Binge On! - And So This is Net Neutrality?

Thu Dec 10 19:57:21 UTC 2015

> On Dec 10, 2015, at 2:32 PM, Chris Adams <cma at cmadams.net> wrote:
> 
> I could have paid more to get it faster, and some large-scale shippers
> have special arrangements that seem to get their packages priority.  How
> is this different from Internet traffic?

For me the better comparison is international postal services.  I can get
USPS to give a package priority on their network, but once it leaves
that SLA is gone.  They did their best to deliver it to the next-hop.

The concern I have here is part marketing and part technical reality.

1) “Unlimited*” doesn’t really mean unlimited, which I’m personally
    understanding of, but I’ve seen others take the hard-line approach.

2) “Peering” is a term that people don’t quite grok, because it’s
   overloaded in so many ways with transit, SFI, etc.

3) Networks are rarely equal.  T-Mobile has lots of end-users.  Their
   pattern will look different from someone doing disaster recovery
   off-site data storage.  

4) corollary with #3 - Through M&A, divestiture and other moves companies
   don’t always participate in the same markets in the same way.  $dayjob
   does not do DOCSIS/DSL services in north america.  Should we?  Not all
   networks are on the same 5 continents/countries/cities.  What is that
   overlap necessary?  The days of being at AADS, MAE-E,W, pac bell, etc
   have changed significantly.  Content distribution has advanced, edge
   speeds have changed making applications feasible that were not thought
   possible 10-20 years ago.

With the recent 174 <-> 3320 lawsuit, FCC, etc.. this all is interesting
to me.  How do you reach a solution where the customers win?

I’ve seen many approaches to this, and as an engineer I don’t like congested
ports.  Congested ports mean someone is unhappy, and minimizing that is a goal.

When two sides are not speaking to each other, it’s less likely things will
be fixed.  This is at least people working towards a solution, it may not be
one where I have the old Qwest promise of every movie from everything ever
*prepares to ride the light*, but I expect things to get better over time as
companies adapt.

- Jared

P.S. Regarding “unlimited” above, things like the new overage charges for
DOCSIS, DSL, FTTx services that were perceived as all you can eat, seeing
a company place a ceiling on the overages seen would be ideal.  eg: you
max out at the business class service price, say $50 for residential
$100 business class starting tiers that most companies have.

Having no max for that is unreasonable for all parties as a bill for $infinity
is less likely to be paid compared to 2-3x usual fees.

The same theory could be applied to international data fees, just auto-sign me
up for the roaming plan that matches my usage.  I seem to recall Sprint had
a cellular offering like this for minutes used (many eons ago) and for
being shareholder and consumer friendly it seemed to be the right balance.