Slashdot Mirror
Cisco Opposes Net Neutrality
angry tapir writes: All bits running over the Internet are not equal and should not be treated that way by broadband providers, despite net neutrality advocates' calls for traffic neutral regulations, Cisco Systems has said. Some Web-based applications, including rapidly growing video services, home health monitoring and public safety apps, will demand priority access to the network, while others, like most Web browsing and email, may live with slight delays, said Jeff Campbell, Cisco's vice president for government and community relations. "Different bits do matter differently. We need to ensure that we have a system that allows this to occur."
Somehow in my mind Cisco and Oracle are the same company. Maybe I have reached my dotage, but when I see one mentioned the other may as well be there too. They are like Satan had identical twins separated at birth.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I will continue not buying Cisco's products.
I prefer my bits non optimized than someone else deciding how they should be "optimized" for me. Thank you!
in an effort to keep customers after the Snowden leaks... this is your play?
Cisco, how you have fallen, and will continue to do so!
This means Comcast & TWC will be purchasing more network equipment from Cisco. They won't upgrade infrastructure to deliver better service, but they'll happily buy equipment that prioritizes traffic (slows down traffic coming from non-paying sources) for the purpose of double dipping by charging both you and Netflix/Amazon/Google/etc.
Its a shame they don't have a vested interest in hardware capable of making such a thing possible.
I'm pretty sure all traffic will be able to go just as fast as it needs to, without anyone paying more for the privilege.
Some Web-based applications, including rapidly growing video services, home health monitoring and public safety apps, will demand priority access to the network,
Do health monitoring devices get priority access to electricity? Does the electric company get to decide which devices will be shut down first? Can they shut down your devices before they shut down your neighbor's, because you bought Sony instead of Samsung? Would it be good for the electric company to be allowed to negotiate priority access to electricity with the appliance manufacturers?
Net neutrality is about protecting the more important free market -- the free market in information -- by requiring the carriers to compete only on price and overall performance of their network.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The internet had, since IPv4, provisions for exactly this, and whole careers have been built by this. It goes by different names, Type of Services, QoS, Traffic Engineering. IPv6 has also provisions for this, so did ATM in its time. MPLS has a HUUUUGE component of this...
Having said that:
Video on Demand traffic from, say comcast, should have the same priority as video on Demand traffic from youtube or netflix (or some future cash strapped start-up).
Videoconferencing traffic from skype should have the same priority as videoconferencing trafffic from google+ o Cisco (or some future cash strapped start-up).
Web traffic from yahoo should have the same (slighty lower) priority as the web traffic from "mom & pop web server".
You get the drift, not because some big company is willing to pay more, or the ISP wants to double dip you can play with the priorities.
And THAT is net neutrality for y'all!
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Net neutrality is the idea that data from any provider (rich or poor, powerful company or a single guy, corrupt or honest) is treated the same way on the network.
Cisco's comment concerns the prioritization of data depending on its type. I see nothing wrong with that.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Architecturally, Cisco's point has merit (aside from being purely an excuse to sell higher-margin fancy-shaping hardware, rather than brutally commodified really-fast-switching hardware). Some applications are more latency sensitive than others.
However, there's a serious complication that Cisco is either ignoring or doesn't have any reason to care about: the mechanisms for doling out 'priority access to the network' and 'slight delays' are more or less target agnostic. There is nothing magic about hypothetical VOIP-911, Granny Accelerometer, or whatnot that makes it easy to identify them as "justified" prioritization and leave everything else alone.
If you have the system set up to promote and demote traffic based on type, origin, destination, (or any similar set of parameters sufficient to plausibly identify 'important' traffic, rather than just basic TCP congestion behavior), you can promote and demote whatever you feel like writing rulesets for. Given that the last-mile is pretty much buttoned up by a cozy oligopoly of incumbent telco and cable outfits, does anybody seriously expect the shaping to stop at making sure those 'public safety apps' get the message out in time, rather than paying lip service to ensuring that 911 calls go through and then moving on to the actually profitable business of chopping the internet up and attempting to reach optimum price discrimination and suppress competition?
So, barring major changes in the competitive landscape, or some sort of regulation-indistinguishable-from-magic, agreeing with Cisco on architectural grounds;but still rejecting the idea on the balance, is a perfectly cogent position(you can argue that it isn't correct; but it's not contradictory): Yes, traffic prioritization will allow better performance of latency sensitive applications (if they are in fact prioritized) all else being equal. However, once you have the architecture in place for that, the economic incentives to go nuts with it are absurdly compelling. By comparison, 'just grow your way out of it' isn't architecturally elegant; but it provides a nice, aligned, incentive for ISPs to build out and people who want more performance to buy fatter pipes, rather than for ISPs to let the infrastructure rot and focus on squeezing every penny out of every user.
Health monitoring, public safety apps, growing video services. One of these things is not like the others, and yet these companies still insist that they can have a completely fair and unbiased tiered system. I guess we should be thankful that video services is merely considered on par?
How does net neturality impact QOS in IPv6?
I mean, if you aren't allowed to give some packets higher priority, then doesn't that make the whole point of getting a quality of service guarantee moot?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Always read the fine print, in this case pay attention to way he says. Slight delay, now what does that really mean. Like email, is the slight delay a reference to postal services, or the electronic transfer of data, so milli seconds or minutes to complete.
I pay for bandwidth, I expect that bandwidth to be usable, what I do with that bandwidth as long as it is within the law is up to me not the providers choice. I do not accept the ISP monitoring, controlling and censoring my. I do not accept the ISP crippling my choices of content suppliers in preference for their own. I do not accept my ISP to purposefully crippling the services of companies who do not contract with them in preference for those that do.
It is obvious laws are required to protect the provision of services to ensure anti-competitive monopolistic tactics can not be used to artificially inflate profit margins.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Net neutrality doesn't help them sell their very expensive hardware.
I'm not sure that I like having my web pages load slowly so that somebody else can watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians jitter-free.
Exactly. We keep having debates framed by PR firms and their $$$ so we avoid the real issues and get stuck into weaker positions. Net Neutrality doesn't make phones(SIP) equal to crappy video streaming (http.) Actually we should be yelling at network admins fire walling everything outside port 80! netflix should be using rstp or something identifiable as video streaming- their abuse of http should be the reason their service has troubles not because comcast is into extortion.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If you're doing anything as critical as home-based life support system monitoring and you're literally trusting your life to your ISP, then you're already well past the point of screwed.
While I agree that fast lanes should not be needed, just as they don't seem to be needed today (how many times the definition of the human eye does HD need to be, anyway?) it's important to understand that smaller countries can achieve faster internet speeds more easily due to their relatively small real estate. The number one factor affecting latency is distance, and the US has a lot of ground to cover.
That doesn't mean Comcast and TWC aren't still screwing us when they "do not compete against each other in any area" (direct quote).
Wait, Cisco wants to support a new network paradigm that would result in a market for new hardware, worldwide? This is America where lobbying new product lines into existence, is routine.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Except that even where U.S. city/suburb densities are as high or higher than said small country, internet access still sucks. This probably accounts for %60-%80 of the U.S. population. (Maybe not E. Asia, but certainly a good chunk of Europe.)
Other things small countries can do that may be more difficult for the U.S. to do:
1 - Have a true national plan for rolling out internet, rather than Country, State, County, Municipality, Neighborhood, and Individual plans. (Individuals in this case being people who object, maybe with some merit, to unsightly telco boxes on or near their property and do something about it, messing up the plan, either requiring the telco box to be moved or for them to go through city planners and/or court to get permission to place the box on the person's property.)
2 - Dictate how the internet is going to be rolled out. Similar to 1, but not quite the same. Possibly have "country wide" municipal broadband, with individual providers riding off of state owned infrastructure.
3 - Not deal with U.S. Corporate lobbyists. It seems we have world class corporate lobbying. Our lobbyists are so strong that they can convince us the price we're paying for Internet, Health Care, Cell Service, pick your overpriced product is as good or better than the rest of the world, that the reduced service we often receive along with the high prices is really better than the rest of the world, and that all the multiple ways we pay our ISPs to improve their infrastructure, through taxes, directly through our internet bills, through "back door deals" like Netflix paying both their ISP and the end user's ISP to deliver content will actually improve much of anything. (The latter seems to have, but only because that one entertainment provider has paid to improve that one service on that one monolithic ISP.)
4 - Laying down new infrastructure rather than dealing with a hodgepodge of existing infrastructure. This one is actually pretty important. Especially since some of that old infrastructure - land lines - are something ISPs/telcos are still federally mandated to maintain. . . unless this has recently changed. Also, they may have more uniform wiring, and access to that wiring, in their larger buildings.
Now they are both going to sue me for the slander of associating each with the other. They'll probably both win too, and have to sue each other over fractions of my soul. But the judge will be in on it and award both the same soul three times each.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
nuff said.
Think of the average peering deals with new side speed clauses. Not just a dedicated line or bandwidth or best effort but the correct settings for that interconnect between telco monopolies and cartels. Your local ISP will have to pay to get out of the US, into the US, get out of the EU, into the EU, Asia, Africa, South America....
If your regional ISP does not have the right partners at a national level its game over for the users until extra cash flows.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...what I do with that bandwidth as long as it is within the law is up to me not the providers choice. I do not accept the ISP monitoring, controlling and censoring my.
You shouldn't accept the state doing it either. The internet is information, don't let the government censor it any more than you would your ISP.
It is obvious laws are required to protect the provision of services to ensure anti-competitive monopolistic tactics can not be used to artificially inflate profit margins.
I suppose you can start with outlawing exclusive franchise contracts to pry open the market for more service providers, including municipal ones. It is also necessary to consider them as common carriers and the internet itself as a public utility.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Who would have thought Cisco prefers the world attempt to deploy foolish and hopelessly complex inter-domain prioritization schemes requiring $$$$$$ Cisco solutions to implement?
In an encrypted world, outside of designating port usage and everyone respecting it (which I envision entities like Netflix doing), how would you differentiate different types of traffic?
Frankly, net neutrality is the *only way* as networks get more opaque.
I have a customer who is currently with Time Warner Cable and their speeds have gone down significantly over the last 6 months. They used to be able to access web sites with split-second response times. Now the average is at least 5 seconds before a web page comes up. I have placed numerous support calls, they come out and run their own hosted speed test which claims they are meeting speeds. They then leave saying there is nothing wrong, yet browsing is almost unusable. I believe they have QoS turned on so that their own speed tests run fine, yet the overall browsing experience is significantly worse. If they are playing these games now, what will happen when net-neutrality is eventually abolished by these big souless corporations?
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
This is abusing the internet architecture. The whole idea is that services don't rely on speed and delivery, but work with the network architecture to ensure that whatever service they provide is able te deal with delays. This means that if ISPs want happy customers and companies want their internet product to work properly, they have to ensure that there's enough room on the entire network to deliver those services adequately.
Now some company that sells equipment that can prioritize packets of certain services so network providers can get away with saturating the data links more starts flipping the principle of the internet around. Sorry, no, that's not the *internet* you are talking about Cisco. That's a private network in which some company gets to say what they think is important.
Every individual company owning a network will have different priorities. Try connecting thousands of private networks with different priorities and different technologies to achieve those and make that work. This is what Cisco is proposing we do to the internet and it will be a pain to try it and chances that it will ever work are close to zero. Part of why the internet works is because we have a global goal of just routing packets without prejudice. Don't mess with that, it will end in tears, unhappy customers and only a few rich C level executives at router producing companies.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I see two problems: 1) How should the high priority/premium flag be controlled ? The ISP can't know the technical requirements of all services, i.e. they don't know if a certain special designed Machine to Machine communication needs low latency.If the ISP charges low latency, then they would categories certain traffic as latency critical, in order to charge more. If the software it self can open the connection in a 'premium mode', then applications might do this secretly in order to generate a revenue stream to its developers. If this have to work, then the one paying the internet bill need to decide if he wants to pay the premium for a given traffic. The one paying is not necessary the one using the computer/tablet, this could be a kid unknowingly to parents approving a 'premium' service. 2) The ISP starts to degrade performance of non-premium trafic. The argument of the ISP would be that: since a connection is not paying for low latency/high throughput, then we will throttle the connection, even if the infrastructure of the ISP has not reached the limit.
If there's sufficient bandwidth for everyone then net neutrality won't be a problem now will it? Either someone light a fire under these goddamn ISPs and make them stop stalling on upgrading shit, or force them to stop lying to their customers about how much bandwidth they're actually paying for. Also Cisco is a shit company and can go fuck themselves.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Of course a network vendor is going to point out that some packets needs preferential treatment over others. It's something they've worked to engineer into their product lines because their customers demand the capability to do so. For an ISP, 911 VoIP packets are a much higher priority than World of Warcraft packets.
Too many folks are caught up in the idea that prioritization is bad. There's a difference between between the philosophy of Network Neutrality and the operational reality of packet prioritization.
Saying Cisco opposes Net Neutrality just because they're pointing out some simple truths on how network operate today is like saying Glock supports terrorism just because they make guns.
Of course, if the title weren't sensational, no one would probably read it.
It saddens me that Slashdot seems to have decided that they need to resort to the same tactics as the National Enquirer
I oppose you and your products, I don't use them at home. And I use your competitors products when I do professional work.
Om, nomnomnom...
Why would you need QOS and traffic shaping if you have adequate bandwidth? Thats what we pay for. We are already paying for them to deliver VIOP or streaming video by paying for the bandwidth. If the provider can't deliver what they sold, thats not the end users problem, its the provider's problem. But once I pay for high bandwidth that guarantees my VOIP and all the other stuff they want to prioritize, why should I pay more? I"VE ALREADY PAID THE EXTRA CHARGES!!!! They want to just make you pay more for everything. Its as simple as that.
Just provide the FSCKing bandwidth you sold me you FSCKing bastards!
Please, but pretty-please, buy more traffic-shapers from us. Otherwise we are coming to the end of the road with nplain old network gear. We need to peddle more stuff. what a bunch of self serving idiots.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
The headline is up to Slashdot's usual standards I see. They are talking about quality-of-service, which is a common and uncontroversial measure to prioritise traffic which needs low latencies over traffic for which that is less important. They aren't talking about prioritising Comcast's video streams over Netflix' video streams! This has nothing to do with "opposing net neutrality", it's just bad, sensationalistic reporting.
Cisco simply see a big profit to be made by selling new kit that is specially designed to be able to determine which traffic is from where and priorotize (a bit like QoS but for providers rather than traffic type).
They don't give a shit about the whole neutrality debate really... just more sales. Who cares who or what it harms? Sales comes first!
I got here late, but TFA is a lie. Stating the obvious (voice and HTTP are not "equal" to the client nor provider), doesn't make an official Cisco stance against Net Neutrality. In fact, most Net Neutrality proposals (every one I've seen officially submitted in Congress), would have allowed for such action. No Net Neutrality has yet prevented reasonable traffic grooming. It's designed to prevent Comcast from running a VoIP service with premium QoS and deliberately lowering the QoS of all other competing services. To keep all competing services at the same level is "neutral".
Net Neutrality is not "traffic neutral" It's "provider neutral" at least so far in every bill I've read. And that's the best way. Why force every packet to be the same when we know they are inherently not?
Learn to love Alaska
We already know what the unregulated market will do. It will put the decision into the hands of the people with the most money rather than in the hands of the end user.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Before you lose yourself in flights of fancy, consider this. Cisco sells network gear, i.e. the stuff you need to implement multiple tiers of traffic. Only the more advanced, expensive, and high-margin gear will do that of course. Think: deep-packet inspection.
And you were actually wondering why Cisco is in favour of an Internet that needs advanced kit and against an Internet that doesn't need special gear to implement multiple tiers?
A bit slow at arithmetic, are you?.
Well, then I'm glad the NSA tampers with your filthy wares, you odious scum.
I've been saying this for years: as we leave copper telephony behind, E911 services over VOIP must be prioritized over other internet traffic.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
...with the specialized hardware for managing such an internet.
If 'concerned' companies like Cisco were really worried about important data getting through they'd be asking questions about why broadband in the U.S. is so crap on a cost/benefit ratio compared to other modern industrialized nations; and, if they were really concerned about health monitoring and public safety, they certainly wouldn't leave it up to the free market to safeguard those concerns - they'd want a separate protocol for those types of devices/systems.
Anyone who grew up with the early internet (by which I mean the very early 90's, not the DARPA days) and greeted each new increase in bandwidth with elation will recoil with horror at the thought of being throttled by some greedy middle man who YOU ARE ALREADY PAYING to get access to the endpoint you're now being screwed over.
I'm not one for espousing socialist policies, but I'd rather see all the fiber in the U.S. in the hands of the government than net neutrality be legislated out of existence and it be in the hands of Comcast. I know that's like comparing two handfuls of crap, but it would appear that some crap is worse than others.
Loading...
Of course there is requirements for networks with different features compared to the current Internet, Cisco just have to realize that it can't call them 'Internet'.
'Internet' precisely define a relatively cheap to operate neutral network that don't grant performance. Anyone can use it like it want to as long at it contribute to it and don't cause problem to the others participants. This fact have a lot of implication on how the network is managed and how it is sustainable financially.
It's right that the internet is not the best network for a categories of uses cases that need granted performances. This is a justification to build a other better network that fit the expected requirement. Call it 'Servicenet' of you wants. But this not a justification the fight against the net neutrality of the Internet.
They stand to make millions on the new discrimination market.
The Cisco rep is describing QoS, which should be a good thing and the reporter made the jump to Net Neutrality.
This is not a network neutrality violation.
Network neutrality = traffic prioritization based upon source and destination.
Quality of service = traffic prioritization based upon content type.
Some Web-based applications, including rapidly growing video services, home health monitoring and public safety apps, will demand priority access to the network, while others, like most Web browsing and email, may live with slight delays, said Jeff Campbell, Cisco's vice president for government and community relations.
Cisco is talking about prioritizing traffic based on the content type, which is, and has always been, part of the internet. Everyone who has an IP phone probably has a router that supports this because you can't have your roommate's bittorrent connection preventing you from making a quality 911 call.
Stop using this term for things it is not! Every time it happens we lose ground on the network neutrality debate. One of the problems we have with advocating NN is that every time someone talks about QOS there is an article like this that confuses everyone. Reasonable people listen and think that what Cisco is saying makes sense, so they decide that they don't support network neutrality, not realizing that isn't what the discussion is about.
Cisco will sell the equipment required to maintain these "fast lanes" All their engineers are probably freaking out about this, but their Marketing and Sales departments are salivating.
I had the privilege of seeing the late, great Admiral Grace Hopper speak back in the early 80's. Something she said at that talk always stuck with me. In those days we began talking about "information science" (in fact my degree is in Computer and Information Science). She emphasized the importance of attaching value to information. "For example," she said. "Imagine there are two pieces of information headed to the computer's operating system. One piece of information says that a valve in the plant is over-pressure and may rupture at any minute, causing great damage and possible loss of life. The other piece of information says that Joe Blow did not get the proper insurance deduction taken out of his paycheck last week. Clearly one piece of information has more value than another, and so one piece of information should be processed first."
Cisco does have a point. It can be argued that certain bits of information are more valueable or important than others. The problem is not that we should weight bits, but how we're going about doing it. If the only criteria for assigning value is based on the bit generator's ability to pay, then we will build a very unfair and dangerous system. I am not against net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am against net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued. Cisco says that video bits are more important than email bits. I agree with that. But if Cisco says that Netflix bits are more important than, say, Hulu bits, I will not agree with that.
It is not surprising that Cisco would make such a statement, regardless of how any of us feel about how bits are valued. They stand to make a lot of money designing and selling systems that weight and prioritize bits.
Proverbs 21:19
Sorry, I've been only vaguely aware of your Time Cube-esque ranting over the past few months, but I've wondered the entire time and am now asking, why would someone need a program to edit their hosts file?
The rest of you forgive the off-topic, please.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
This is a very old position, and there's nothing unusual about it. Cisco's traditional view of of treating traffic has always been that more sensitive traffic, like voice, should be given preferential treatment over SMTP on LANs and WANs (which it should). Extending this to the net in general means that Netflix and gaming traffic would be given priority over web and pretty much any other kind of traffic. That's not the same as paying for preferential treatment irrespective of the nature of traffic, which is wrong. Should Facebook traffic take priority over Teamspeak traffic? That's where the real debate begins.
It's worth distinguishing between neutrality between actors, and neutrality between protocols.
It makes perfect sense to use QoS features to guarantee reliable availability of a small amount of bandwidth with very high priority (thus lower latency) for VOIP, while allowing downloads to consume a ton of bandwidth but get delayed slightly to get the VOIP traffic where it wants to be. We do stuff like this all the time at many levels and it's good engineering.
The concern about net neutrality is more at the level of, say, choosing to throttle companies you are trying to compete with. Although apparently, the real issue with Comcast and the like has mostly been not actively throttling, but merely failing to upgrade feeds enough to handle the load.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
> This means that if ISPs want happy customers and companies want their internet product to work properly, they have to ensure that there's enough room on the entire network to deliver those services adequately.
This is exactly what is running ISPs to ground today.
Companies like Google and other content providers charge end-users directly for their service, and use common-cost Internet to deliver it. Huge increase in traffic (hello MP3, hello video, hello torrents) causes ISPs to inflict costly upgrades of the network to keep the same income from end-users (who expect prices to go down). The same user who is trying to save every penny on internet connectivity will now gladly pay X$ for, say, internet radio service. ISP doesn't see any of that extra income, only increased costs.
The only solution is to share the income and the cost.
Asking ISPs to carry the burden themselves will run them to the ground, or cause market consolidaiton until you have monopoly (similar to what happens in USA).
> Every individual company owning a network will have different priorities.
Concept you described is wrong. It doesn't matter what are those priorities, nobody is proposing to have thousands of priorities. If you read the article this is also not what person from Cisco was proposing directly.
The way it happens in reality is twofold:
- when you get a "circuit", you can pay extra for guaranteed bandwidth. If a video or other content provider wants to have guaranteed bandwidth, they can pay for that, and receive that. All such requests being equal, as long as bandwidth is available. If it runs out, ISP should be earning enough to increas capacity.
- within each content provider traffic you can declare several classes with differing characteristics. Voice will require low bandwidth but top priority for minimum delay/variation. Video will require high or adaptive bandwidth, delay can be higher but with low variation. Content provider can pay for different classes differently, and receive certain bandwidth guarantees for each class.
Both those models exist for a long time (over 15 years) are actively used in existing ISP networks and actively sold - except that whole Internet is usually just one class of service without any specific guarantees.
There should be no problem introducing classes of traffic to the Internet. If video provider 1 wants to pay for lower class than video provider 2, saving money because they think quality should be ok - let that be. If they both pay for the same class, there would be no preference for one or the other though.
This is net neutrality.
Existing networking vendors gear can already (a bit better or worse) carry this out in practice. Obstacle is in financial/political layer - how to make payments for that work on a larger inter-provider scale, including ISPs and content providers.
> Try connecting thousands of private networks with different priorities and different technologies to achieve those and make that work.
> chances that it will ever work are close to zero.
It already works on global scale in the internet, just not on public internet. ISPs have years of practice implementing just that.
> Sorry, no, that's not the *internet* you are talking about Cisco. That's a private network in which some company gets to say what they think is important.
"Public Internet" is already a large private network (collection of smaller ones), where each ISP on the path of the packet can decide whatever he wants to do with it. There is not much public about it in reality.
Cisco can make lots of money selling hardware that moves different streams at different speeds.
I don't like it. I don't have to buy their products. I don't have to shop at places that use them for infrastructure. I don't have to support politicians that want to break net neutrality.
Cisco may see that sort of (blood) money in their future, but it isn't going to be coming out of my pocket. Maybe some other folks agree.
I'd wager that the problem lies in Time Warner's links to the tier 1 backbones, and not traffic shaping. If those links are saturated, as Level 3 and Cogent have complained about, then any traffic routed through those tier 1's will suffer. But the Time Warner hosted speed test will work perfectly. Technically, Time Warner is right, they are meeting requirements for the link form the customer's home to Time Warner. It's too bad they don't make any promises about usability.
Have you trace routed to popular sites or tried an independent speed test?
Cisco will get the money either way.
No QoS - ISPs will have to drastically upgrade bandwidth capacity so that VOIP and video traffic don't get choked out, and Cisco sells more equipment.
Yes QoS - ISPs will need to drastically upgrade network processing capacity so that VOIP and video traffic don't get choked out, and Cisco sells more equipment.
If you enforce anti-net neutrality in the way these companies are saying, you're a party to antitrust law violation.
Cisco or other vendors can make equipment for doing this, but I wouldn't want to be one of the higher-ups at a service provider who says they're going to use it for that purpose.
I prefer my bits non optimized than someone else deciding how they should be "optimized" for me. Thank you!
Indeed. If QoS becomes standard, then god-forbid you attempt to develop a new real-time network application, as the QoS won't recognize its real-time nature and so you'll get 500 ms ping times.
I really don't understand what need QoS is supposed to fill. There's an option for it on my router, and I once tried my best to utilize it. Netflix loves to figure out the size of your internet connection and use all of it, nevermind what anyone else in the house might want to do. So I tried to figure out how to fix this, but QoS isn't about giving everyone the share of the internet that belongs to them. It's about letting some users take bandwidth away from others. When the hell would I want that?
Say I have a dozen people in a house sharing one internet connection. Obviously I'd like to dedicate 1/12 of it to each person, and then, take whatever isn't being used at the moment by some people and divide that equally between everyone else. Then, if someone decides to make a VoIP call, it either fits in their share, or it fits when they get the leftovers, or they just don't get to fucking make their call, because if they want to have control over a larger fraction of the bandwidth, they need to pay more than 1/12 of the bill. So what if the other users are merely doing bittorrent? Presumably they're doing it because they want to, and they're paying for a share of the internet too, and so they can do whatever they want with it.
I really don't want my ISP to be doing any QoS. I don't care if they are oversubscribed. If they're oversubscribed ten to one, then guarantee me that 1/10th of my bandwidth -- I can fit a VoIP call in that just fine -- and let me have the rest only when its available. There's no need at all to take into consideration what type of traffic it is, and doing so will just screw me whenever other customers are doing something more blessed.
Jeff Campbell, Cisco's vice president for government and community relations, has no clue what he's talking about. Stupid Bosses.
Of course some traffic types need priority. You prioritize based on the type of packet. Go for it. Just don't do it based on who it's from or to. That is the basis of net neutrality.
He's either stupid, ignorant, or deceitful. it's bad when being ignorant is your best bet......
"Different bits do matter differently. We need to ensure that we have a system that allows this to occur."
Translation:
"Different bits do matter differently. We SELL systems that allows this to occur."
The ISPs should be legally limited to two types of traffic shaping:
1) Based purely on subscriber plan, without looking at traffic type. If you've paid for a better plan then me, your traffic gets weighted more heavily.
2) Optionally (if the subscriber requests it) they could shape based on traffic type, but only within the packets belonging to a specific subscriber.
That way, if we have equivalent plans then your torrent packets and my VoIP packets get exactly the same treatment, but my VoIP packets get priority over my torrent packets.
"A July 1999 IETF specification (RFC 2638) discusses paid prioritization by saying: “It is expected that premium traffic would be allocated a small percentage of the total network capacity, but that it would be priced much higher.” Another specification (RFC 2475) published half a year earlier says that setting different priorities for packets will “accommodate heterogeneous application requirements and user expectations” and “permit differentiated pricing of Internet service.” (An RFC is a policy document, often accepted as standards, published by the IETF.)"
I would also add that the abstract of RFC 2474 says:
“Differentiated services enhancements to the Internet protocol are intended to enable scalable service discrimination in the Internet”
http://www.digitalsociety.org/...
The ISPs should be legally limited to two types of traffic shaping:
1) Based purely on subscriber plan, without looking at traffic type. If you've paid for a better plan then me, your traffic gets weighted more heavily.
2) Optionally (if the subscriber requests it) they could shape based on traffic type, but only within the packets belonging to a specific subscriber.
That way, your web pages would get exactly the same priority as their video stream.
Why should your videoconferencing packets get priority over my netflix stream?
If we've both paid for equivalent plans, then we should have equal use of the network.
The only truly fair option is for ISPs to weight traffic between subscribers based on their plans, without looking at traffic type. Then within the traffic belonging to a single subscriber they could (if approved by the subscriber) do QoS based on traffic type.
To me, Net Neutrality means that all traffic (regardless of far end *or* type) should be treated equally.
The only fair way to allocate resources on a subscriber network is by doing traffic shaping based on the subscriber plan, *without looking at traffic type*.
Suppose we've both paid for an identical subscription. I use my entire bandwidth for streaming video and torrenting, you use your entire bandwidth for videoconferencing. Traditional QoS would give your packets priority over mine. Since we're paying the same, that makes no sense!
The ISP should shape both our streams based on our subscriber plans. As an optional step they could apply QoS to the traffic belonging to each individual subscriber, but that would only affect the traffic for that specific subscriber.
The simplest solution is:
1) ISPs apply traffic shaping to each subscriber separately, without looking at packet type, source, destination, etc. The only criteria are which subscriber the packet belongs to, and what level of subscription they've paid for.
2) As an optional step (opt-in or opt-out) the ISP can do QoS within the packets belonging to a particular subscriber. This would only affect that subscriber, nobody else. Ideally this would be under the control of the end-user in some way, via ToS packets, classification rules, etc.
Put another way ... I expect my video stream from Joe Blow Video Streaming should get the same priority on a TimeWarner network as CBS.com video streams.
I expect web pages from JoeBlow.com to be served up with the same priority as pages from CBS.com
Net Neutrality is about the source of the traffic ... it's not about the type of traffic ...
I do not expect that my web pages from JoeBlow.com be served up with the same bandwidth as my video stream from JoeBlow.com. That is a QoS issue based on type of traffic and is legitimate bandwidth management and is outside of the Net Neutrality question.
QoS is about the type of traffic ... it's not about the source of the traffic ...
So either Cisco is spreading FUD or they aren't talking about Net Neutrality.
From earlier comments, it sounds like the journalist who wrote the article confused the two (either wilfully or neglectfully).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
okay so there's a public safety issue, and the traffic is prioritized, great. then the program at the other end receives the info and sends out a text message to first responders. and guess what? text messages are treated as low priority, so the overall delay is actually _increased_.
to make matters worse, let's say the public safety thing is spamming the alert, (maybe a design flaw in the program, maybe not), well that spamming is now prioritized, over, again, text messages, maybe even ip telephony, etc.
now you're causing congestion in times when congestion is the last thing you need.
and then a first responder finally gets on sight, and they don't know a medical procedure, so they look it up on the web, but guess what, web traffic takes the slow lane. or maybe its a video hosted by comcast - which isn't paying time warned the royalties it needs to not get throttled.
there's no telling before hand what information is needed, over what channels, over what protocols, and by who.
yes, all bits are of different value. but you don't know what that value is. that's the whole point of net neutrality.
A TB spread perfectly even over 30 days is only 3.08mb/s, which runs about $1.5 for transit. But Comcast said 99% of their bandwidth is not transit, as most comes from CDNs and the like, so it's pretty much free. So depending on your source of data, 1TB can be between $0 and $1.5.
Finally some sensible arguments against NN. Delays while doing operations over the internet.. Rather not.
And I'm sure Cisco has JUST the right tools to prevent that...
Privacy is terrorism.