Re: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net>]

Michael Thomas wrote:
> On 02/27/2015 02:52 PM, Naslund, Steve wrote:
> > What is that statement based on?  I have not seen any outcry for more 
> > symmetric speeds.  Asymmetry in our networks causes a lot of 
> > engineering issues and if it were up to the carriers, we would much 
> > rather have more symmetric traffic patterns because it would make 
> > life easier for us.  Remember that most carrier backbones are built 
> > of symmetric circuits.  It would be nice but the users generally 
> > download more than they upload.  That is the fact.
>
> Average != Peak.
>
> Why is this so hard to understand?

Marketing, and the stupidity of marketeers.

Seriously.

I spent a few years of my life, back in the 1980s, consulting to various 
DoD agencies - and I can't tell you how many times my role was to defend 
ethernet purchases (made by IT departments) against Telcos who were 
pitching ISDN at the General Officer level ("you don't need these 
new-fangled ethernets, an ISDN switch will handle all the data you need).

I also got dragged into some discussions with, then, New England 
Telephones ISDN marketing folks.  At one point, after lots of talk about 
how 64kbps was all you'd ever need for any reasonable data activity I 
made the observation that uploading a 1MB file, over their ISDN X.25 
packet service would cost something like $100 in usage fees and take two 
minutes.  Their response was "who'd ever need to upload a 1MB file?"  I 
kid you not.

Of course, I later found out that NET did have some folks who understood 
- it's just they were all working on selling their brand new Frame Relay 
service - still only 64kb, but at least the cost was a bit more 
reasonable, and the marketeers understood what they were selling, and to 
whom.

Meanwhile, today, we still see commercials talking about how much faster 
one can download an entire HD movie over <brand x> cable system's higher 
speed service.  Not generally how people are using the net.

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra