Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

Barry Shein bzs at world.std.com
Sun Mar 1 03:28:16 UTC 2015


On February 28, 2015 at 18:14 clayton at mnsi.net (Clayton Zekelman) wrote:
 > You do of course realize that the asymmetry in CATV forward path/return path existed LONG before residential Internet access over cable networks exited?  

You mean back when it was all analog and DOCSIS didn't exist?

 > 
 > 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*

-- 
        -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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