Re: Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid,

[Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net>]

> > I DO have a problem with a content provider paying to get priority
> > access on the last mile.  I have no particular interest in any of the
> > content that Yahoo provides, but I do have an interest in downloading
> > my Linux updates via torrents.  Should I have to go back and bid
> > against Yahoo just so I can get my packets in a timely fashion?
> > </end user>
> > =20
> > I understand that the last mile is going to be a congestion point, but
> > the idea of allowing a bidding war for priority access for that
> > capacity seems to be a path to madness.
> > =20
> > --Chris
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> Since prioritization would work ONLY when the link us saturated
> (congested), without it, nothing is going to work well, not your
> torrents, not your email, not your browsing.  By prioritizing the
> traffic, the torrents might back off but they would still continue to
> flow, they wouldn't be completely blocked, they would just slow down.
> QoS can be a good thing for allowing your VIOP to work while someone
> else in the home is watching a streaming movie or something.  Without
> it, everything breaks once the circuit is congested.

The problem with this theory is that it /sounds/ nice - but the reality
is that eventually ISP's will use it to justify deprioritizing one 
customer's traffic over another, i.e. because your neighbor is doing
realtime video and you're doing bittorrent, because their networks are
not sufficiently beefy to handle all the traffic their customers may
generate at once.

If you're spending $60/month for an Internet connection, though, and 
your neighbor's spending the same, why would your ISP be permitted to 
determine that your traffic was less valuable?

You want prioritization on a customer's link?  Fine, allow for that,
let the customer decide what should have priority, and I've certainly
got zero problem with that.

However, the moment we talk "paid" prioritization, we get into all sorts
of troubling issues.  What happens if YouTube doesn't want to pay for
"paid" prioritization of their traffic?  Does my ISP decide to route 
them through Timbuktu in order to punish them, effectively holding me as
a hostage until YouTube pays up?

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.