Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

Brian Johnson bjohnson at drtel.com
Mon Sep 13 14:44:40 UTC 2010


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Leo Bicknell [mailto:bicknell at ufp.org]
>Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 9:32 AM
>To: nanog at nanog.org
>Subject: Re: Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid,Prioritized
Traffic?
>
>In a message written on Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 09:50:21AM -0400, Joe
Provo
>wrote:
>> [cue endless thread of knee-jerk responses; can we just Godwin it
>> now please?]
>
>Of course Hitler was the first to propose pay-to-play internet
>traffic.  :)
>

Well done. :)

>Consumers are more in need of regulatory protection than business
>customers, at $19.95 a month they are viewed as expendable by many
>of the companies that offer consumer services, and are often served
>by a monopoly or duopoly, often at the encouragement of government.
>They can't vote with their dollars as we like to say, and need some
>protection.
>

OK... so doesn't this speak to the commoditization of service providers?
I'm against more regulation and for competition.

>However, the proposed "remedies" of banning all filtering ever, or
>requiring free peering to everyone (taking both to the extreme, of
>course) don't match the operational real world.  Many of those who
>are pushing for network neutrality are pushing for an ideal that
>the network simply cannot deliver, no matter what.
>

Agreed. The bulk of the "Net Neutrality" crowd lives in a dream world.
Most (maybe some, maybe a few depending on your view) approach filtering
as a solution to a technical problem not as a money making proposition.
I have always espoused it only as a fix to technical (security, abuse
and the like) issues.

>Rather than network neutrality, I'd simply like to see truth in
>advertising applied.  If my provider advertises "8 Mbps" service
>then I should be able to get 8 Mbps from Google, or Yahoo, or you,
>or anyone else on the network, provided of course they have also
>purchased an 8 Mbps or higher plan from their provider.  I don't
>care if it is done with transit, peering, paid priorization, or any
>other mechanism, those are back end details that will change over
>time.  I don't care if it is Google building their own network, or
>you buying 8Mbps service from your local monopoly ISP.
>

Explain how the provider of access is supposed to be able to control all
of the systems outside it's control to get a specific speed from a
content provider. If you are espousing contracts with each content
provider, then you will quickly be destroying the Internet.

We advertise a rate and ensure we have no congestion on our Internet
connection to ensure that all demands for traffic are met on our side. I
cannot ensure that site X will not be flooded or have other restrictions
on its bandwidth that will prevent your full utilization of the
bandwidth.

- Brian J.


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