Re: It's the Internet Stupid

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
Date: June 7, 2009 6:25:40 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    It's the Internet Stupid

I agree with Brett that this document is disappointing. It's an  
attempt to accomplish a goal through agency regulation that the  
proponents tried and failed to achieve through the legislative  
process. Hence, it's anti-democratic on its face.

And as Brett says, the side-effects of such a regime are enormous,  
reaching not only into the prohibition of business contracts that  
would give consumers real choice in voice and video services, but  
banning necessary network management practices to prevent  DOS  
attacks, Spam, and other exploits.

I disagree about CDNs, however, as it appears to me that the net  
result of these regulations is not to ban them as much as to privilege  
CDNs over standard Internet delivery. If ISPs have to forward packets  
without knowledge of source address, CDNs will rule, and the paying  
for expedited delivery that the signatories seek to restrict will  
actually increase. But you won't be paying AT&T, you'll be paying  
Akamai.

Is that progress? Only if you define it as the inability to improve  
the mechanisms underneath Internet applications that have been  
steadily decaying for the last 35 years, and I don't think most would.

While I can appreciate the desire to prevent ISPs from engaging in  
arbitrary and discriminatory behavior, a broad brush ban of this kind  
is not the way to accomplish it. It's far better to recognize that  
applications have Class of Service requirements that can only be met  
with the cooperation of the network. As long as any fees that are  
levied for a particular CoS are non-discriminatory and pro- 
competitive, we're fine, but if they're not, they're not. That means  
anyone should be able to buy Voice CoS or scavenger CoS, not that  
everyone gets it for free.

Rather than crippling the Autonomous Systems that make up the  
Internet, the focus of regulators should be make them improve. This  
back-door regulation doesn't cut it.

RB
David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
> Date: June 7, 2009 4:44:15 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] It's the Internet Stupid
>
> http://itstheinternetstupid.com/
>
> Dave, and everyone:
>
> Note that this comment to the FCC contains a plea that the FCC  
> prohibit network management by Internet providers. To wit, it asks  
> the agency to "prohibit discriminatory or preferential treatment of  
> packets based on sender, recipient or packet contents."
>
> Sounds good on the surface -- unless one understands its full  
> implications.
>
> Since the information identifying (among other things) the protocol  
> being used is part of the packet contents, this would make it  
> impossible to prioritize time-sensitive traffic.
>
> Likewise, if providers could not route packets to a more direct  
> connection or send them at a higher speed when they were bound to or  
> from specific addresses, it would be impossible for a content or  
> service provider which required enhanced performance (e.g. low  
> latency or jitter) to pay a surcharge for higher quality of service.  
> This restriction (which would be the equivalent of prohibiting UPS  
> from offering "red," "blue," and "ground" service) would kill  
> innovation by precluding cutting edge technologies from ever seeing  
> the light of day. It would also effectively outlaw content delivery  
> networks.
>
> The comment likewise pays homage to competition, but ignores the  
> fact that the regulation it recommends would fall most heavily on  
> competitive providers and likely would force them out of business,  
> creating a duopoly.
>
> There seem to be quite a few people who, perhaps due to  
> fearmongering by lobbyists for large corporations, seem bound and  
> determined to straitjacket the Internet with regulations. Alas, they  
> apparently forget that the Internet could not have existed were it  
> not originally designed as a loose federation of networks, each of  
> which was subject to DIFFERENT acceptable use policies and  
> management strategies. (Were it not designed this way, educational  
> institutions, government agencies, and private companies could not  
> have signed on, because no one set of policies could have fit all of  
> them.)
>
> They also appear to forget that the best way to discourage something  
> is to regulate it. If the signatories on this statement truly wish  
> to see universal broadband deployment, they must not "monkey wrench"  
> this goal by hobbling the rollout of new technologies and  
> prohibiting innovation.
>
> --Brett Glass, LARIAT
>
>
>
>
>
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