Interesting People mailing list archives
net neutrality, continued ...
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:40:30 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "Yoo, Christopher" <christopher.yoo () Law Vanderbilt Edu> Date: June 22, 2006 10:36:29 AM EDT Subject: RE: net neutrality, continued ... What is most interesting to me is the extent to which the network that most people regard today as the Internet is already nonneutral. Network owners are caching popular content locally, which gives that content speed and cost advantages. Overlay networks, like Akamai (which reportedly serves 15% of the world's web traffic, including Google), are taking this to a wider scale by maintaining a distributed network of servers and using it to deliver content more cheaply and more quickly. Some backbones are advertising security features by conveying traffic through purely private networks to a later point in the network than is usually (raising difficult definitional questions of how far you can carry traffic on a private network before it is no longer "the Internet"). ISPs routinely block ports known to be sources of spam, viruses, worms, bots, and phishers. They also frequently deploy filtering technologies and maintain portals that give privileged placement to certain content. And backbones enter into peering arrangements with some ISPs and transit arrangements with others. (If you are interested, both Bob Cannon and Craig McTaggert submitted abstracts to the upcoming TPRC of papers reviewing the extent to which the network is already nonneutral, which will devote two paper sessions and possibly a keynote address to network neutrality.) All of this raises questions about the workability of thelabeling-oriented proposal, since a significant portion of what people regard as the Internet today
may well not meet the definition "the Internet" laid out in the statute. And as we learned from the debates over UNE-P and the proper classification of Internet-bound traffic and VoIP, definitional schemes often simply invite creative ways to arbitrage into one's preferred definitional category. ------------------------------------- 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, continued ... David Farber (Jun 22)