet on a Tiered Internet, I would because it's going to happen.
The profit potential is too great.
Whatever you thought the Internet is/was, it won't be for long because there are too many players that stand to make way too much money.
-Big ISP's kill the smaller ISP's because they'll pay a "wholesale transit tax." Competition? What competition?
-Companies providing the fiber/cable get to collect more. Someone explain to me how it's possible for there to be any competition in this segment.
-New industry segment is born out of ownership. Effectively creating a new kind of prepaid calling cards.
-Consumer pays only slightly more. The perfect example is the ass-raping Visa/MC gets away with. Consumers see only a little of the cost in some transactions sometimes. Meanwhile, merchants get to pay their bank many, many times over.
Ahh capitalism....
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Just yet another Government imposed setback. Its things like this that lets the rest of the world simply pass us by.
But wait! http://dontregulate.org/ says otherwise.... lol
The article talks about selectively prioritizing data streams, which does seem almost evil on the face of it.
But what if they left the existing infrastructure in place and focused offering on enhanced access to paid sites through selective, local staging and caching (such as leveraging telco-based Yotta Yotta or Akamai implementations)? It seems reasonable to charge for this, it doesn't really impact the rest of the world, and it could enable much faster access.
Ok, it does sound a little bit evil. But certainly far less than deliberately routing non-paying sites through lower bandwidth lines.
If Amazon shows consumers this tiered fee/tax (and the tech support number of the offending ISP), I can't help but think that ISP will soon discover that the fee/tax is unprofitable.
Let the market decide, but ensure that consumers have all the facts and tools to affect the decision.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
no one will pay extra to use the web... we already have $30-$60 a month. paying more just means I'll cancel or find another service that charges a flat amount.
I'd rather quit using the internet before I subscribe to a stupid pay model like this.
And if the telcos are so concerned that they're not getting enough revenue from the traffic passing through their networks, I'd rather see them simply raise the rates for bandwidth in general, than hide the costs elsewhere.
It's better for me, specifically, because then I can *choose* whether I want to pay for that service.
It makes the market run more efficiently, too, because the information necessary to make that choice is more readily apparenty to consumers.
The only problem? The telcos probably gain a significant advantage by hiding the information, restricting choices, and creating arbitrary fee structures, than by playing in an efficient market.
Tweet, tweet.
Correct me if I am wrong:
a) Hosting companies pay their uplink for bandwidth and transfer
b) Websites pay hosting companies for bandwidth and transfer
c) ISPs pay their uplink for bandwidth and transfer
d) Surfers pay ISPs for bandwidth and transfer
This is an obvious spite move by Big Telecom. Analog telephony is dead, long live analog telephony. Don't invent services to make up for an obviated technology.
Good God man! You pay $29.99 for cable TV, and then you pay more for things all over the place to pay for TV advertising? Oh, the humanity!
Version 1: What every Slashdotter fears. Our ISPs charge us, the site's ISP charges them, and then our ISP and anyone in between charges the site to not throttle down their connection. This business model is impractical and would probably be found illegal if taken to court.
Version 2: What will probably happen. Any site can pay for what amounts to a "leased line" from their server to our ISP. This would give them guaranteed bandwidth across the entire trip and eliminate potential bottlenecks.
Another idea (would also fit in #2) I've heard mentioned is that service providers can essentially buy more bandwidth for you, but only to use their site. Say you have a 3 Mb connection. ABC wants to stream HDTV to you and would prefer it be over a 6- or 10 Mb connection. They pay your ISP, your ISP conditionally opens up your bandwidth so you can get the stream flawlessly without having to pay for the higher bandwidth full-time.
I'm all for #2, especially the second part. I'd love to be able to pay a small fee to have my bandwidth opened up for a particular service.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. "A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx's makes sense," he says.
So, just how is the internet similar to SnailMail? The only thing I can think of to explain this statement is that this guy is getting a lot of money from some ISP.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
FidoNet shares are going through the roof!!!
I mean, seriously. When I call someone long distance, I pay the bill. They don't typically bill the person I'm calling, too. This sounds remarkably similar to the VOIP phone service in my area, where all calls are included in the basic rate, no matter where or for how long. Sure, the other party has to have phone service, too, but I feel pretty confident that Google pays something for their access to the backbone.
This just sounds like another BS excuse to get more money. If the flat rate is too expensive (doubtful), raise the rate or make it per MB. Either way, they need to give up on the double-billing idea.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Only 2 questions :)
1) So for the 'few' of us that live outside america does this mean that access to only american content gets slower?
If so then I can see opportunities for other companies in other countries benefiting from this. Will become a case of host anywhere but in the USA.
2) Are the other companies that own/supply the networks around the rest of the world going to follow suit?
Then community owned networks just got more attractive.
i have been keeping very close track of this story for the past 2 months now. both sides of the argument have valid points.
for example, consider the telecommunications companies' point of view. currently, they sell more access to bandwidth than they have available. which is fine for regular, burst-type internet use.
now, with internet tv, video-on-demand, and movie downloads looming on the horizon, their argument is, "the current infrastructure can't handle everyone watching streaming video or downloading movies at the same time. if your house is on fire, and all your neighbors are downloading the last episode of '24', your VoIP phone call to 911 may not go through."
so their goal is to get the gov't to allow them to run their part of the internet as a private network. where they can partition off portions of their bandwidth that's dedicated to VoIP phone calls and such, while allowing a (perhaps smaller) portion of the pipe to be available for video downloads and such.
but the potention for abuse is there. what's to stop comcast from throttling a customer's bandwidth if they're using vonage so it basically becomes unusable, then forcing that customer to use comcast's VoIP service instead?
then you have the argument of the google's, microsoft's, amazon's, etc. they know that they'll be charged money to guarantee fast delivery of their services on infrastructure of those companies they're not partnered with. for example, if comcast and yahoo partner up, comcast can guarantee yahoo's search page comes up right away, but google's might take a few seconds longer. that would be a disaster for anyone who doesn't pay the 'comcast tax' and relies on their ads being served up.
one thing the telecom companies forget is that, although they've invested billions into this country's infrastructure, joe taxpayer has had a hand in that investment too. look at your phone bill. see those taxes? universal service charge - what's that for? it's to encourage better connectivity to schools, libraries and rural areas. it's collected and distributed back to the telecoms to invest in infrastructure.
the root problem is the current infrastructure won't be able to handle all the new tv/video/movie services that are about to strike. so instead of investing in more bandwidth to handle the load in the manner we currently enjoy (net neutrality), the telecoms want to use the 'tiered' structure instead.
i'm with tim berners-lee on this - provide either service or content, but not both.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
You just know that the step after a web site paying to get better service will be paying to cut out the competition. Just like Intel did to AMD: giving the founderies business provided they did not do business with AMD. Typical behavior of a monopolist. At that point the web will stop being the great leveler and will become another cartel owned by the media elite.
Lets hope and work to make sure that day never arrives.
You really think it's a good idea to have big government barging and telling people what they can and can't do on the internet? Wasn't one of the cool things about the internet was that it was supposed to be independent from government regulation and control? That it would allow for experimentation and innovation for both individuals and businesses, and not be told what we can and can't do?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"It's not discrimination; everyone has the opportunity to pay us for better service."
I'm sure there are ways to spin the money issue either way on Net Neutrality. I think Net Neutrality proponents are better off sticking to their core principals about how the internet needs to remain a level playing field.
I'm not saying they don't have a valid point; I'm just saying it sounds too much like something a telco giant would talk about. Stay on point with the "Net Neutrality is good for competition and the future of the internet" and you will have a bigger impact.
http://www.redbanktv.org/
Remove their legal protections as common carriers as a corporation. They want to tier the internet make them legally liable for everything crossing thier wires. Let the MPAA/RIAA eat them alive. Let them go to jail for transmitting kiddie porn. Have at it. You want to differentiate the packets flowing then you should have to do the full check on those packets. And hey to make sure you don't weasel out of anything, you don't get to claim common carrier status on anything.
I think the ISPs are seriously underestimating the ability for these highly valuable internet sites to hurt their business.
What happens when Google responds by delisting EvilISP, or, preferentially indexing sites that are not served from EvilISP's network. What happens when Amazon charges more for customers arriving from lame ISPs?
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but ISPs/Telcos seem to forget the value of their services are dependent on the value of the web.
Anyway food for thought... This will be a good fight, hopefully we all don't lose?
I didnt see if this was posted in the thread, but: http://savetheinternet.com/blog/ And to those too lazy to read: The "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 was passed by a bipartisan majority in the House Judiciary committee, so good news...Just a little, but its still good news
Cost is probably a bad argument. The better argument is competition. We don't really want thousands of different competing firms providing cable to the home, its not practical. The physical infrastructure is going to be narrowly "controlled" and its better for everyone that it is. Just as its better that we don't have multiple road systems set up in "parallel" (over and under eachother, perhaps), with different "road service providers" competing to get us to pay for connections from our home (or business) to their road.
But we do want robust competition among providers of services delivered across that physical infrastructure. But if the controllers of the physical infrastructure are allowed to selectively discriminate among different content streams, and favor the ones that they are getting an extra payment for (or which originate with them), then we won't have that robust competition. We'll have control of the infrastructure equating to control of content.
Hey, I just came up with my list of the top 1 things never to say to a politician you're trying to influence (or even read the remainder of your letter), and I thought I'd pass it along to you for future reference:
hth!
I just watched the entire flash animation on dontregulate.org and I have seen the light! EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE INTERNET IS CANADA'S FAULT!!!!
Fine...let them create the tiered internet...then sue them the next time you get spammed through their connection.
1 million lawsuits the day after should convince them otherwise.
All you need are lawyers....
I highly recommend anyone writing similar letters to their representatives to Get to the Point in the first paragraph. Identify the bill and how you think they should vote as soon as you're done with the formality of introducing yourself. Just like writing technical reports. The introduction or abstract always sums up the main content so a busy reader can glean the important parts from it immediately. Congressmen don't have time for their constituents...^H^H^H^H... are very busy people and receive quite a bit of correspondance to sift through.
Once you have "voted" in your representative's inbox, then you can and should explain your reasons. In that respect your letter is excellent. The fact that you identified yourself as a small business owner gives him that "Defended small business owners in the Network Neutrality Act of 2006 vote" in his campaign material. Everybody loves that one.
I personally am a little undecided on the bill. While I have heard no promise of any genuine benefit for the consumer and really hope we don't see a tiered internet come to pass, a small part of me thinks perhaps we should let the market kill this one. Surely if enough preference is exerted by consumers and companies like Google and Yahoo taking our side, the tiered internet will leave leave AT&T's backbones dry as the LA river (least cost/shortest latency routing?), and provide the perfect environment for other companies to invest in building high capacity lines. I just don't know if it's worth the risk that AT&T might succeed, though.
imho, you are a tad naive. there is nothing wrong with doing illegal stuff in the minds of these types... there is only something wrong in doing something that can be proved illegal.
california energy was manipulated and gamed. the state lost TENS OF BILLIONS b/c of this illegal behavior that you don't think can happen.
ride your bike by a gas station and look at the prices... everyone *knows* there is manipulation going on, but it isn't provable.
> 07-Feb-2006: A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.
This is the whole source of the problem right here.
How is Google "freeloading"? Paying $millions in ISP fees every year is now called "freeloading"?
And without "freeloaders" like Google and Amazon, Verizon's internet service would be much less attractive to customers.
Let's call the "tiered internet" what it is: a crass, venal, bare-naked attempt by the ISPs to grab more money.
The only way they can hope to get away with it is by virtue of scanty competition and/or tacit collusion.
It's really just that simple.
That's a fast connection your website has there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
Can popular sites charge Telcoms for full-speed access to content?
So, mister-i-need-a-level-playing-field-to-compete, what is capitalism?
Christopher Yoo got it, and his point is what's wrong with the telecomm's ideas. He's right, consumers should be able to pay for better delivery, just like when I order something shipped FedEx I can pay for regular delivery or I can pay more for overnight delivery depending on what I want. But that's not what the telecomms propose. That'd be like the telecomms saying "Consumer, you're using a lot of bandwidth. If you want to download streaming video you're going to have to pay for a higher-capacity link.". What the telecomms propose, though, is to not have the consumer pay for what they want but to have whoever the consumer's asking for stuff from pay. It's like my ordering something and paying for overnight shipping, and FedEx saying to the shipper "Right then. The customer's paid for standard shipping, but unless you pay us for overnight delivery we'll shove your package in the back and deliver it whenever we feel like it. Which may be never. Oh, and the extra just gets you standard delivery, real overnight will be yet more on top of that.". Of course the telecomms don't want to phrase it that way, because people understand FedEx and the extortion attempt's blatantly obvious.
I think that analogy hits very directly at what tiered internet effectively accomplishes.
Now onto the question of whether or not someone who owns a private bridge (since almost all bridges in the US are managed by some level of the government, but almost all the backbones are privately owned), has a right to let FedEx's trucks cross before UPS's when the bridge is crowded if FedEx is willing to pay for the privilege. Meanwhile UPS can wait in the queue.
But wait...transportation projects are taken on publicly because of the cost and land involved. It would not be practical to let PonSys build one bridge across the Mississippi and TransCorp build another right next to it to compete for tolls, when one publicly owned bridge accomplishes the same. That can be accomplished much more easily with network paths. Rather than UPS waiting for the congestion to ease on PonSys's bridge, they'll just plan their route (set their routing rules) to use Trancorp's bridge when PonSys's is backed up. The flat-rate bridge may be more expensive than riding the bottom tier of the other one, but they can still rake it in whenever their competitor is causing unacceptable delays for the shippers.
I have a strong hope this one will sort itself out with resorting to legislation.
I did a whois on the handsoff.org site (the one that dontregulate.org points you to):
= handsoff.org&InputServer=--automatic--
http://www.kessels.com/whois/whois.php?InputQuery
And came up with "The Mecury Group" as the owner:
http://www.mercgroup.com/
From the site:
"Proven practitioners of persuasive arts..."
Not that this should come as any surprise.
I dream in binary.
There are a number of sites online with information on this issue. You can take a look at the save the internet coalition at www.savetheinternet.com. One thing that I strongly suggest people look into is a cooperative effort between moveon.org and of all people, the Christian Coalition. They are teaming up to afford a $70,000 ad in the New York Times. That will really get people talking and see that there couldn't be a more Bipartisan issue out there. 2000 people donating $35 gets the ad. I've already given my money: https://civic.moveon.org/donatec4/save_the_interne t.html
Just remember that Yahoo and AT&T are already deeply in bed with each other. They have been partners since long before SBC bought AT&T and assumed that name. If you will recall, SBC bought and destroyed on "portal" company. After that debacle they decided it was best to partner with someone and they picked Yahoo. Remember that they call their DSL service AT&T Yahoo! internet.
Rember that SBC has been trying to destroy the Internet since the Internet destroyed their plans for a monopoly information service.
Stonewolf
By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.
Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.
He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web.
"What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said.
"Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
An equal net
The British scientist developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. Since then it has exploded into every area of life.
However, as it has grown, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve.
The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model.
This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally.
This view is backed by companies like Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to be introduced to guarantee net neutrality.
The first steps towards this were taken last week when members of the US House of Representatives introduced a net neutrality bill.
Pay model
But telecoms companies in the US do not agree. They would like to implement a two-tier system, where data from companies or institutions that can pay are given priority over those that cannot.
This has particularly become an issue with the transmission of TV shows over the internet, with some broadband providers wanting to charge content providers to carry the data.
The internet community believes this threatens the open model of the internet as broadband providers will become gatekeepers to the web's content.
Providers that can pay will be able to get a commercial advantage over those that cannot.
There is a fear that institutions like universities and charities would also suffer.
The web community is also worried that any charges would be passed on to the consumer.
Optimism
Sir Tim said this was "not the internet model". The "right" model, as exists at the moment, was that any content provider could pay for a connection to the internet and could then put any content on to the web with no discrimination.
Speaking to reporters in Edinburgh at the WWW2006 conference, he argued this was where the great benefit of the internet lay.
"You get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across a site that I did not set out to look for," he said.
A two-tier system would mean that people would only have full access to those portions of the internet that they paid for and that some companies would be given priority over others.
But Sir Tim was optimistic that the internet would resist attempts to fragment.
"I think it is one and will remain as one," he said.
The WWW2006 conference will run until Friday at the International Conference Centre in Edinburgh.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
From the article: "On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message."
Easy did they say? What planet are they on? Every time a packet crosses a carrier, the priority may or may not be paid equal attention to. I wouldn't think for even a second that AT&T will treat Verizon's prioritized packets with as high a priority as their own customer's prioritized packets.
Even more misunderstood is that the last mile makes much more of a difference than the backbones. If your local ISP doesn't care about the differenciated services settings, all the money Google, Yahoo, and Disney shell out for better streaming video performance won't add up to much. The Disneys of the scene will eventually figure out that they paid for the privilege of slowing everybody down, not speeding themselves up. That should be an interesting fight.
Easy...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
You mean like the super in the building holding it hostage until you tip him?
I have no objection in ISP charging web sites for being accessed, it's their right to do so, it's their fiber etc. Well theoretically. The *real* issue is that ISPs have a quasi monopoly. In fact it's a fairly natural monopoly, there's no point in companies digging parallel pipes in the ground. The same problem could arise with electricity. The energy providers can't really do evil, but what if the guys who own the cable starting charging the appliance builders to work with electricity. In the end it all comes back to owns the fiber... even if a monopoly controls it, it can't do a lot of damage since a competitor could profit and start placing evil-free fiber. Google anyone?
\u262D = \u5350
How do those Default people compare to my provider, Linksys?
everyone *knows* there is manipulation going on, but it isn't provable.
The manipulation that is going on with energy prices is out in the open.
It's about Iran, and the sword rattling that's going on. It's got the energy markets spooked. Coupled with our disasterous invasion of Iraq which had shutdown supplies from there, we're in a situation where good old fashioned Econ 101 forces have taken hold.
Do I think they manipulated the market purposefully? No. But I also don't think they care about fixing it because of the profits they are earning.
The ISPs and content providers are fighting over who has to deal directly with charging bandwidth hogging consumers. Since consumers are irrational (as evidenced by 90% of the posts here), it is clear that both ISPs and CPs want the other side to deal with consumer's bitching, moaning, and complaining.
It is really simple, folks. You pay for what you get. Either ISPs switch to tiered pricing, or they keep the same sort of schemes that they have now but charge bandwidth-hogging CPs, who then charge the consumers. Either way, bandwidth-hogging consumers pay more. It really doesn't make a difference to the end user.
You might need to hit a few computer equpment flea markets, but you should be able to get a pair of bidirectional high-gain narrow focus antennas, and set them up with a line-of-site to a friend (or a craigslist friend) a mile away who has DSL.
The lag would be bad for gaming, but for surfing or downloading large files the system would work great. Have them pay the ISP a little bit more for twice the bandwidth, split the bill, and you're golden.
Of course, this is something I've done at a friend's ISP and the ping times were low / the falloff wasn't great. But still, with carefully aimed directional antennas you can get some great signal.
The ______ Agenda
If the internet is tiered into multiple layers then the cost of accessing the internet might become free.. only we would not have any sites to acess. Thats like buying a pre paid mobile SIM card with no credit...
A traceroute from my DSL connection goes through AT&T and Level3 before it hits Google. This means that, at the very least, Google is paying Level3 for transit. They might have some sort of settlement-free peering situation with Level3, but Level3 certainly isn't going to give them transit for free. Plus, AT&T has a TON of customers, thus requiring Google to pay a TON in transit fees in order to get to them through third-parties (like Level3).
Because Frontdoor will be shut when the Internet gets Ti(e)red...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
What? You insensitive clod, I've got a knee spasm problem and I read Slashbot .. .. ow I see .. I misread .. :)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Me: Hello, how may I help you?
Member: I'm having a lot of trouble accessing your Web site through my ISP, BigTelecom, Inc. What gives?
Me: Let me check into it.
[later]
BigTelecom: Hello, how may I help you?
Me: Hi, our members who are your customers are experiencing problems contacting our Web site, and the problem seems to occur at the border to your network.
BigTelecom: May I have your customer number, please?
Me: Uh, I'm not your customer, our members are.
BigTelecom: Sir, without a customer number we can't guarantee connectivity to your site. It's only $300 per month. Would you like me to transfer you to our sales department?
Me: Yeah, $300/month times the number of ISPs our members use, which is essentially all of them! Nuts!
If the telecom companies get what they want, that's the exact scenario I'll be dealing with.
My ISP traffic shapes the Bittorent protocol to 20Kbps from usually 200Kbps.
;-)
My Question: Why is Traffic Shaping any different from Net Non Neutrality.
And if they wanted to save Bandwidth why not block HTTP
if the established 800 lb. gorillas get the power to decide who stays and who fails. That's not capitalism
No, that is exactly how capitolism works. And that is why laws existed to put a damper on such abuse.
A few bits times a zillion users adds up. Anyway, Google would not need to use a "fast lane" for most of its data. Does it matter if your search comes up .01234 seconds late? No. Does this matter with your VoI or streaming video? Yep.
There's so much crap spewing about this tiered internet stuff when it really should be fairly simple. Anyone who knows anything about economics knows that GDP = C + I + G + NX. I'm guessing that ISPs plan to get almost all of this potential "tiered income" from C, or Consumer. In particular, they want to charge the consumer without the consumer having any choice; isn't this along the same lines of a monopoly? Microsoft is disliked because it effectively denies many people a choice in what software they use.
Since I am paying for bandwidth (the company pays for it because I pay them), I want to choose how it's used. Isn't this economics 101?
Regarding 911 calls to VOIP -- isn't the problem here that the ISPs don't guarantee any sort of minimum bandwidth/latency combination to the ordinary home?
Most systems right now ignore the QoS state of packets --- everything get's shipped down the pipe - no priority assigned - don't care if it's a WWW GET or a VOIP call - everything goes together as 'best effort'.
QoS was developed to resolve the issue that some protocols are latency sensative and others are not. In general it has NOT been implimented.
What I see here is that the ISPs are saying they are willing to impliment QoS for people who pay extra for it. I have seen a few comments comparing the tiered/open internet to FEDEX/USPS. That works in the sense that you pay extra to have FEDEX deliver something faster. The thing is, you actually pay for the company to DO something. In this case, you are paying the company to NOT do something.
If QoS is implimented as envisioned originally (RFC2386), every protocol has a priority, some like ftp, html, email, etc are best effort - it doesn't matter if it's delayed a few mSec or not - others like Streaming video and VOIP are high priority - latency kills there. The protocols for QoS are supposed to recognize the QoS state - either through a QoS value in the packet or through protocol recognition based on packet filtering - and route accordingly.
If an ISP is going to impliment QoS, it has to impliment QoS network wide - it's not a piecemeal item due to the fact it requires some advanced knowledge of 'best route' implimentations. In order to make the tiered internet being discussed, some form of packet filtering will have to be implimented to diferentiate the corperations sending the data and determining if they have in fact paid for QoS. This can be a peer point interface where the QoS is rewritten or a 'per hop' determination at the routers.
So what exactly are you paying the company for? They have implimented the QOS protocols already, you are paying for them to not filter out your QoS. Even better, since I can't see the ISP's paying each other for the service, you will probably have to pay every ISP to not filter you. It is after all a network. Just because Qwest shoves you through at high priority because you paid them to does not mean AT&T will unless you pay them also.
Let's move on to the next stage. This is what most people are quoting the Backbone providers as saying, "if you pay us, we will mark all all of your packets as priority QoS." OK, well that's spiffy, not only are you charging me more to run things through your network with no garantee that the next network will abide by your QoS, but you have just destroyed the whole purpose of QoS because now the VOIP and HTML are running at the same QoS again. You get more money to provide exactly the same service you just had.
What doesn't work:
- Charging for QoS without making some arrangement to make sure that QoS will be honored throughout the network.
- Implimenting QoS based on Source not Protocol
What will work:(assuming network wide honoring of QoS protocols.)- Charging more for raw bandwidth after Implimenting QoS.
- Charging more for QoS rated bandwidth based on protocol.
In short, any implimentation of QoS or tiered internet that does not include a garanteed honoring of that QoS by every peer on the network is doomed - there will be no net gain in processing unless you pay every peer.Basing a QoS system on Source and not Protocol is equally as doomed because it will fail to provide any advantage to the latency sensative protocols due to the high volume of non-sensative protocol trafic. Face it Bit-Torrent is not latency sensative. A dropped packet at a congested router is irrelivent in the scheme of things, it's a lot different for a VOIP call.
Remember, QoS should only come into play when there is a bottleneck at a router/peering point.
Just my
Well, part of it is that big companies cannot compete on the interenet and need artificial help which this would give them as they usually have plenty of money.
The other part is that ISPs want more money, even though IMNHO they should be treated like any other telecom, e.g. a phone company. When I place a phone call my call goes through unless the line is busy, not because the target of the call paid a fee to allow more calls through. The infrastructure upgrading is a huge joke. When's the last time we've seen a major infrastructure "upgrade"? They're, again, just like phone companies sit and squat on the network until it's just barely running then run around whining about omfg we have to upgrade/repair but we don't want to have to pay for it.
As to costs: most of their so-called bandwidth costs come when these companies only lease fractional lines as the bandwidth overages usually cost more than just leasing the complete line would have cost on a monthly basis in the first place, and on top of this most of these companies backhaul most of their traffic through their own networks to begin with. They're just utilities that provide zero added value and want to try to attempt to add value by artifically controlling access and thereby giving them pricing leverage, and hopefully, to them back to the bad old days of metered access. I can see it now, $50/h of 6M internet access, $40/h of 3M, $30/h of 1.5M, $15 of 768k, or $5/h for 128k.
Not to mention the peering agreements between backbones probably have some wording in them that either allows or forbids QOS operations on their traffic. And wether they have forbidden or allowed QoS it probably applies both ways.
I wonder what ATT and Verizon will do the first day they find out the backbone providers they are peered with are dumping all traffic to and from their backbone into the lowest QoS band.
The idea of implementing QoS will probably fail because some backbone provider will have agreements that with separate providers that both allow and dont allow QoS. The company with the agreement that forbids QoS would sue that the contract was willfully and intentionally broken casuing monitary damages (i.e. have to pay QoS costs now).
The lawyers are the only ones who will make money on this scheme. (Unless all peering agreements are renegotiated simultaneously)