Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast's Actions

Dave CROCKER dhc2 at dcrocker.net
Tue Nov 30 00:51:07 UTC 2010



On 11/29/2010 2:40 PM, Rettke, Brian wrote:
> Essentially, the question is who has to pay for the infrastructure to support
> the bandwidth requirements of all of these new and booming streaming
> ventures. I can understand both the side taken by Comcast, and the side of
> the content provider, but I don't think it's as simple as the slogans spewed
> out regarding "Net Neutrality", which has become so misused and abused as a
> term that I don't think it has any credulous value remaining.


I find it helpful to distinguish "participant neutrality" from "service 
neutrality".  The first says that you and I pay the same rate.  The second says 
the my email costs the same as my voip.

As described, it appears that Level3 is being singled out, which makes for 
participant non-neutrality.  On the other hand, if Comcast were charging itself 
for xfinity traffic, this might qualify as service non-neutrality (assuming 
there is a plausible meaning to "charging itself"...

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net




More information about the NANOG mailing list