Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

Sat Feb 28 11:11:51 UTC 2015

On 28/Feb/15 11:29, Owen DeLong wrote:
> This is where I disagree with you.
>
> Look at it this way… I bet even you consume far more content than you produce. Everyone does. It is the nature of any one to many relationship.

You are assuming that I am the one, personally, producing that content.

In the future, if the uplink is large enough, it may be our devices
doing the producing, and not the humans who own them. Is that feasible?
Certainly. Is it happening now? Not nearly enough, even if the tech. is
already there.

Between humans and devices, there could be an equilibrium between
production and consumption. It's hard to say. My point is, let's not use
yesterday's assumptions for today's or tomorrow's movement. Almost
everything else has moved on (or is moving on).

But I won't labour the point so much. In my part of the world, we are
deploying fibre into areas and customers that have been traditionally
served by asymmetric bandwidth. So in a couple of months or years, I'll
be able to tell you what effect that has had on eye-ball patterns.
Nothing like experience...
>
>
> If you have an example of any concept of an application where an end-user is likely to need the same amount of bandwidth upstream as they do downstream, I’m all ears. Your first example utterly failed. Do you have a better example to offer?

That is your point of view, Owen. Which I respect. I don't expect that
we'll agree on all things, or even anything :-).

Rather than talk so much about it, I am going to do it and see what
happens. That, for me, is my point. If others can join, that'll be great!
> Even phones consume asymmetrically and almost entirely down-stream.

I was speaking about the evolution of expected usage patterns of a
traditionally voice and SMS mobile network, not the 2G/3G/4G data
(a)symmetry.

Oh well...
> I’m all for bigger uplink pipes, but insisting on symmetry is absurd.

I agree that one does not need symmetry at all times. But the potential
to guarantee symmetry is good enough; or rather, the potential to limit
degradation of symmetry in the upward direction is important, purely
from a technology or hardware standpoint.

That is why, in my trial, we are pushing Ethernet on Active-E, and not
anything else. We are less likely to fail at the symmetry game if we
pushed any other tech. It does not mean that 1:1 symmetry is absolutely
necessary for sustained performance, it just means you remove that issue
from the equation Day 1.
> Not sure what you mean by “degraded in a way that would make you happy”.

On GPON, 30Mbps up, 100Mbps down seems reasonable. But because the
uplink on GPON is asymmetric, that 30Mbps uplink could quickly disappear
as the network is subscribed.

On Active-E, 100Mbps up, 100Mbps down seems reasonable. Degradation of
the uplink is a lot less likely due to the tech. (ceteris paribus). So
if uplink degradation on an Active-E network were to occur, that 100Mbps
would degrade a lot better than the 30Mbps on a GPON would. That's what
I mean.
>
> This makes no sense whatsoever.

I'll leave you to work it out...

Mark.