Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3)

Scott Helms khelms at zcorum.com
Thu May 15 18:06:24 UTC 2014


Chris,

You're not reading what I said, nor did I make a statement anything like
 one of the silly things you referenced (640k ram etc).  Prioritization
isn't that complex and today we handle the maximum amount of complexity
already since everything is the same priority right now.

You're trying to make the statement that giving multiple content providers
priority somehow makes connectivity unworkable for consumers as if we don't
have this problem already.  Consumers can easily starve themselves of
bandwidth with video or any other content and almost no connections in the
US have any sort of intelligent fair usage buffering provided by the
service provider.  This is true for both cable, telco, and other operators.


Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------


On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists at gmail.com
> wrote:

> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Scott Helms <khelms at zcorum.com> wrote:
> > Its not really that complex, if you think about it having 10000s of
> > 'movieco' with the same priority is the status quo.  At the end of the
> day
> > the QoS mechanics in DOCSIS are pretty straightforward and rely on
> service
> > flows, while service flows can have equal priority I doubt most operators
> > will sell more than a few (perhaps just one) top priority in a given a
> > category.
> >
>
> yes, there will only ever be 5 computers. or you couldn't possibly
> need more than 640kb of ram..... or more than 4billion 'ip addresses'.
>
> I don't think you have to get to more than 10 or 20 of the stated
> examples before things get dicey ... Once a set of customers
> experience (and can measure) the effect, they'll back their complaints
> up to 'moviecompany' and some set of contract penalties will kick in,
> I suspect.
>
> Sure, if there is only one it's not a problem, but there are already
> not just one...
>
> >
> > Scott Helms
> > Vice President of Technology
> > ZCorum
> > (678) 507-5000
> > --------------------------------
> > http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
> > --------------------------------
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Christopher Morrow
> > <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:06 PM, Ryan Brooks <ryan at hack.net> wrote:
> >> > On 5/15/14, 11:58 AM, Joe Greco wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> 2) Netflix purchases 5Mbps "fast lane"
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > I appreciate Joe's use of quotation marks here.    A lot of the dialog
> >> > has
> >> > included this 'fast lane' terminology, yet all of us know there's no
> >> > 'fast
> >> > lane' being constructed, rather just varying degrees of _slow_ applied
> >> > to
> >> > existing traffic.
> >> >
> >>
> >> please correct me if I'm wrong, but 'fast lane' really is (in this
> >> example):
> >>   'cableco' port from 'moviecompany' has 'qos' marking configuration
> >> to set all 'moviecompany' traffic (from this port!) to some priority
> >> level.
> >>
> >>   customer-port to 'cableco' has 'qos' handling/queuing that will
> >> ensure '5mbps' of 'moviecompany' is always going to get down the link
> >> to the customer, regardless of the other traffic the customer is
> >> requesting.
> >>
> >> right? (presume that in the rest of the 'cableco' network is
> >> protecting 'moviecompany' traffic as well, of course)
> >>
> >> So, when there are 1 'moviecompany' things to prioritize and deliver
> >> that's cool... but what about when there are 10? 100? 1000? doesn't
> >> the queuing get complicated? what if the 'cableco' customer with
> >> 10mbps link has 3 people in the location all streaming from 3
> >> different 'moviecompany' organizations which have paid for 'fastlane'
> >> services?
> >>
> >> 3 x 5 == 15 ... not 10. How will 'cableco' manage this when their
> >> 100gbps inter-metro links are seeing +100gbps if 'fastlane' traffic
> >> and 'fastlane' traffic can't make it to the local metro from the
> >> remote one?
> >>
> >> This all seems much, much more complicated and expensive than just
> >> building out networking, which they will have to do in the end anyway,
> >> right? Only with 'fastlanes' there's extra capacity management and
> >> configuration and testing and ... all on top of: "Gosh, does the new
> >> umnptyfart card from routerco actually work in old routerco routers?"
> >>
> >> This looks, to me, like nuttiness... like mutually assured destruction
> >> that the cableco folk are driving both parties into intentionally.
> >>
> >> -chris
> >>
> >> BTW: I didn't use a particular 'cable company' name for 'cableco', nor
> >> did I use a particular streaming media company for 'moviecompany'...
> >> Also, 'cableco' is short-hand for
> >> 'lastmile-consumer-provider-network'. Less typing was better, for me,
> >> I thought.
> >
> >
>



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