Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

Fri Sep 17 15:59:45 UTC 2010

On 9/17/2010 10:22 AM, Michael Dillon wrote:
> On a TCP/IP network, QOS features work by deprioritising traffic,
> either by delaying
> the traffic or by dropping packets. Many ISPs do deprioritise P2P
> traffic to prevent
> it from creating congestion, but that is not something that you can productize.
> At best you can use it as a feature to encourage customers to use your network.
>

It's not just that. Many p2p apps don't play fair, and their nature 
causes them to exceed other applications in cases of congestion. You 
adjust priorities to give a better overall experience on average.

> Are you suggesting that ISPs who receive protection money from one service
> provider, should then deprioritise all the other traffic on their network?
>

Is consumer grade bandwidth not deprioritised to business grade 
bandwidth? The provider is running a reverse business model, charging 
the content provider as well for better class of service. It doesn't 
scale, so it is heavily limited, but so long as the provider offers the 
same service to anyone (ie, anyone can play in this class of service), 
it seems to be a fair business practice.

What should be illegal is the ability to hurt competitors of services 
offered by the provider (ie, provider offers voip, so they destroy 
traffic to other voip carriers). In fact, I think it was considered 
illegal years ago, though I admit that I didn't follow the case to it's 
conclusion.

>> ISP has 2xDS3 available for bandwidth total. Netflix traffic is 20mb/s.
>> Bandwidth is considered saturated.
>
> Now you are talking about circuit capacities well below what ISPs typically
> use. In fact, two 45Mbps DS3 circuits are less than the 100Mbps Ethernet
> broadband service that many consumers now use.

1) My logic scales, so I saw no reason to use larger numbers.
2) You must live in the City and are making a bad assumption on 
available capacities.
3) It's easier for those who don't have 100Mb, 1G, 10G, to grasp smaller 
numbers.

Jack