What Net Neutrality should and should not cover

Matthew Petach mpetach at netflight.com
Sun Apr 27 19:06:26 UTC 2014


On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 9:57 AM, Rick Astley <jnanog at gmail.com> wrote:
[...]

>  It would be sort of the same concept of my grandmother
> calling my cell phone yet we both need to pay for our individual phone
> lines to at least reach the carrier tasked with connecting our call. Even
> if my grandmother calls a business, that business have phone lines they pay
> for. Technically this would be double dipping but it's been the norm for a
> very long time.
>

Hi Rick,

It's slightly worse than that.  Allow me to expand your
metaphor just a little bit.

You pay for a phone connection to provider X.

Your grandmother pays for a connection to provider Y.

The connection between provider X and provider Y
is handled by long-distance carrier Z.

Provider X decides they don't like carrier Z, and won't
add more capacity with carrier Z.

Your grandmother tries to call you; but due to the lack
of capacity between carrier Z and provider X, she gets
an "all circuits are busy" message over and over again.

Provider X tells provider Y that if wants to get its
calls through, it will have to pay additional $$s
*beyond* what it already pays to carrier Z, in order
to connect to provider X so that those calls can go
through.

Provider Y is concerned that your poor grandmother
may have a stroke due to all the stress and worry
that she is undergoing, due to not being able to reach
you on the telephone.  So, with a heavy heart, they
agree to pay provider X to connect additional circuits
to provider Y, at a  much higher cost.

To avoid having to go bankrupt paying those additional
costs, provider Y has to raise the cost for your poor
grandmother's phone service.

In order to pay the increased costs, she is forced to
go without afternoon tea on weekends.  And there is
much sadness in the universe.

That's where we are today.  The content providers
and the eyeball networks used to be just fine being
connected through intermediate carriers.  But now
the eyeball networks are refusing to increase
capacity with the intermediate carriers, telling
content providers that they either need to pay
additional money to connect directly to the eyeball
networks, or deal with congestion ("all circuits busy"
recordings for their customers).

Nobody's asking for a free ride (well, other than
$low_cost_transit_carrier, but I'm  leaving them
out of this discussion)--what they're objecting
to is having to pay for their upstream transit
circuits, and then *also pay additional money
to bypass congestion, and talk to specific eyeball
networks.*


Hopefully that clarifies the situation a bit more.  ^_^

Thanks!

Matt



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