Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid,

Tue Sep 21 17:16:25 UTC 2010

> 
> My friend, that is a straw man. ISPs have complete control over who
> they peer with, the size of the peering pipe they accept and whether
> that peering session is free or paid. If peering with Netflix will
> cost you more than you gain, you just don't do it.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin

To some extent, yes, it is.  There is a certain amount of "devil's
advocate" being played on my part to help flesh out the nature of the
problem and other ideas from other folks and their insight.  Sometimes
you just have to run something up the pole and see who shoots at it and
what they shoot.

I suppose what I am saying is that in general, selling express treatment
in the core is probably a bad idea as it gives the bean counters an
incentive not to approve capacity increases in order to increase revenue
from selling "premium" access.  In some cases, prioritizing on the
customer edge might be a good idea so your 16yo downloading movies or
sharing his porn collection doesn't keep your VIOP phone from working.

There is room for innovation to decrease bandwidth utilization at least
in the core and at the Internet edge of the provider's network.
Multicast, for example, has never really reached its potential for
streaming live events such as sporting, news, or live entertainment
events.  Sometimes the investment in innovation must be caused by
feeling some pain if things are left as they are.  Currently the ones
feeling the pain are not the ones who would have to undertake that
investment; there is nothing the ISP or consumer can do to improve the
content provider's application. The point I was trying to make is maybe
if those content providers did experience some or more financial
consequence of increased bandwidth consumption, they would be more
sensitive to it and we would all benefit as a result.

G