Net Neutrality...

Wed Jul 16 16:10:13 UTC 2014

Barry,

Your point is well made and applies to present conditions.  I'm not
sure the current Net Neutrality debate extends so much to access,
though we should talk about that (Consumer access service policy: No
servers at home!? Asymmetric bandwidth profiles!?  What is this, the
dark ages?).  The problem as I understand exists within the realm of
the backbone and content where scale is a concern.  And your point
still applies as some explicit value for adequate can be determined,
i.e. 10 or 100g peer and transit links.  Regarding neutrality, if
public megacorp monetizes priority traffic, does that present a moral
hazard for megacorp to allow interface saturation and push more
content into priority service?  What is the high water mark for
priority services reaching best effort behavior, i.e. all traffic is
priority contending for a single queue?  Anyway, I feel like this
horse is dead.  I'd like to talk about neutrality in symmetry on
consumer access services.  I'd gladly trade my 30/5 for 15/15 with the
ability to host services for the ~$60/mo I pay today.

Jason

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com> wrote:
>
> Re: Net Neutrality
>
> In the past all attempts to create a content competitor to the
> internet-at-large -- to create the one true commercial content
> provider -- have failed.
>
> For example, AOL, Prodigy, various "portals", MSN, Netscape, on and
> on. We can split hairs about who goes on the list but the result is
> clear since if even only one qualifies we know it failed. The point
> stands.
>
> To a great extent "net neutrality" (or non-neutrality) is yet another
> attempt to create a content competitor to the internet-at-large.
>
> This doesn't prove it won't work but the track record viewed this way
> is bad: 100% failure rate to date.
>
> Mere bandwidth can foil any such nefarious plans, assuming an
> enforceable zero bandwidth (or nearly so) isn't one of the choices.
>
> But just somewhat less bandwidth or as proposed prioritized bandwidth?
>
> Maybe not a problem/advantage for very long.
>
>   Note: I'm using bandwidth measures below as a stand-in for all
>   possible throughput parameters.
>
> For example if the norm "have-not" bandwidth were 100mb/s but the
> "have" bw was 1gb/s I doubt it would make much difference to many,
> many business models such as news and magazine distribution. Those
> services in general don't even need 100mb/s end to end (barring some
> ramp-up in what they view as service) so what do they care if they
> were excluded from 1gb/s except as a moral calumny?
>
> Do you think you could tell the difference between surfing
> news.google.com at 100mb/s vs 1gb/s? I don't.
>
> And if have-not-bw was 1gb/s and have 10gb/s it would make little
> difference to video stream services except perhaps when someone tried
> to ramp up to 4K or whatever. But, etc., there's always a new horizon,
> or will be for a while.
>
> So the key to network non-neutrality having any effect is bandwidth
> inadequacy for certain competitive business models. It only can exist
> as a business force in a bw-poor world.
>
> Right now the business model of concern is video streaming.
>
> But at what bandwidth is video streaming a non-issue?
>
> That is, I have 100mb/s, you have 1gb/s. We both watch the same
> movie. Do we even notice?  How about 1gb/s vs 10gb/s?
>
> There exists a low and high (practical) bandwidth range within which
> it simply doesn't make any difference to a given business model.
>
> 56kb dial-up is sufficient for displaying 512kx512k images, and 1mb/s
> is luxurious for that application, you couldn't gain a business
> advantage by offering 10mb/s modest-sized image downloads.
>
> There's simply no such open-ended extrapolation. Adequate is adequate.
>
>   The internet views attempts at content monopoly as damage and routes
>   around it.
>
> to paraphrase John Gilmore's famous observation on censorship.
>
>
> P.S. I suppose an up-and-coming bandwidth business model which vastly
> exceeds video streaming is adequate (i.e., frequent and complete)
> "cloud" backup. With cheap consumer disks in the multi-TB range, well,
> do the math.
>
> --
>         -Barry Shein
>
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