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Net Neutrality question for IP list
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:13:22 -0500
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Net Neutrality question for IP list Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:10:10 -0600 From: Floyd Ferguson <floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net> CC: Floyd Ferguson <floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com>, Floyd Ferguson <f.ferguson () verizon net>, Rod Naphan <Rod.Naphan () us fujitsu com> Professor Farber, I have a question about the net neutrality issue that perhaps could be clarified by some of the participants in the Interesting People mailing list. Professor Lessig, in his Feb-7 Senate Testimony pays considerable attention to "application competition" and the risks associated with "access-tiering", characterized as adding "an additional tax on network innovators based on the particular service being offered." It's not entirely clear how this differs from a definition of "service differentiation ... to accommodate heterogeneous application and user requirements, and to permit differentiated pricing of Internet service" [RFC2475], and which forms the basis for the Differentiated Services Architecture. So, my specific question is, within the concept of Network Neutrality advocated by Lessig, whether a broadband provider like BellSouth would or would not be allowed to develop and deploy a RFC2474-based service to offer potential customers like Mark Cuban, that could support unique application requirements, as for instance, substantially superior error loss rate or packet delay variation between the service access point and the residential connection of a BellSouth broadband customer, which would enable Cuban's application to successfully play video to the large screen plasma TV rather than a computer screen. Certainly one can with little effort imagine how a carrier like BellSouth could use such a protocol to develop services for a customer like Cuban to provide significant competitive advantage for video applications for BellSouth broadband subscribers compared to video applications from other companies not willing to pay for such a service. And how these differenitated services would yield significant benefit to the residential broadband user. Again, the question is whether this would be OK or not OK within Lessig's framework? If not, why not? Thanks, Floyd Ferguson Distinguished Strategic Planner Fujitsu Network Communications floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Net Neutrality question for IP list Dave Farber (Feb 16)