Two Tiered Internet

Thu Dec 15 00:28:06 UTC 2005

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> 	but do i get "the Internet"?  ... your claim is that
> 	i am not paying for it.  my bills indicate that i -am-
> 	paying for it.  (regardless of priority... after all, the
> 	Internet is "best-effort" ... and w/ QoS, i don't get that
> 	anymore... i get the choice to buy crap instead of best effort...)
> 	Best effort is the top-tier of the QoS/priority pyramid... as
> 	sad as that is.

You start with a flawed assumption, you end up with wrong conclusions.
Who said this had anything to do with "the Internet"?

Instead, this is about additional private network services, which cable
companies already do over coax, that telco's want to offer over a
multiservice access line in addition to "the Internet."  Coax can carry
over a Gigibit of data, but cable companies usually sell user's less
than 10Mbps for Internet data.  Cable companies reserve the rest of
the their network capacity for private services like HBO, video on
demand and voice.  Just because part of a physical line is used for
Internet service doesn't mean everything going across the same line
is the Internet.

The telephone companies are asking for the same ability to sell multiple
services over the same physical line.  Cable companies didn't make their
Internet service slower when they add more private services, why do
people expect the telephone companies to make their Internet service
worse when the telephone companies add private services to their network?