Digex transparent proxying

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Proxies are fine WHERE CUSTOMERS HAVE AGREED TO THEIR USE.

STEALING someone's packet flow to force it through a proxy is NOT fine.

I think this is the heart of Karl's argument. (Karl, feel free to correct
me if I'm wrong.) The rest of the rant about how transparent caches, proxy
server, etc. work and other opinions about how the Internet and web content
will look in the future is ... not my concern at present.

But the original topic is of great concern to me. Is there one person on
this list - even someone from DIGEX - who can give me one reason why
altering the destination of a packet a customer paid you to deliver,
without that customer's consent or foreknowledge, is in any way morally or
ethically permissible? Hell, for that matter, is it even legal?

OK, what about class of service? This implies applying different sets
of rules to different class of packet flows, and implictly giving some
flows lower priority and dropping their packets. The key is the customer
expectations, if they expect to lose packets and have slow performance,
they you can probably get away with it.

There is fundenmentally little difference between class of service
and transparent caching.

While I think Digex's move may be a little unusal, I would find
it difficult to believe there is anything contractual or legal that
prevents it.

It seems like a lot of moral grandstanding to me, but I guess I should
be used to that. I would have expected better from most Nanog people
to use this as some sort of "My company is more ethical than your company
forum". The average reader of Nanog is perfectly capable of judging
this for themselvs.

2

[SNIP]

There is fundenmentally little difference between class of service
and transparent caching.

I find that statement false-to-fact. There is a very fundamental
difference. One implies that at least an attempt (however low priority
that attempt is) will be made to deliver all packets to their
*destination*. The other implies that absolutely no attempt will be made
to reach the desired destination in some instances. You honestly do not
see a *fundamental* difference here?

I notice you still have completely avoided answering my question. "Class
of service" is usually negotiated at the time of the contract being signed.
DIGEX has made a *fundamental* change to the service they are providing
their customers with little or no attempt to fully disclose this change in
service to their paying customers. (IMHO, that e-mail posted to NANOG was
a bad attempt at CYA, not a notification to their customers. They probably
plan to point at that e-mail if they ever get hauled into court. I hope it
proves as useless to DIGEX in court as it did to their downstreams in
troubleshooting problems.)

Once again I put the question: Is there ONE PERSON on this list who can
justify this type of behavior? Even someone from DIGEX?

And before anyone goes off once again about how great caching is, I will
once again publicly state that I am not at all opposed to caching - even
forced caching of customers. It's your network, do as you please. But at
the risk of sounding like I am "morally grandstanding", I simply believe
you should TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS before you do something like this. Is that
really too much to expect? Jeremy, you don't think it's unreasonable for
people to follow Best Practices documents. Would you find it unreasonable
for people to disclose these types of *fundamental* changes on their
network to their customers as "best practices"?

While I think Digex's move may be a little unusal, I would find
it difficult to believe there is anything contractual or legal that
prevents it.

Others have disagreed with you. I would have to see DIGEX's contract to be
sure myself.

[SNIP]

It seems like a lot of moral grandstanding to me, but I guess I should
be used to that. I would have expected better from most Nanog people
to use this as some sort of "My company is more ethical than your company
forum". The average reader of Nanog is perfectly capable of judging
this for themselvs.

Heh. Now who's grandstanding?

As for the average NANOG reader, I would have to agree with you that they
are capable of thinking for themselves. And they've probably have already
made up their minds without reading this thread. Which is why I've asked
them to give me some input. Lots of people here have thought about this a
lot more than I have, perhaps they would care to share their thoughts about
this issue?

Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net

TTFN,
patrick