Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

Michael Dillon wavetossed at googlemail.com
Fri Sep 17 15:22:24 UTC 2010


> So you are saying, it's perfectly okay to improve one service over another
> by adding bandwidth directly to that service, but it's unacceptable to
> prioritize it's traffic on congested links (which effectively adds more
> bandwidth for that service). It's the same thing, using two different
> methods.

On TCP/IP networks you cannot prioritize a service and you certainly cannot add
bandwidth unless you have an underlying ATM or Frame Relay that has bandwidth
in reserve.

On a TCP/IP network, QOS features work by deprioritising traffic,
either by delaying
the traffic or by dropping packets. Many ISPs do deprioritise P2P
traffic to prevent
it from creating congestion, but that is not something that you can productize.
At best you can use it as a feature to encourage customers to use your network.

Are you suggesting that ISPs who receive protection money from one service
provider, should then deprioritise all the other traffic on their network?

> ISP has 2xDS3 available for bandwidth total. Netflix traffic is 20mb/s.
> Bandwidth is considered saturated.

Now you are talking about circuit capacities well below what ISPs typically
use. In fact, two 45Mbps DS3 circuits are less than the 100Mbps Ethernet
broadband service that many consumers now use.

--Michael Dillon




More information about the NANOG mailing list