Tom Wheeler’s Tangled Web Recycles an Old Story

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
> Date: June 22, 2017 at 2:54:03 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <ip () v2 listbox com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Kevin Taglang <headlines () benton org>
> Subject: Tom Wheeler’s Tangled Web Recycles an Old Story
>
> Here’s a reaction to the vision of a future web Tom Wheeler published in the Brookings site this Tuesday. I think the 
> former chairman has a very limited view the relationship of networks to applications. It’s on High Tech Forum, 
> http://hightechforum.org/tom-wheelers-tangled-web.
>
> Tom Wheeler’s Tangled Web Recycles an Old Story
>
> Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler shared his vision of a new web in an article on the Brookings Institution web site 
> this week. Wheeler says the Internet is set to transcend the status quo, which he calls a “find-and-display protocol 
> that organize[s] the internet’s morass of incompatible databases”. In Wheeler’s new Internet, we’ll see “the 
> orchestration of raw intelligence to produce something new.”
>
> Wheeler’s new Internet is essentially George Gilder’s Telecosm, a system in which bandwidth is unlimited, there is no 
> network switching, and every piece of information anyone places on the network goes everywhere, privacy be damned. 
> Gilder’s vision proved naïve and unworkable – switching isn’t going away and bandwidth is finite – so Wheeler uses 
> the term “Web 3.0” to lose the baggage.
>
> Incidentally, “find-and-display protocol” is a Wheeler neologism.
>
> Wheeler’s Web vs. Reality
>
> Wheeler seems to accept the misconception that IoT devices will flood the Internet with sensitive information. 
> Something like this happens when devices are hacked, but it’s not normal.
>
> Like the traditional web, smart devices only share information with appropriate partners. While we can instruct a 
> temperature sensor to report exceptionally high or low readings to an authorized monitor, it’s not par for my sensor 
> to report to your controller.
>
> So the IoT doesn’t imply “flooding the network with a tsunami of data” from everything to everywhere. But it does 
> mean that more devices will be connected and more data will be transported.
>
> What Wheeler Gets Right
>
> While Wheeler doesn’t express himself particularly well, his vision isn’t completely wrong. The new Internet isn’t 
> simply a bunch of gizmos, it’s services that arise to make sense of the information gizmos can generate. Many of the 
> new devices will be “driverless” in the sense that they’re not going to be directed by humans in real time.
>
> And we should expect that more data will traverse the Internet year-by-year, as it always has. Sensors create new 
> information by their nature: any time the condition of a sensor changes, information is created. If some of this 
> information is reported to artificial intelligences, old services become richer and new ones are enabled.
>
> The success of an internet that includes real-time information and AIs (as well as consumers viewing content) depends 
> on networks delivering data in a timely manner with an acceptable level of reliability and cost. Wheeler puts this 
> down to conformance to established conventions of openness, and that hope falls short..
>
> Progress Is Only as Fast as the Slowest Parts
>
> The Gilder model of networking abolishes norms of network architecture by assuming something that’s unlikely to 
> exist: networks of infinite capacity. He believed that network speed increases at three times the rate of 
> semiconductor speed because it did for a certain period in the late ’90s.
>
> This was because optical networks were in their infancy in those days, while microprocessors were fairly mature. 
> Ultimately, network technology can’t outpace semiconductors in general because optical networks are made out of 
> semiconductors and light.
>
> Over the short term, some chips do get faster than others: microprocessors have outpaced memories, giving rise to 
> complex caching schemes to prevent inevitable bottlenecks. And we’ve seen rapid advances in specialty optical 
> transceivers, outpacing processors. But whole systems aren’t much faster than their slowest parts.
>
> Gilder claimed future networks would be “dumb” because bandwidth would be infinite. That’s more aspiration than 
> realism.
>
> What Wheeler Gets Wrong
>
> Wheeler insists that his vision only depends on applications “being free of interference from those who run the 
> networks that take us to and from the internet.” This is a plug for his claim that the Open Internet Order of 2015 
> didn’t regulate the Internet per se, just the access networks.
>
> This is a defective view of the Internet and especially of the Internet of Things. IoT is the sensors and the 
> monitors with which they communicate. We can’t divide the networks that form the Internet into access networks, 
> backbone networks, and edge service networks without losing the Internet’s essential unity. It’s all of these things 
> working together, and more.
>
> And it’s not enough for networks to “refrain from interfering” when data delivery requires action on the network’s 
> part. Networks need to actively deliver correct information to all the right places, not just indiscriminately 
> re-transmit everything they see to the entire web. And they need to deliver this data on time.
>
> Indiscriminate retransmission assumes bandwidth that doesn’t exist (and probably never will exist without quantum 
> magic.)
>
> Freeing Networks to Impove
>
> While bandwidth will never be infinite and free as Gilder and Wheeler wish, there is a way forward. We can develop 
> networks that provide sufficient bandwidth, latency, reliability, and economy to make a much broader range of 
> applications practical.
>
> This is what network engineering has done throughout the broadband era. Consumer bandwidth was frozen by regulation 
> to 4 Khz per connection for decades under the Communications Act of 1934.
>
> But the advent of broadband technology – and the loosening of constraints on network service models provided by the 
> 1996 Telecommunications Act – allowed capacity to increase as fast as technology and investment could run.
>
> This is why broadband network capacity has improved by an annual average of 25% for the past twenty years, from about 
> 1 Mbps in 1996 to close to 100 Mbps today.
>
> Substituting Intelligence for Infinite Bandwidth
>
> Applications are activities tailored to particular needs, and as the needs vary so do the network requirements of 
> applications. It’s not enough for networks to “refrain from interfering”, they need to give each application the 
> treatment it desires within a budget of finite capacity and reasonable cost.
>
> Networks do this by recognizing application needs and allocating resources in an optimal manner. This practice – made 
> controversial by open Internet regulations  – is obviously the tradition in all resource management systems in every 
> sphere.
>
> As I explained in my post on Time-Sensitive Networks, resource management is not a zero-sum game. It complements 
> bandwidth growth by providing performance improvements using a second tool.
>
> The IEEE 802.11n standard for Wi-Fi pursued a two pronged approach: it enabled 4X higher speeds than 802.11g by 
> doubling channel size – more bandwidth – and also by improving transmission efficiency through aggregation.
>
> Back to the Basics of Networking
>
> This method of improving performance by increasing raw capacity and efficiency in lockstep has served us well in 
> Wi-Fi for 15 years. The same model holds in 3GPP technology for licensed networks.
>
> And the same model will hold for 5G networks. Capacity will improve by making networks denser and by exploiting more 
> radio spectrum. But the real win for applications comes from opening a dialog between networks and apps.
>
> Instead of being required to guess what applications need, 5G networks will be told. And instead of applications 
> having to guess what the networks can supply, they also will be told. This is all explained in our podcast with Peter 
> Rysavy on 5G application support.
>
> Rather than trafficking in ancient speculations about the future of networking, would-be visionaries would be better 
> served by developing an understanding of networking technology. That’s the real driver of innovation.
>
> Grounding Visions of the Future in Reality
>
> None of us actually knows what the Internet will look like in 20 years: we don’t know what apps we’ll be running, 
> what threats we’ll be facing, or how regulatory concepts will evolve. Hence, it’s better to create systems and 
> structures that promote experimentation and progress in many directions than to impose personal visions.
>
> Wheeler regards “openness” as the sole virtue of networking. He’s more concerned with limiting risk than with 
> promoting progress. This is the road to disaster.
>
> Openness is fine except when it isn’t: an Internet that’s every bit as friendly to unlawful behavior as the 
> life-saving technologies should not be our goal. We want more from the Internet than merely mitigating some of the 
> problems it creates.
>
> Internet generations of the past have all tended to concentrate on a single application. The Web 1.0 generation was 
> actually built around the needs of the Web as an application. What Wheeler calls Web 2.0 is actually the abandonment 
> of the web as the dominant application in favor of video streaming.
>
> We’ve never really had a network that did a fantastic job of adapting itself to diverse portfolio of applications. We 
> understand how to do this now because network technology has given us the tools.
>
> So the question for regulators like Mr. Wheeler is whether they’re going to allow us to use the tools we’ve developed 
> – bandwidth reservation, software-defined networks, and network slicing – to support an invigorated innovation 
> economy.
>
> Rather than insisting one archaic frameworks like Title II and over-valued notions like openness to provide a map of 
> the future, I’d much rather see a new regime where we can question assumptions, explore new paths, and put all 
> options on the table. But this idea is very threatening to the old guard.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> RB
> —
> Richard Bennett
> High Tech Forum Founder
> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
>
> Internet Policy Consultant



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