Interesting People mailing list archives
What is "normal Internet service"?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:36:06 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu> Date: June 15, 2009 8:24:31 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net> Subject: What is "normal Internet service"? Brett, what do you see as "normal" Internet usage? You've spoken quite negatively (and quite often!) in this forum about peer-to-peer, bandwidth management, etc. Today, you spoke of "the bandwidth that YouTube can squander". But, like it or not, Youtube is one of the most popular applications on the web. The question, then, is this: what is the service that you and other similar ISPs intend to provide? What is your vision of what the Internet should be? To me, you seem to be advocating the Internet of 10 years ago: relatively small transfers, comparatively static (and hence cacheable) web pages, a download-mostly model, etc. I accept that your network is geared towards that, for both economic and technical reasons. But it's quite clear that that's not the product most people want to consume (albeit perhaps not pay for). How can these be reconciled? I see two alternatives here. First, there is a regulatory approach: applications that don't meet a certain model of the network are banned. This seems unlikely in most countries. If nothing else, it would freeze innovation -- to me and to many others, the beauty of the Internet is that it encourages innovation at the edges. The other alternative is to let the market work its will. If the costs (and hence prices) for the service people want are too high, people will scale back their expectations or demands. If others can offer a service you cannot or will not, then those others will prosper at your expense. Your course, as best I can tell, has been load management: throttle expensive requests to something you can afford without raising prices too much. Users may or may not be satisfied with that in the long term, but absent regulatory intervention the market will decide. The one strategy you cannot pursue is to demand that others meet your definition of the Internet. Google presumably has its own reasons for not wanting Youtube videos cached. Perhaps it's so they get an accurate hit-count, which they need for feedback and advertising sales, and even for their "most viewed" counters. In other words, they're maximizing their own utility function. It isn't reasonable to ask them to maximize yours. You can respond -- but at a certain risk, as outlined. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- What is "normal Internet service"? David Farber (Jun 16)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: What is "normal Internet service"? David Farber (Jun 16)