Net Neutrality vs. Technical Reality

penciling_in writes "CircleID has a post by Richard Bennett, one of the panelists in the recent Innovation forum on open access and net neutrality — where Google announced their upcoming throttling detector. From the article: 'My name is Richard Bennett and I'm a network engineer. I've built networking products for 30 years and contributed to a dozen networking standards, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi. I was one of the witnesses at the FCC hearing at Harvard, and I wrote one of the dueling Op-Ed's on net neutrality that ran in the Mercury News the day of the Stanford hearing. I'm opposed to net neutrality regulations because they foreclose some engineering options that we're going to need for the Internet to become the one true general-purpose network that links all of us to each other, connects all our devices to all our information, and makes the world a better place. Let me explain ...' This article is great insight for anyone for or against net neutrality."

Comments

So Non-Neutrality solves problems ?!

[erlehmann]

Over-the-air delivery of TV programming moves one copy of each show regardless of the number of people watching, but the Internet transmits one copy per viewer, because the transport system doesnâ(TM)t know anything about the content.

One word: Multicast .

Re:Multicast?

[Skinkie]

YouTube on steroids is geographic caching. But even if two people on the same network are watching the same video, it should be an option to receive the networkdata that is for the position the other person is currently watching.

But the problem with multicasting is not that there are no tools, but it is not 'neutrally' implemented across different carriers that deploy access networks.

Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, It is not just simpler to add udp management capabilities. The Management capabilities in TCP are built into the NETWORK STACKS! And these network stacks may not play by the rules either. Read up on TCP RENO etc... Then you will understand what he is talking about.

Re:Open source throttling detector?

[Aluvus]

Network Neutrality Squad Network Measurement Agent. It's LGPL.

Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie

[WolfWithoutAClause]

LOL Richard Bennett is the guy that repeatedly spammed the wikipedia Network Neutrality article with his garbage, over a long, long period. He tried to rewrite the *definition* of network neutrality about a dozen times maybe in bizarre ways, he repeatedly deleted referenced material (usually describing them as 'lies' in his subject line), rewrote stuff, and in every possible way you can imagine tried to spin reality in ways that were self-evidently harmful to the balance of the wikipedia article.

He even deliberately misquoted another engineer to say the exact opposite of what they said; to the point that they logged onto the wikipedia talk page to complain. This was even after it was pointed out they never said what he wrote them saying and that the references disagreed.

He also thought that it was a good idea to get interviewed in articles in 'The Register' and then quoted himself in the wikipedia to 'prove' his points.

Oh yeah, and he used 'sockpuppets' to continue to also push his point of view while temporarily banned.

I could go on about this sleazebag for quite a while. When you even try to list the stunts he pulled it runs to several pages.

I would also challenge some of his depth of understanding, for example, at least at one point in time he didn't seem to have the slightest clue what a contended service is, which is kinda... basic. Really, really basic.

Really, he's just a bizarre guy, with bizarre views, and personality wise he's a total asshole.

(See wikipedia RFC, which contains references to a small fraction of his 'work' in the wikipedia if you want to get a measure of the man).

Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Oops: RFC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RichardBennett

Re:There are more than 4,000 independent ISPs.

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Well, where I live - along the border between 2 cities, I have access to 2 cable companies, Wow and Camcast, and AT&T. (There is also stelite broadband, of course, but my neighbors tell me the QoS is bad). There are several companies that resell AT&T DSL, and a few that run there own DSL over lines leased from AT&T, but all of these are dependent on AT&T's infrastructure, so are not really competitors. (I often wonder if AT&T saves money from not having to bill or provide customer support for "indirect subscribers" - just provision circuits and let the "little guys" worry about the rest.) In my experience, these 3 big ISPs, and their vassels, behave more like a cartel than competitors.