IP: Re: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers!

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 23:28:00 -0500
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: David Devereaux-Weber <dave () cable doit wisc edu>
> Subject: Re: IP: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory
>   routers!
>
> (These opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.)
>
> I am a network engineer at the Division of Information Technology at the 
> University of Wisconsin-Madison.  We operate the Internet backbone for the 
> Madison campus, and provide technical assistance to the state-wide WiscNet 
> (ISP for for public sector institutions).
>
> And, for full disclosure, Cisco's Chairman, John Morgridge, is an alumnus 
> of the UW-Madison School of Business.  Mr. and Mrs. Morgridge have been 
> very generous to the University.  They visit the city and the campus 
> regularly.  On several occasions, Mr. Morgridge has met with our Network 
> Engineering staff to talk about Cisco's plans and to find out our needs 
> and ideas for future needs.  We are very happy with this relationship.
>
> While we have a significant amount of Cisco equipment in our networks, we 
> also have (to Cisco's chagrin) network equipment from other vendors.
>
> We do not use cablemodems for our campus networks.
>
> For off-campus service, we have a cablemodem service in partnership with 
> Charter Business Networks for student, faculty or staff use at home.  We 
> also sell dsl service in partnership with several local companies.
>
> End of disclosures.
>
> To us, Quality of Service is a good thing.  Different Internet 
> applications present different demands on the network.  World Wide Web and 
> email present relatively low volume demands, and slight (under 1 second) 
> timing delays are not a problem for email or web users.  On the other 
> hand, live or streaming media present much higher demands on the 
> network.  Timing delays create dropouts in audio or video.  Networks 
> intended for email, web or ftp traffic can be designed on a "best-effort" 
> basis - if a packet doesn't get through the first time, TCP will notice 
> and ask for a re-transmission.  Best-effort causes problems with 
> multimedia.  Without QoS features, the only way to ensure quality 
> multimedia is to significantly overdesign the bandwidth.  For example, 
> using a 100 MB ethernet for a 4 MB video stream.  This overdesign makes it 
> unlikely that random bursts of traffic will interupt a multimedia 
> packet.  As the scale of a network increases from local to metropolitan, 
> regional and national, bandwidth overdesign becomes increasingly 
> expensive. QoS allows network equipment to delay packets that can tolerate 
> delay, while immediately passing packets that can't tolerate delay.
>
> Those users who don't need to send video don't want to see their network 
> cost increased to support a service that they won't use.  Differentiated 
> services through Quality of Service will allow us to offer inexpensive 
> service to customers with low demands, while simultaneously being able to 
> offer service that will support streaming media to customers who need that 
> kind of service.
>
> So, QoS product features from companies like Cisco are a response to 
> legitmate network needs.  They will let us provide the most appropriate 
> service at the most appropriate cost to each customer.
>
> Dave
> --
> David Devereaux-Weber, P.E.
> djdevere () doit wisc edu  http://cable.doit.wisc.edu
> Network Engineering
> Division of Information Technology
> The University of Wisconsin - Madison