Re: [ NNSquad ] Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Bob Frankston [Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:17 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: 'Lauren Weinstein'
Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ]  Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)

At the risk of continuing this topic – this is a short response I wrote for NNSquad – there were also worthwhile 
responses from others on the list. I am concerned about the risk of justifying what is basically a policy decision by 
claiming it’s an engineering decision. This is misdirection is endemic to policy – the FCC’s arbitrary models are 
confused with reality and then given credibility to be accepted as givens when doing supposedly critical analysis.

A good engineer works within the constraints given -- a great engineer questions the constraints and gets fired because 
the constraints serve a policy need higher than mere science or reality.

For brevity I'll simply note that the model of a "hog" holding up all traffic for a long time is wrong. We're not 
talking about slow networks or 200 car freight trains but lots of individual pack vying for slots.

The real problem is with the metaphor of a fixed size buffet -- this is a Malthusian focus on zero-sum scarcity that 
creates no new value. In practice the carriers have given us only fraction of the potential capacity. Remember the 
"modem" scare which was 100% correct in noting that if we all started using modems the phone system would collapse. It 
didn't because we shifted to getting access to the inherent abundance available in the transport -- instead of 56kbps 
per copper pair we could get megabits and the rights of way now can give us gigabits at lower cost.

What does it mean to connect to an "ISP" if we do our own networking and who defines fairness? Faux-ATT which, 
according to the NYT, is now threatening to judge whether our bits are moral enough, AKA, violate some copyright?

Another respondent on the list commented on the fallacy in saying “But in the final analysis, we all know that some of 
our bits are more important than others, and the network will work better if the layer 3 and layer 2 parts can 
communicate that sort of information between each other. “ We know no such thing.



-----Original Message-----

From: nnsquad-bounces+bob19-0501=bobf.frankston.com () nnsquad org 
[mailto:nnsquad-bounces+bob19-0501=bobf.frankston.com () nnsquad org] On Behalf Of Lauren Weinstein

Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 18:31

To: nnsquad () nnsquad org

Cc: lauren () vortex com

Subject: [ NNSquad ] Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)





------- Forwarded Message

From: David Farber <dave () farber net>

To: "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:21:28 -0800

Subject: [IP] Interesting -- comment from author -- F.C.C. to Look at





 ---------------



From: Richard Bennett [richard () bennett com]

Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 4:23 PM

To: David Farber

Subject: Re: [IP] Re:     F.C.C. to Look at Complaints Comcast Interferes With Net - New York Times



As the author of the article in question, I'll gladly defend it. The

fundamental point I was trying to make is simply that there's a huge

hole in the architecture of the IETF protocol suite with respect to

fairness. I'm a layer two protocol designer (Ethernet over UTP, WiFi 11n

MSDU aggregation, and UWB DRP are in my portfolio), and in the course of

my career have devoted an embarrassing amount of time to engineering

fairness in network access. Most the younger generation takes it as

given that if you understand TCP/IP you understand networking, but in

fact most of the progress in network architectures over the last 30

years has been at layers 1 and 2. And with the TCP-centric mindset, they

tend to believe that all problems of networking can be solved by the

application of the right RFCs. But in fact we all connect to our ISP

over a layer 2 network, and each of these has its own challenges and

problems.



The carriers are often criticized for not using packet drop to resolve

fairness problems, but that's not really the scope of packet drop, which

is actually a solution to Internet congestion, not to the lack of

fairness that may (or may not) be the underlying cause of the

congestion. We need a different solution to fairness at layer 3,

especially on layer 2 networks  like DOCSIS where packet drop closes the

door after the horse has run off.



The buffet analogy needs a little refinement. What the bandwidth hog

does is block the line to the all-you-can-eat buffet so that nobody else

can get any food. That's not a behavior that would be tolerated in a

restaurant, and it shouldn't be tolerated in a residential network.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the huge problem when DOCSIS was designed, so

the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the technology don't address it, certainly

not as well as Full-Duplex Ethernet, 802.11e WiFi, and DSL do.



Some may argue that the Internet doesn't need a fairness system as it's

mostly a local problem, and I have some sympathy for that point of view.

But in the final analysis, we all know that some of our bits are more

important than others, and the network will work better if the layer 3

and layer 2 parts can communicate that sort of information between each

other.



I don't view this as a moral problem as much as an engineering problem.

Moral philosophy is certainly a fascinating subject (as is video

coding), but it's outside the scope of the current discussion.



RB



David Farber wrote:

> ________________________________________

> From: Bob Frankston [bob37-2 () bobf frankston com]

> Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 1:01 AM

> To: David Farber; 'ip'

> Subject: RE: [IP] Re:     F.C.C. to Look at Complaints Comcast Interferes With Net - New York Times

>

> Moral court again ...

>

> Does this mean I can't share files with my neighbor because of the cost of peering with a remote provider? Will 
> someone judge that backing up over the net is not an appropriate use of the network? Am I not allowed to backup to 
> peers?

>



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