What Net Neutrality should and should not cover

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1

Without the actual proposal being published for review its hard to know the
specifics but it appears that it prohibits blocking and last mile tinkering
of traffic (#1). What this means to me is ISP's can't block access to a
specific website like alibaba and demand ransom from subscribers to access
it again. I do not know if this provision would also include prohibiting
intentionally throttling traffic on a home by home basis (#2) and holding
services to the same kind of random is also prohibited but I think this too
would be a far practice to prohibit. Bits are bits.

From the routers article (

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-usa-fcc-internet-idUSBREA3M1H020140423)
and elsewhere it seems what the proposal does not outlaw is paid
peering
and perhaps use of QoS on networks.

#3 On paid peering:
I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should
be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious
problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential
repercussions that would have. Clearly it would not be fair to for only the
largest content providers to be legally mandated as settlement free peers
because that would leave smaller competitors out in the cold. The only fair
way to outlaw paid peering would be to do it across the board for all
companies big and small. This would be everyone from major content
providers to my uncle to sells hand runs a website to sell hand crafted
chairs. This would have major sweeping repercussions for the Internet as we
know it over night.

I think it makes sense to allow companies to work it out as long as the
prices charged aren't unreasonably high based on market prices for data.
This means if 2 ISP's with similar networks want to be settlement free they
can. If ISP's want to charge for transit they can, and if ISP's want to
charge CDN's to deliver data they can. Typically the company with the
disproportional amount of costs of carrying the traffic would charge the
other company but really it should be up to the companies involved to
decide. Based on the post by Tom Wheeler from the FCC (
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/setting-record-straight-fcc-s-open-internet-rules )
it sounds like if this pricing is "commercially unreasonable" (ie
extortion) they will step in. Again I think this is fair.

#4 On QoS (ie fast lane?):
In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane
traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and
classification marking that would really only become a factor under
instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be
unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at
the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major
networks for several years. I don't see this as the end of the Internet as
we know it that now seems to essentially be popular opinion on the issue.
Numerous businesses are using QoS to protect things like voice traffic and
business critical or emergency traffic from being impacted in a failure
scenario. In modern day hyper converged networks where pretty soon even
mobile voice traffic could be VoIP over a data network prohibiting the use
of all QoS seems irresponsible.

The larger question is, is it fair for ISP's to charge people to be in a
priority other than "best effort"? To answer a question with a question,
if an ISP is using a priority other than "best effort" for some of its own
traffic is it fair if a peer with a competing service is only best effort
delivery? This is sort of akin to Comcast not counting its own video
service against the ~250G/month cap of subscribers but counting off network
traffic against it. In theory if some of an ISP's own services are able to
use higher than best effort priority the same should be available to the
business they are selling service to. If they go completely out of their
way to intentionally congest the network to force people into needing a
higher than best effort classification I would think it should fall into
what the FCC calls "commercially unreasonable" and thus be considered a
violation. So again, I think this is fair.

I have numbered the items I mentioned from 1-4 being
#1. Blocking
#2. per household (last mile) rate limiting of a service (though rate
limiting at all anywhere should probably be up for discussion so #2.5)
#3. The legality of paid peering
#4. The legality of QoS (unless fast lane is something else I don't
understand).

Feel free to augment the list.

2

The current scandal is not about peering, it is last mile ISP double
dipping.
Nick

3

I wish you would expand on that to help me understand where you are coming
from but what I pay my ISP for is simply a pipe, I don't know how it would
make sense logically to assume that every entity I communicate with on the
Internet must be able to connect for free because I am covering the tab as
a subscriber. I am not talking about JUST Netflix here as they are a large
company more capable than some smaller ones at buying their own pipes out
to the world. 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.

Now if we will lets talk about where this concept falls apart. Pretend I
run a lemonade stand and my ISP offers to give it free Internet access, how
generous of them! I then meet a businessman from town who is complaining
about what it costs him to connect to the Internet because he has a lot of
equipment that serves data to people all over the place. I see this as an
opportunity to make more money and I say "hey, they don't charge me at all
for Internet access I will make you a deal, I will connect your equipment
to them for 1/3 what you are paying today". "Good deal" says the
businessman. I eagerly ride my bicycle home, pick up my phone, call my ISP
and tell them the news "Hey, thanks for the free service but I need you to
upgrade my connection x5 because I decided to do content delivery for the
businesses in town". "Oh hell no says my ISP, that was not at all the
agreement, your lemonade stand is still free but if you want us to carry
the extra traffic you have to buy more ports the same as everyone else". I
didn't build a successful lemonade stand because I take being treated like
this sitting down! Our now much larger volume of traffic is slow to the ISP
and they are refusing to upgrade it for free, so I call up the media and
have them run a story about how the ISP is intentionally limiting our
traffic and they simply need to upgrade it for free. People are already
paying for the Internet, if they don't give me my free ride they are double
dipping!

Public opinion is in, that mean ISP should be giving me my free access but
the reality of the situation is perhaps a bit different. My lemonade stand
pulled a coup when it became a content provider and demanded a free ride,
and railroading my ISP for it in the media was probably a dishonest thing
to do. I reluctantly agree to pay them for ports for content I am
delivering but "local businessman" from my town has tasted blood and he's
not done yet "Who else has a lemonade stand with free Internet?!" he
proclaims.

I changed some names to protect the Innocent :slight_smile:

4

#3 On paid peering:
I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should
be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious
problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential
repercussions that would have.

Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're
deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and
the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the
peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay
you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent
interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you
continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice.

What sort of corrupt practice? You might, for example, degrade your
residential customers' speed to the part of the Internet housing a
company you think should pay you for peering. Or permit the link to
deteriorate while energetically upgrading others to keep pace with the
times. Same difference.

This doesn't have to be true. You could bill downstreams for
consumption and exclude the paid peering from that calculation. But
you don't do that. And you aren't planning to.

#4 On QoS (ie fast lane?):
In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane
traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and
classification marking that would really only become a factor under
instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be
unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at
the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major
networks for several years.

It's prevalent on private work networks and users hate it. It
generally disables activities the network owners don't approve of
while engaging in doubletalk about how they're OK with it. Users don't
want to see this migrate outward.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

5

* William Herrin

#3 On paid peering:
I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should
be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious
problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential
repercussions that would have.

Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're
deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and
the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the
peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay
you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent
interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you
continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice.

It's not "just that simple".

If for example you asks for a peering with me, the first thing I'll do
is to take a close look at how the traffic between our two networks is
currently being routed.

If I see that I have no monetary or technical gain from setting up that
peering with you, perhaps because the traffic is currently flowing via
an already existing peering of mine (with your upstream, say), or via a
transit port of mine that's not exceeding its CDR, then I'd probably
want you to at cover my costs of setting up that peering before
accepting, at the very least.

Even if I was exceeding the CDR on my transit ports, it's not at all
certain that accepting a peering with you would even be a break-even
proposition for me. Keep in mind that unlike routers and line cards, IP
transit service *is* dirt cheap these days.

So no, refusing a peering or requiring the would-be peer to pay for the
privilege isn't *necessarily* "corrupt practice". It Depends.

Tore

6

I'd characterize it as an attempt to charge content providers for
access to last mile customers, where those are two different
companies.

Which isn't really different from what you said, just phrased a little
differently.

But more importantly I think it's an attempt to impose a Cable TV (sat
tv, whatever) business model on the internet.

That is, with CATV companies like HBO have to pay companies like
Comcast for access to their cable subscribers.

Since they grew up together it's all fairly symbiotic though we do see
flare-ups like when Time-Warner decided to block CBS over "access"
fees.

Not clear how that would work if imposed on the internet space.

Maybe get ready for basic, premium, and gold internet, gold includes
Netflix streaming AND Amazon shopping! Something like that.

What I'm more, or just as, concerned about is the end of just putting
up a web site and hoping people come to it w/o a lot of capital.

That is, launching a new web site becoming similar to launching a new
cable TV channel (i.e., coordinating with and paying/licensing with
the last-mile provider(s)) rather than whipping together some HTML and
hoping for the best, etc.

7

[...]

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. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Matt

8

That is, with CATV companies like HBO have to pay companies like
Comcast for access to their cable subscribers.

Well, no. According to Time-Warner's 2013 annual report, cable
companies paid T-W $4.89 billion for access to HBO and Cinemax. No
video provider pays for access to cable. The cruddy ones like home
shopping and 24/7 religion have small over the air stations and use
the must-carry rule, everyone else gets paid something, in the case of
ESPN quite a lot. There's a reason that T-W bought HBO and Comcast
bought NBC, to capture all that money they'd been paying out.

There's two separate issues here: one is that the Internet is a
terrible way to deliver video. The Internet part of your cable
connection is about 4 channels out of 500, and each of the other 496
is streaming high quality video. That little bit of Internet is
designed for transactions (DNS, IM) and file transfer (mail and web),
not streaming, so when you do stream it is jittery and lossy.
Furthermore, nobody uses multicasting, if 400 customers on the same
cable system are watching Game of Thrones, there's 400 copies of it
cluttering up the tubes.

In a non-stupid world, the cable companies would do video on demand
through some combination of content caches at the head end or, for
popular stuff, encrypted midnight downloads to your DVR, and the
cablecos would split the revenue with content backends like Netflix.
But this world is mostly stupid, the cable companies never got VOD, so
you have companies like Netflix filling the gap with pessimized
technology. (I do see that starting tomorrow, there will be a Netflix
channel on three small cablecos including RCN, delivered via TiVo,
although it's not clear if the delivery channel will change.)

The other issue is that due to regulatory failure, cable companies are
an oligopoly, and in most areas a local monopoly, so Comcast has the
muscle to shake down Internet video providers. That's not a technical
problem, it's a political one. In Europe, where DSL is a lot faster
than here, carriage and content are separate and there are a zillion
DSL providers. We could do that here if the FCC weren't so spineless.

R's,
John

9

At some point some the MSOs and telcos tried selling CDN to the streaming video people and they didn't want to partake. It was cheaper for them to keep streaming it off 3rd party CDNs. There are also some weird (dumb) legal/contractual issues around Netflix (or some other video provider) negotiated content residing on a box or even within a datacenter of another company who also has contracts with the content owner.

All cable VOD for some time has been a distributed CDN albeit proprietary and ultimately delivered via QAMs, and still unicast. There are caches in headends and even further down in the access networks. The next generation of that is HTTP based though so any normal HTTP cache can be used. Comcast has contributed a bit to Apache Traffic Server as it plays a part in their next-gen video service delivery.

I'd love to see wholesale networks. We saw that with DSL in the US quite a bit but eventually it all died out, and I highly doubt the ones running the networks would have allowed video services. All IP will happen on cable and once that happens most of the barriers to wholesale go away. So in 15 years things may be different. :slight_smile:

Phil

10

I agree with all this, even the parts that disagree with me.

   -b

11

Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're deliberately

billing two customers for the same byte

I think this statement is a little short sighted if not a bit naive. What
both parties are sold is a pipe that carries data. A subscriber has one,
Netflix has one. They are different bandwidths, at different locations, and
have different costs.

Where your statement is short sighted I already explained partly in saying
its too difficult to decide who gets a free ride and who gets the bill so I
challenge you to propose an actual policy that prohibits charging for
peering that doesn't have major unintended consequences. All in all I am
sort of disappointed to find so few rational opinions around here. One of
the few decent articles I have read on it is here:
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html

I think if you make a law that says all content providers big and small get
free pipes and the residential subscribers of broadband must pay the tab
the cost of broadband in the US compared to the rest of the world
skyrocket.

I also think the practice of paying an intermediary ISP a per Mbps rate in
order to get to a last mile ISP over a settlement free agreement is also a
bit disingenuous in cases where the amount of traffic is sufficient enough
to fill multiple links. Theoretically there are many times where the
intermediary ISP can hand off the traffic to a last mile ISP in exactly the
same building they received it in so they have very few of the costs of
actually delivering the traffic yet are the only party receiving money from
the content provider for delivery. This arrangement makes sense when the
traffic to the last mile ISP is a percentage of one link but after enough
links are involved the intermediary ISP is serving no real other purpose
than as a loophole used to circumvent paid peering fees (right or wrong).

I think if paid peering were made illegal overnight for companies big or
small the landscape of the Internet would be completely redrawn and not for
the better. I honestly think what last mile ISP's should do in this
situation is to offer to provide transit for content delivery for a low
cost. They generally have available outbound capacity to other networks and
they can play the "settlement free only" card back at some of the companies
they are in dispute with. If nothing else it would result in having similar
traffic profiles and settlement free would start to make more sense so
everybody wins.

12

#4 On QoS (ie fast lane?):
In some of the articles I skimmed there was a lot of talk about fast lane
traffic but what this sounds like today would be known as QoS and
classification marking that would really only become a factor under
instances of congestion. The tech bloggers and journalists all seems to be
unanimously opposed to this but I admit I am sort of scratching my head at
the outrage over something that has been in prevalent use on many major
networks for several years.

It's prevalent on private work networks and users hate it. It
generally disables activities the network owners don't approve of
while engaging in doubletalk about how they're OK with it. Users don't
want to see this migrate outward.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

A couple of things come into play here, I think:

1. Prevalence of congestion on shared-bandwidth media, e.g. cable.
2. Who controls the QoS?

A thumbsuck seems to indicate that #1 is high or at least significant enough to cause user-visible impact in e.g. places where cable internet providers in the US don't face any real competition. So, QoS measures can come into play in those locales/situations.

For #2: QoS is good. Deciding which traffic gets passed and which dropped in congestion is, in and of itself, a good ability to have and can be a great value-added service. "You want to run VoIP on the same line as your regular data but want to ensure your VoIP traffic gets through? No problem: Here's our QoS-Extraordinaire service!" The concern comes from the direction the rules seem to be taking on this in shifting control/input on how QoS is applied from (a) just ensuring network-control doesn't get drowned out and (b) a value-add service where the customer picks their traffic prioritization, to an external party paying for preferred access to the BB-provider's customers. As a customer of BB-provider, this means that someone else now has control over how my packets get delivered based on a deal they cut with BB-provider. It's not about helping the end-user: It's about enriching BB-provider. It's another situation of opening up a two-sided market and fostering a situation where established players on the content side who can afford to pay BB-providers A through ZZ get beneficial treatment and there can be a larger barrier to entry to the markets occupied by those players.

Yes, QoS should only come into play where congestion is involved. But, from experience we can see there are ways to let BE traffic degrade to affect e.g. latency-sensitive traffic without having to actively throttle it. Sure: the "commercially unreasonable" clauses *should* protect against that to a degree, but that's a very vague definition that creates a lot more regulatory overhead. Rather than saying "you're not allowed to accept payment to prioritize one content provider's traffic over another's," the FCC would now have to investigate this situations on a case by case basis to determine if a specific situation is "commercially unreasonable". So; basically, how much confidence do we have in the FCC's capacity/competence in enforcement of those types of regulations? We could also tack on that this could create a "barn door" situation, where lax or vague rules go into effect, "the market decides", and then we have a helluva time trying to stuff the cat back in the bag because at that point this type of preferential treatment would already be an established/common practice.

13

No one is suggesting that all content providers get a 'free ride', let alone a legally-mandated free ride. Giving last-mile providers an implicit (if not explicit) OK to bill providers whose content happens to be popular with the last-mile providers' customers sets a horrible precedent.

Content providers have infrastructure costs, just like last-mile ISPs. Your arguments seem to ignore that minor point. Those cost cover different things than what a last-mile ISP would need to cover, but they have costs nonetheless. They either pay other providers to haul their bits to other networks or they build infrastructure to locations that allow them to peer with providers. That could be to a mutually-agreed meet point for private peering, or it could be to an exchange point to peer with other providers who have a presence at the same exchange point.

Look at the Peering DB. In general, you will see that content networks have more open peering policies than eyeball networks. It's in their best interests to get as topologically close to their consumers as possible. Some transit networks do the same, but that's a much more variable picture.

jms

14

Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're

deliberately

billing two customers for the same byte

Where your statement is short sighted I already explained partly in

saying

its too difficult to decide who gets a free ride and who gets the bill

so I

challenge you to propose an actual policy that prohibits charging for
peering that doesn't have major unintended consequences. All in all I am
sort of disappointed to find so few rational opinions around here. One of
the few decent articles I have read on it is here:

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html

I think if you make a law that says all content providers big and small

get

free pipes and the residential subscribers of broadband must pay the tab
the cost of broadband in the US compared to the rest of the world
skyrocket.

No one is suggesting that all content providers get a 'free ride', let

alone a legally-mandated free ride. Giving last-mile providers an implicit
(if not explicit) OK to bill providers whose content happens to be popular
with the last-mile providers' customers sets a horrible precedent.

Content providers have infrastructure costs, just like last-mile ISPs.

Your arguments seem to ignore that minor point. Those cost cover different
things than what a last-mile ISP would need to cover, but they have costs
nonetheless. They either pay other providers to haul their bits to other
networks or they build infrastructure to locations that allow them to peer
with providers. That could be to a mutually-agreed meet point for private
peering, or it could be to an exchange point to peer with other providers
who have a presence at the same exchange point.

Look at the Peering DB. In general, you will see that content networks

have more open peering policies than eyeball networks. It's in their best
interests to get as topologically close to their consumers as possible.
Some transit networks do the same, but that's a much more variable picture.

jms

I'm sorry but all this talk of lemonade stands and metaphors is giving me a
headache.

It really is a simple case of supply and demand.

You have four actors who may or may not be the same entity ( example:
transit provider who is also your isp ).

1) User

Who shops around to get the best isp who has the access he wants at the
best price. This user does not need to know about transit and peering
agreements because if they can not get their content they should, in a
perfect world, choose an ISP who will.

2) ISP - For User / Content provider

An ISP should recognize the needs of their customers and seek out the best
relationships that will keep their customers paying them. These
relationships should be formed out of mutual self interest either for pay
or swap arrangements. The ISP should terminate / form new relationships
with other providers that are in the best interest of their customers
because their business should depend on being the best ISP available and
keeping their customer's happy.

3) Transit provider

A transit provider who may or may not be one or both of the ISPs of a user
or content provider. Should form as many interesting and useful
relationships to make themselves attractive to other providers. If they
aren't providing competitive offers no ISP or other provider would want to
make arrangements with them and their business fails.

4) Content provider

These are the people who have what the users want. Their offerings compel
users to sign up to ISPs which pay for transit who allow access to content.
Content providers should partner themselves with the best ISP(s) or transit
providers that give their content the largest reach to the most users at
the best price. Content providers should use their content and money to
make the best arrangements for their business or it dies. They should not
have to worry about being strong armed for being successful because the
market should be self adjusting. Example: if transfer fees go up and a
better contract can't be sourced or arranged either the content provider
re-thinks their pricing model or their business dies and should die since
it would no longer be sustainable.

In all cases each actor is paying their way making relationships that are
best for their business with the immediate link or links in the chain of
communication for delivering content.

At this point we have to assume it is cost prohibitive for all content
providers to form direct end to end relationships with all or majority of
all users.

Unfortunately this nice friendly free market of opportunity isn't true and
because of that you now have actors starting to abuse their position. Which
based on history shouldn't be a real shock.

In an alarmingly high number of cases a user only has one high speed ISP to
choose from. This allows that ISP to play a game of chicken with everyone.
Since users have lost the right to choose, because of reasons outside of
their control, we are all going to if not already suffering. These type of
single ISP only use cases leads to hard to prove artificial limitations
that lead to arguments that go no where. Example: users who report Netflix
has poor quality of service on their open ISP connection but good quality
of service on a VPN running over that same connection because the VPN's ISP
is running their business correctly.

When last mile ISPs no longer have pressure or over-sight to maintain a
business model that puts user's needs first, because a happy user is a
returning user, you now have an entity who will do anything for a dollar as
long as it can't be proved illegal for the moment. It also completely
removes any incentive to upgrade as such ISP's real product transforms from
the internet connectivity they provide their users to the now locked in
users themselves. I would not be surprised if more money is now being spent
maintaining/ supporting anti-competitive legislation than on network and
infrastructure upgrades/costs.

Transit providers, content providers, and other ISPs should be scared
because if this goes on much longer you will now have the digital
equivalent of the mutually assured destruction (MAD) policy which in the
end everyone loses.

Some points I want to make very clear:

1) Everyone SHOULD pay but no one should be forced to pay twice and their
should be some anti-competitive checks/balance like we have for other areas
of our lives.

2) Last mile ISPs should absolutely use their user base as a bargaining
device only as long as they don't damage or reduce their primary goal which
is to provide said users with internet connectivity.

3) In this day of technology and innovation there should be no reason why a
user can't have choices. Plenty of regions have found a way to share. At
the very least local government should work with their population to find a
solution that suits their needs first and not only a private for-profit
entity. This may be through offering incentives, fair access policies, or
even full blown installs that anyone can offer service over.

-Kris

15

I wish you would expand on that to help me understand where you are coming
from but what I pay my ISP for is simply a pipe, I don't know how it would
make sense logically to assume that every entity I communicate with on the
Internet must be able to connect for free because I am covering the tab as
a subscriber.

0) No you're not. What you are covering is a percentage of the aggregate use model - the problem is what happens when you using 3% of your local end-node service capability run into the other 300 people who want to do the same. The use fees dont cover the bulk transit that is generally controlled through backhaul agreements so...

  I am not talking about JUST Netflix here as they are a large
company more capable than some smaller ones at buying their own pipes out
to the world.

1) The pipe issue is that of the last mile providers and not Netflix. The issue is the failure of the IETF to put controls in place which address this.

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.

How so? You are paying for the individual routing of data to that independent end node per the contract. If Grandma's cell and yours was covered under the same use contracts or shared minutes contract then that would make sense but otherwise they are independent services and whether that person is family or not they are a separate account - and billing. Hence 2 bills there.

2) The idea pertains to the concept that "everyone has a digital persona and that persona is legally real", i.e. it has similar rights to their physical persona. In places like France this is now law.

Now if we will lets talk about where this concept falls apart. Pretend I
run a lemonade stand and my ISP offers to give it free Internet access, how
generous of them! I then meet a businessman from town who is complaining
about what it costs him to connect to the Internet because he has a lot of
equipment that serves data to people all over the place. I see this as an
opportunity to make more money and I say "hey, they don't charge me at all
for Internet access I will make you a deal, I will connect your equipment
to them for 1/3 what you are paying today". "Good deal" says the
businessman. I eagerly ride my bicycle home, pick up my phone, call my ISP
and tell them the news "Hey, thanks for the free service but I need you to
upgrade my connection x5 because I decided to do content delivery for the
businesses in town". "Oh hell no says my ISP, that was not at all the
agreement, your lemonade stand is still free but if you want us to carry
the extra traffic you have to buy more ports the same as everyone else".

3) So the other issue is the Use Contract you have most likely has a no-commercial or minimum commercial use clause in the licensing agreement. Likely also a no-resale as a service as well in the same agreement so what they actually say is "How long have you been doing this?" and you reply you have been testing it for a month now. So they send you a bill and when you as the Lemonade stand operator get it and choke, and then call them - they say "have you read the no resale clause in the contract?" and its over.

  I
didn't build a successful lemonade stand because I take being treated like
this sitting down! Our now much larger volume of traffic is slow to the ISP
and they are refusing to upgrade it for free, so I call up the media and
have them run a story about how the ISP is intentionally limiting our
traffic and they simply need to upgrade it for free.

4) Yes you do - and you scream how this is also racial profiling because anyone who hates lemonade is unAmerican or un-something.

People are already
paying for the Internet, if they don't give me my free ride they are double
dipping!

How so - how are people already paying for the service you are now talking about selling which you are taking from someone else in violation of their provisioning agreement?

Public opinion is in, that mean ISP should be giving me my free access but
the reality of the situation is perhaps a bit different. My lemonade stand
pulled a coup when it became a content provider and demanded a free ride,
and railroading my ISP for it in the media was probably a dishonest thing
to do.

How so? Again - your stand is a bandwidth thief and your business is breaking the terms of its end-user agreement with the ISP as well.

16

It's totally unclear to me that the IETF is the one who failed to put
controls in place. If they were able to mandate anything, BCP38 wouldn't
be an issue.

17

I think the problem is simply a lack of competition and the rise of,
in effect, vertical trusts. That is, content providers also
controlling last-mile services.

What exists is rife with conflict of interest and unfair market
power. Particularly in that wire-plants are generally protected
monopolies or small-N oligopolies.

The wire-plant* operators and content providers need to be separated
and competition needs to be mandated by allowing easy and fair access
to wire-plants.

Wire-plant operators should be closely regulated. Content providers
should not, in general, be regulated.

* Which of course may not involve any actual wires but it's a term of
art, L1/L2 if you prefer.

18

Barry Shein wrote:

I think the problem is simply a lack of competition and the rise of,
in effect, vertical trusts. That is, content providers also
controlling last-mile services.

What exists is rife with conflict of interest and unfair market
power. Particularly in that wire-plants are generally protected
monopolies or small-N oligopolies.

The wire-plant* operators and content providers need to be separated
and competition needs to be mandated by allowing easy and fair access
to wire-plants.

Wire-plant operators should be closely regulated. Content providers
should not, in general, be regulated.

* Which of course may not involve any actual wires but it's a term of
art, L1/L2 if you prefer.

I kind of think Layer 3 - metropolitan area IP carriage seems to be where the issues converge. Somehow the notion of multiple IP providers, operating across unbundled fiber, doesn't seem to work out in practice.

Yes, there are a few municipal networks that provide Ethernet VPNs as the basic block of unbundled service - with multiple players providing various Internet (IP), video, and voice services on their own VPNs; and there are some networks, particularly in Canada, where the unit of unbundling is a wavelength, on a common fiber/conduit plant; but in most cases, economies of scale seem to dictate a single IP-layer fabric for a geographic area. (Think campus and enterprise networks.)

Miles Fidelman

19

I think Kristopher's email was a fantastic description of the situation,
but I'd like to make one minor correction: "you now have an entity who will
do anything for a dollar" full stop.

Recent US antitrust litigation has tended towards penalties like "promise
to stop doing that, and make sure the lawyers get paid." (Sometimes the
initial penalty is much higher, but it gets reduced on appeal.) Nobody
goes to jail and the financial penalties don't threaten the profits gained
from the illegal behavior.

If a corporation stands to make a few extra billion dollars a year from
illegal behavior... their "worst case" outcome is they're fined $100
million and told to cut it out... and there's a good chance they can
postpone this outcome by spending $18.8 million a year on lobbying... you
do the math (because they certainly have).

(All numbers made up except the $18.8MM which is in fact what Comcast spent
on lobbying last year.)

              -Robert.-

20

Barry Shein wrote:

I think the problem is simply a lack of competition and the rise of,
in effect, vertical trusts. That is, content providers also
controlling last-mile services.

What exists is rife with conflict of interest and unfair market
power. Particularly in that wire-plants are generally protected
monopolies or small-N oligopolies.

The wire-plant* operators and content providers need to be separated
and competition needs to be mandated by allowing easy and fair access
to wire-plants.

Wire-plant operators should be closely regulated. Content providers
should not, in general, be regulated.

* Which of course may not involve any actual wires but it's a term of
art, L1/L2 if you prefer.

I kind of think Layer 3 - metropolitan area IP carriage seems to be where the issues converge. Somehow the notion of multiple IP providers, operating across unbundled fiber, doesn’t seem to work out in practice.

It’s working quite well in areas where it’s been tried in earnest.

Yes, there are a few municipal networks that provide Ethernet VPNs as the basic block of unbundled service - with multiple players providing various Internet (IP), video, and voice services on their own VPNs; and there are some networks, particularly in Canada, where the unit of unbundling is a wavelength, on a common fiber/conduit plant; but in most cases, economies of scale seem to dictate a single IP-layer fabric for a geographic area. (Think campus and enterprise networks.)

If you build out a fiber plant with home runs to colocation facilities where providers can meet subscriber lines, the economies of scale can generally work and do in some areas.

While active ethernet to the subscriber isn’t necessarily viable, GPON with the splitter at the MMR is just as viable as GPON with the splitter in the neighborhood. This was, in fact, discussed at length a while back on this very list.

Owen