Slashdot Mirror
Another Inventor of the Internet Wants To Gag It
MojoKid writes "Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the
Internet' in news articles. According to Wikipedia, he's the
father of networking through data packets. And he's
turned his attention to everyone's favorite data packet topic: Peer-to-Peer
file sharing. He's established a company called Anagran, and says their devices
can sort out which file transfers on the tubes are P2P, and — you guessed it — can throttle them in favor of other, more 'high-priority' traffic."
An upstart? Trying to destroy Gore's legacy?
I suppose the internet is unprotected while Gore's off riding moon worms...
Yes, but who decides what's "high priority" going from the consumer to the cloud? I pay for a 6mbit line every month, and I expect to be able to use it the way I see fit. What makes your 6mbit line so special that your traffic gets precedence over mine? We're paying the same amount, shouldn't we get the same service, no matter WHAT we're transferring?
This has to be the most ridiculous article in the history of slashdot.
"Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the Internet' in news articles."
That's right, just another guy. Who just happened to be the Program Manager and principle architect for the initial design and construction of ARPAnet.
When YOU do that to YOUR traffic, this is fine.
When SOMEONE is doing that to SOMEONE ELSE'S traffic, it is not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look at the over 4,000 channels of content (much of it in hi-def) legitimately distributed via miro.
Kevin Smith on Prince
throttling for QoS is one thing. How about when Comcast blocks them in favor of its own video streaming service?
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
Of course, Evil Corporations(TM) can use this for Bad Things(TM), Bush administration must be somehow involved, this will cause the Earth to spin off its axis, etc. But with Comcast et. al. already throttling P2P, what is it that this guy is doing that's so evil? As long as they aren't blocking P2P entirely, I'd rather get my e-mail in a timely fashion that speed up my ISO downloads which aren't time sensitive.
"95% of all Slashdot
And so does Cerf, and all of the other co-called inventors, and fathers. They got us into this mess.
Someone needs to sort out egalitarian access, hopefully some visionaries and NOT a large group of non-vendors, so that the process can be as inclusive as possible.
My suggestion: two channels, one for QoS-respected traffic, the other free-for-all. The QoS channel costs you, per period time. The free-for-all is all you can eat. Vary the mix you want to purchase, or offer at your free hotspot or WebbieTubeBar. You get what you pay for, no more, and less if you don't use it.
The pontiff approach ain't working.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If our current private internet entities fail to realize that there can be no universally determined difference between one data or another, we need to either regulate or take that power from them.
There is no 'more important data'. That term is a relativistic concept that bears no actual meaning when read by anyone but the original believer. What is more important to one person is worthless to another.
The internet is a well established virtual representation of public interaction. It has many intricate elements, all of which should be preserved in the aspect of freedom. There is no universally determinable difference of importance between one data or another; the quality is only relative.
---------
Anyway, if these companies want to place values on data, we need to exercise our ability consumers and citizens of this country to tell them WE DON'T AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT.
I'd hate to see it, as it would probably be worse, but we could probably socialize the whole internet in the U.S. Take all those companies and acquire all their assets through some form of virtual eminent domain, etc.
Our failure to achieve our very popular goals of freedom in the US will most likely fail due to LOBBYING. Our desires as a majority are easily ignored. Hold your congressmen responsible. Write them and tell them what you want.
People of America: Take Control Back. Spread truth, refuse corruption, and get off the goddamn couch.
In today's world there is so very little the individual can do to change laws that favor big businesses. This is simply those individuals reacting to laws that they cannot change, by finding ways to do what they believe they should be allowed to do.
In the end, the absurd laws and the p2p about negate each other, so I'm not in favor of people trying to "fix" p2p unless they are also undertaking a fixing of the laws that are providing p2p with justification.
Examine the situation from a different perspective. In the wild west there were small towns that didn't have effective law enforcement or court, and there was a wide measure of "mob rule" / rioting when a big business started running the town, getting the laws of that town changed to their favor and owning the local judges. Sure, you can work to dissolve the mob, but that doesn't really fix the problem. If you're truly interested in fixing the problem, you have to deal with the mob and the company (and it's effects/actions) that's causing the mob to be necessary. If all you work against is the mob, you've only made things better for the minority.
We've been trying for years to fix the laws and it just keeps getting worse. Then came along p2p and suddenly all the injustices were dealt a serious blow. It's still nowhere near even, but it's taken a big enough bite out of the injustice that the "mafiaa" is looking to beat down the newly formed resistance against it. Can't say as I blame them, they've got a sweet thing going and don't want to lose it. But I'm on the losing side of the issue so I'm rooting for the underdog.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Oh, the virtual circuit guy. I interviewed with Telenet when they had 13 employees, so I met him in the 1970s. Telenet HQ was in a big mansion-like house. It seemed too weird to succeed, and I didn't want the job.
The virtual circuit vs. datagram battle is almost forgotten now, but it was a major issue before fiber optics provided vast cheap long-haul bandwidth. Remember, the ARPANET backbone was only 56Kb. Long-haul leased bandwidth was incredibly expensive through the 1980s.
If the backbone bandwidth is the constraint on network traffic, congestion management of a pure datagram network is very tough. I had to run such a network in the early 1980s, which is why I have all those classic RFCs and papers on network congestion. We figured out how TCP should play nice to avoid congestion collapse, and how fair queuing could give the network some defenses against overload. That was enough to make a network of reasonably-well behaved nodes not doing anything with real-time constraints behave.
In the days of congested backbones, virtual circuits were looking like the future, because they were more manageable. Bandwidth could be assigned at connection setup, and each connection throttled. Tymnet and Telenet worked that way. That approach became obsolete when local area networks became widely used; none of them were virtual circuit, so the backbone had to be at the datagram level. Then fibre optics came along and saved the backbone.
We still don't really know what to do when the backbone is the bottleneck and latency matters. "p2p" file transfer isn't the problem, though. HDTV over the Internet is the problem. There isn't enough backbone bandwidth to support the world's couch potatoes with real-time HDTV streams.
Microsoft at one point proposed a system where real-time HDTV would be multicast, while video on demand would be heavily buffered. That could work, but multicasting with bandwidth guarantees requires more centralized control than the Internet usually has today, which is probably why Microsoft and parts of the broadcast industry liked it.
The "p2p" thing is a side issue. The big issue is going to be who gets to throttle whose HDTV streams. The cable guys want really, really bad to charge extra for those streams, regardless of who originates them.
Yes, but who decides what's "high priority" going from the consumer to the cloud?
Whoever owns the router/switch/frame/NAP/whatever I'd guess.
What makes your 6mbit line so special that your traffic gets precedence over mine? We're paying the same amount, shouldn't we get the same service, no matter WHAT we're transferring?
Not if your contract with your ISP allows them to prioritize traffic. What does it say about the issue?
I pay for a 6mbit line every month, and I expect to be able to use it the way I see fit. ... We're paying the same amount, shouldn't we get the same service, no matter WHAT we're transferring?
That sounds like something a spammer might say.
P2P traffic throttling is just the wedge. It is intended to legitimize throttling. If the telcos get this accepted, the next step is to throttle traffic of big sites who don't pay the telcos extra for their traffic to have priority. Goodbye Vonage, etc..
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Tell me all about your internet usage... Do you have Broadband ?.. what would warrant you to have broadband as opposed to dialup ? .. is your internet connection slow because of all these large file downloaders ? .. I think it's nice that you pay for all and your movies and music... but I don't game, why should I pay for the bandwidth of gamers ?... You see there are probably millions of people who use much less bandwidth than you.
You know, we did the whole per hour and limit of bytes thing back in the 90's.. and it sucked... ask the people who got $400 AOL bills for a months usage.. Stop worrying about who uses what number of bytes for what.. That's not the issue.. the issue is upgrading the network to deliver the bandwidth that you pay for at a flat rate.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
That sounds like something a scaremonger might say.
Yeah, but on freeways, you actually get told what the limit is. If the government told you that you can go as fast as you want, and then if you go over 75, a cop will show up and give you a ticket, anyway, wouldn't you complain, too?
All's fair if you predeclare, as they say - but predeclare you must.
If I, as an ISP user, can determine the QoS algorithm, that's a different story. But when the providers of the service have a financial incentive to favor categories of content that they sell, QoS is not being done in my interest. It's just a way of further degrading and limiting a service that I paid for. That's manipulative and slimy. Please look at how cellular providers operate for a nice preview of that dystopia.
Most ISPs already advertise packages on the basis of bandwidth but penalize customers who actually use it, so there's plenty of reason to distrust them in making any decisions on which content should be favored. Hint: if they're making a buck on it, it will have higher priority. If it's costing them money, lower. Nothing to do with what you want or need. Big ISPs don't give a shit about your interests.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
It sucks whenever that horrible word rears it's ugly head. "THROTTLE." Ugh! It hurts the most just after the "R". I agree that the internet should be free, but let's face it: It's not.
From my understanding, various entities actually own and maintain different parts/sections of the Internet. So when you pay your ISP for internet access, you should only be entitled to whine about the parts of the internet they actually control. It amazes me to think how many people seem to believe they have a true "end to end" connection through their ISP to every computer in the world! The sense of entitlement they exude is almost nauseating. If the route your connection is taking to "GothicKitty42" (a legitimate business associate in Denmark) is being throttled as it passes through Briton, feel free to take control and re-route your own path through the internet. Oh wait... You're too busy watching that DVD you just burned. You certainly can't be bothered to monitor your own QoS when you're paying as much as you do for that broadband connection!
And here's where I actually have to take issue with Bit Torrent type clients. While they don't overload a centralized server, they actually make less efficient use of the network as a whole since everything usually finds its way through the same old trunks of copper and fiber time and time again. All those little packets swimming around like a puddle of sperm looking for an egg... It's a redundancy nightmare of exponentiating proportions.
I'd love to see how some of these people would react if tomorrow they woke up with a peer to peer mesh network instead of their current arrangement. I bet they'd cuss to no end whenever they saw traffic freeloading through their node. They'd probably be racing to the computer store and buying software to shake off those pesky packets so they could get the most out of their internet connection.
But that's just my opinion.
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
Your analogy isn't accurate; here, I'll fix it for you!
First of all, the sports cars are to be limited to 50kph on certain sections of the road whereas the other drivers would still enjoy the full 100kph speed limit in the same section.
Secondly, driving to certain locations such as a beach, movie theater, or concert would be limited to 30kph the entire trip even on the freeway no matter what car you drive.
Thirdly, the providers of the freeway would justify the speed limits on sport cars by claiming that there are just too many sport cars and they are interfering with the other drivers, even though 95% of the freeway is empty at any given time, and none of the non-sport car drivers have ever complained or been affected by the super-fast sport cars.
Fourthly, the freeway providers limit speeds because they have their own plans to introduce their own sport cars that have no speed restrictions, yet have less features, cost more and don't go as fast as the other sport cars.
Fifthly, the providers of the smaller freeways that want to provide faster speed limits at lower prices would have their traffic limited, or shaped, by the larger freeway providers.
There, that's better.
We all pay the same amount of freeways too.
Yet speed limits enforce order... those guys who own sports cars that can break 100 are screwed.
America internet is a joke however and the speed limit is effectively 30mph because we are still on dirt roads.
Good analogy. But I might add net neutrality is failing where the speed limit is different depending you are going to NY or Chicago, Sears or Walmart, White, Black or Hispanic. Equal access then goes out the door. While Lawrence Roberts may be a co-founder of early network technology, this does not make the idea right. It does make it easier for him to get venture capital and start a company to selectively discriminate against protocols.
We need to look at the real picture. Your ISP wants to generate revenue to "preferred" paid traffic. This is what it is about and Roberts is going to capitalize on it. I am not against his capital spirit, but the idea sucks. It is akin to packet/protocol racism.
ISPs today can and do throttle traffic, a statement like "if (overlimit()) throttle();" can be had in any cable router. But this has one huge disadvantage. It isn't as easy for the ISP to go to Google, YouTube or others and say pay me for "preferred" access or else we throttle.
Roberts efforts here are capitalistic and not honorable in the spirit of the Internet. Make no mistake, this is about money and to hell with net neutrality.
Not if your contract with your ISP allows them to prioritize traffic. What does it say about the issue?
Well, if it deprioritizes all the traffic *I* want to run so I don't get the expected service, I'd call that fraud no matter what it says in the contract. Not unless they start adding "* up to X Mbit to selected websites using selected protocols, everything else is sent to the slow lane so you won't even get close".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That sounds like something JAMES BOND might say.
Oh, sorry, thats Scaramunga...
If the government told you that you can go as fast as you want
Roads without speed limit signs (and there are a lot of them, at least here in NY) are limited to the state speed limit (55 in our case).
He didn't say or even imply otherwise. He came up with a hypothetical analogy which said " if [my emphasis] the government told you that you can go as fast as you want".
You can argue that this is or isn't a good analogy, but that's beside the point.
You'll complain that 99% of people don't get "ticketed" but that still doesn't change the fact that you were abusing the service. That 6 mbit or 10 mbit pipe isn't designed to be used at full capacity 24/7 by each subscriber, it's designed [etc]
You can argue all you like that their system isn't designed to be used like that. I'll mostly agree with you- we all know that most consumer broadband services couldn't deliver if they were used to their true "unlimited" capacity.
:)
But again, this is beside the point- you *can't* accuse people of "abusing the service" if it was sold as "unlimited". Even- no, *especially*- if the limitations were stated via some obscure, vaguely-worded small-print in the contract, or some handwaving reference to a "see elsewhere" weasel-worded "fair use" policy.
Many ISPs promoted their services as "unlimited" because it sounded better, even though this relied upon most people not using anything like the full capacity they were given. If this situation changes, it's *their* problem for overselling something they can't deliver, not the customers' for "abusing the system". I'm not going to come up with another trite analogy to illustrate that
Frankly, I've nothing against the principle that (much) heavier users should pay for what they use and not expect to be subsidised. I'm not even entirely opposed to QoS being used so long as it's applied in a relatively neutral and fair manner, and doesn't lead to "second-class citizen" Internet access. I'm only opposed to it when used as some BS excuse to coerce user behaviour, favour the ISPs' vested interests and/or cover-up and weasel out of the limitations of an oversold Internet service, as it is at present.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).