Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

Clayton Zekelman clayton at mnsi.net
Sat Feb 28 23:35:06 UTC 2015


And for historical reasons.  The forward path started at TV channel 2.  The return path was shoe horned in to the frequencies below that, which limited the amount of available spectrum for return path.

Originally this didn't matter much because the only thing it was used for was set top box communications and occasionally sending video to the head end for community channel remote feeds.

To change the split would require replacement of all the active and passive RF equipment in the network.

Only now with he widespread conversion to digital cable are they able to free up enough spectrum to even consider moving the split at some point in the future.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 28, 2015, at 6:20 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
> 
> As I said earlier, there are only so many channels available. Channels added to upload are taken away from download. People use upload so infrequently it would be gross negligence on the provider's behalf. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- 
> Mike Hammett 
> Intelligent Computing Solutions 
> http://www.ics-il.com 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> 
> From: "Clayton Zekelman" <clayton at mnsi.net> 
> To: "Barry Shein" <bzs at world.std.com> 
> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog at nanog.org> 
> Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2015 5:14:18 PM 
> Subject: Re: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality 
> 
> You do of course realize that the asymmetry in CATV forward path/return path existed LONG before residential Internet access over cable networks exited? 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone 
> 
>> On Feb 28, 2015, at 5:38 PM, Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com> wrote: 
>> 
>> 
>> Can we stop the disingenuity? 
>> 
>> Asymmetric service was introduced to discourage home users from 
>> deploying "commercial" services. As were bandwidth caps. 
>> 
>> One can argue all sorts of other "benefits" of this but when this 
>> started that was the problem on the table: How do we forcibly 
>> distinguish commercial (i.e., more expensive) from non-commercial 
>> usage? 
>> 
>> Answer: Give them a lot less upload than download bandwidth. 
>> 
>> Originally these asymmetric, typically DSL, links were hundreds of 
>> kbits upstream, not a lot more than a dial-up line. 
>> 
>> That and NAT thereby making it difficult -- not impossible, the savvy 
>> were in the noise -- to map domain names to permanent IP addresses. 
>> 
>> That's all this was about. 
>> 
>> It's not about "that's all they need", "that's all they want", etc. 
>> 
>> Now that bandwidth is growing rapidly and asymmetric is often 
>> 10/50mbps or 20/100 it almost seems nonsensical in that regard, entire 
>> medium-sized ISPs ran on less than 10mbps symmetric not long ago. But 
>> it still imposes an upper bound of sorts, along with addressing 
>> limitations and bandwidth caps. 
>> 
>> That's all this is about. 
>> 
>> The telcos for many decades distinguished "business" voice service 
>> from "residential" service, even for just one phone line, though they 
>> mostly just winged it and if they declared you were defrauding them by 
>> using a residential line for a business they might shut you off and/or 
>> back bill you. Residential was quite a bit cheaper, most importantly 
>> local "unlimited" (unmetered) talk was only available on residential 
>> lines. Business lines were even coded 1MB (one m b) service, one 
>> metered business (line). 
>> 
>> The history is clear and they've just reinvented the model for 
>> internet but proactively enforced by technology rather than studying 
>> your usage patterns or whatever they used to do, scan for business ads 
>> using "residential" numbers, beyond bandwidth usage analysis. 
>> 
>> And the CATV companies are trying to reinvent CATV pricing for 
>> internet, turn Netflix (e.g.) into an analogue of HBO and other 
>> premium CATV services. 
>> 
>> What's so difficult to understand here? 
>> 
>> -- 
>> -Barry Shein 
>> 
>> The World | bzs at TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com 
>> Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada 
>> Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
> 



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