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Net Neutrality vs. Technical Reality
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jun 15, 2008 01:31 PM
from the in-this-corner-weighing-61-trillion-dollars dept.
from the in-this-corner-weighing-61-trillion-dollars dept.
penciling_in writes "CircleID has a post by Richard Bennett, one of the panelists in the recent Innovation forum on open access and net neutrality — where Google announced their upcoming throttling detector. From the article: 'My name is Richard Bennett and I'm a network engineer. I've built networking products for 30 years and contributed to a dozen networking standards, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi. I was one of the witnesses at the FCC hearing at Harvard, and I wrote one of the dueling Op-Ed's on net neutrality that ran in the Mercury News the day of the Stanford hearing. I'm opposed to net neutrality regulations because they foreclose some engineering options that we're going to need for the Internet to become the one true general-purpose network that links all of us to each other, connects all our devices to all our information, and makes the world a better place. Let me explain ...' This article is great insight for anyone for or against net neutrality."
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Google To Develop ISP Throttling Detector 198 comments
bigwophh writes "Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt — Senior Policy Director for Google — announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs."
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Open source throttling detector? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open source throttling detector? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Multicast? (Score:4, Insightful)
He completely ignores multicast in the paragraph about HTDV being trouble for the Internet, and someone should at least explain why it's not relevant. Otherwise it kind of sinks his battleship w/r/t that argument, IMO.
Re:Multicast? (Score:5, Interesting)
Multicast only works if internet TV is going to be like regular TV where a show is aired at a particular time. If it's going to be more like youtube on steroids multicast doesn't help.
Parent
Re:Multicast? (Score:4, Informative)
But the problem with multicasting is not that there are no tools, but it is not 'neutrally' implemented across different carriers that deploy access networks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Multicast? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This should already help right ?
Re:Multicast? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want on-demand, and NO local storage, then you are indeed in trouble.
Parent
I Oppose The Argument Against Net Neutraility Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
We supposedly have Truth in Advertising laws already on the books, but super-fast, all-you-can-eat, Internet connections are still being advertised. I'd start by applying the existing law to those claims.
I'd like to be sold a truthful amount of bandwidth (DSL tends to be more honest in this area than cable), and not some inflated peak amount that I can only hit when going to the cable sponsored local bandwidth tester site. And when I have that honest amount of bandwidth available to me, I want to be the one to set the QoS levels of my traffic within that bandwidth amount - not the cable company. When I know what I have available to me, then I can best allocate how to use it.
First the cable companies started killing BT, and other filesharing apps to some lesser degree. I believe that to have been a Red Herring. When that was complained loudly about they offered to just cap usage in general, instead of limiting certain bandwidth-intensive applications.
Who does this benefit? The cable companies, of course. Think of the business they're in. They deliver video. But so do a lot of other people on the Internet. Kill everybody else's video feeds because that is the high bandwidth application for the rest of us and pretty soon you'll only be able to receive uninterrupted HD video over your broadband connection from your local cable company. They will become a monopoly in video distribution (and charge every provider for distributing their videos), and all because we insisted that they throttle all traffic equally on their vastly oversold networks.
All they're waiting for is DOCSIS 3.0 to roll out so that they can promise us even more bandwidth that we can't use since they won't even let us used our promised current bandwidth under DOCSIS 2.0. A royal screwing is on its way if your cable ISP in particular isn't clamped down on hard by the federal government by way of the FCC.
And why does it have to be the federal government and the FCC. Because the cable companies have already managed to get all local regulation preempted by the federal government to avoid more stringent local rules, so the feds are the only ones left who are allowed to do it!
Re:I Oppose The Argument Against Net Neutraility L (Score:4, Insightful)
It wouldn't do any good, because of the weasel words in the advertisements. You see, they don't say you'll get N Mbits/second, they say, "...up to N Mbits/second." And, what they say is true, because your equipment is capable of handling that much bandwidth and your cable connection can carry it if it's provided. Of course, what they don't tell you is that they don't have enough bandwidth available to give every customer a connection like that, so the fact that your equipment could handle it is irrelevant. It's just like a car manufacturer telling you that their newest line can go from 0->150 mph in X seconds, but not reminding you that the legal limit is 65. What they say is true, even though they don't tell you all the truth.
Parent
I guess I don't understand. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I guess I don't understand. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it seems to me you understand it perfectly. However TFA seems to be blurring the lines between net neutrality and treating traffic differently. For instance if it were technically necessary to treat all Voice packets as high priority (it seems it isn't as VoIP works, but for the sake of argument) then there's nothing to stop a standard being agreed and implemented on a neutral internet, just so long as the voice packets are treated the same no matter who is sending and receiving them.
Parent
Bang-on. (Score:5, Insightful)
(A non-type-neutral net has some of its own problems, but not the same ones as a non-source-destination-neutral net, and there's a good argument that the latter is more important.)
Parent
Missing the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably most of us agree with that statement in principle. The problem is that the various players in this (users, content providers, and network operators) do not have their objectives aligned. Thus, the engineers for the network operator will come up with a solution (e.g. throttling) that solves the network company's problem (users using too much of the bandwidth they (over)sold), but the engineers working for the users (e.g. people writing P2P apps) will engineer for a different objective (maximum transfer rates), and will even engineer workarounds to the 'solutions' being implemented by the network.
The problem is thus that everyone is engineering in a fundamentally adversarial way, and this will continue so long as the objectives of all parties are not aligned. Ideally, legislation would help enforce this alignment: for instance, by legally mandating an objective (e.g. requiring ISPs to be transparent in their throttling and associated advertising), or funding an objective (e.g. "high-speed access for everyone"), or by just making illegal one of the adversarial actions (e.g. source-specific throttling).
This is not purely an engineering question. The networks have control of one of the limited resources in this game (the network of cables already underground; and the rights required to lay/replace cables), and this imbalance in power may require laws to prevent abuse. It's not easy to create (or enforce) the laws... and ideally the laws would be informed by the expertise of engineers (and afford ways for smarter future solutions to be implemented)... but suggesting that we should just let everyone 'engineer' the solution misses the mark. Whose engineers? Optimizing for what goal? Working under what incentives?
Put more simply: engineering is always bound by laws.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Parent post has to be one of the most clear, cogent, and effective rebuttals of the arguments made in the original article. One must always be mindful to consider the social, economic, and regulatory environment in which engineers--and by extension, the technologies they create--operate. And the author of the article simply fails to do this by viewing the problem as (in the words of parent post) "purely an engineering question."
I had mod points a few days ago but they expired. So this is my way of ma
No net neutrality these past 5 years has meant... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No net neutrality these past 5 years has meant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their intended path optimizes the Internet in their own favor, and works against the Internet as a whole. They're saying, "Yes, we like the Internet. But you're going to like our take on the Internet even better, want it or not." They're bundling "their way" over what should be a common carrier type situation.
So, it is like asking, "No net neutrality for telephone calls over the past 5 years has meant... what exactly?" Nothing, because the telephone companies have kept with the status quo, and not introduced 'features' that degrade the overall value of the network. Were they to announce an intent to do this, you'd see telephone neutrality legislation bounced around.
"But we don't need telephone neutrality legislation! If you legislate the telephone system, then it will kill innovation!" See? We're blaming the wrong folks here. It isn't the customers or the legislators. It is the carrier rocking the boat, and then crying foul when people try to address their money making schemes.
Parent
Re:No net neutrality these past 5 years has meant. (Score:4, Insightful)
Either your trolling or live in a cave.
Parent
I'm not sure if I like his alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the "industry" he's talking about are the corporations that control large chunks of the infrastructure. As we've established time and time again, those corporations aren't acting in the public interest. Their only interest is in what makes their corporation the largest profit. To those interests, blocking competing services or forcing popular websites to pay more to stay online are quite reasonable things to do.
This is why net neutrality is such an important idea. Look at what has been accomplished so far with our "ad hoc" arrangement of computers connected to a crazy quilt of networks. All that you see is just the beginning - but a better future will never come to pass if the corporate interests are allowed to filter / segregate / block network traffic.
Think about it for a minute: consider AT&T. They own a substantial amount of internet infrastructure and they're also the major telephone company. When they look at Skype and discuss how to limit the loss of business to this competitor - you'd better believe they consider blocking VOIP on the backbone. Call it a benefit to the customer and put a competitor out of business; another good day in corporate headquarters.
Companies can't be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
But we know these companies are instead targeting packets that they see as business competitors, so they are not making sound technical decisions. I say it's better to make it harder for a perfect network than to allow corporate interests to balkanize the internet for their greedy purposes.
So Non-Neutrality solves problems ?! (Score:4, Informative)
One word: Multicast [wikipedia.org] .
Net neutrality is a matter of antitrust (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore because the communications infrastructure is partially government funded, and as the radio frequencies are government controlled through the FCC , the "free market" argument doesn't hold water. There are numerous barriers to entry into the ISP market, both government imposed as well as technical ones, and thus coercive monopolies will be able to form unless actively restrained by the government.
This doesn't necessarily say much about HOW you should regulate the market, but it pretty much implies that simply leaving ISPs to screw over customers and smaller competitors is a big no-no. Completely free unregulated markets only work when there are low barriers to entry, many suppliers, no external costs or benefits, perfect customer insight into the market, completely homogeneous and equivalent services being offered, zero cost of switching supplier, and no barriers to trade. The number of markets in which that applies can be counted on fewer hands than most people have.
Neutrality means different things (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially offensive is any sort of attempt at frustrating the dissemination of content based on political bias. The cable companies that own most of the broadband ISP's would love to model the Internet after their cable TV business. They have a news product that has done just a terrific job at political neutrality, and they would love to extend that model to Internet services.
300 baud (Score:3, Insightful)
What crap (Score:5, Interesting)
The effen telcos already got paid 200 billion dollars to do something about getting fiber to the premises and blew it on anything but that. Where's the "political engineering" solution to look into that to determine where the "QOS" broke down at ISP intergalatic central? Where are the ISP and telco fatcats sitting in front of congressional hearings explaining what happened to all that freekin money? Where did it go, real facts, real names, real figures.
And why in the hell does the bulk of the public air wave spectrum only go to the same billion dollar corporations, year after decade after generation, instead of being turned loose for everyone-you know, that "public" guy- to use and develop on? Why the hell do we even *need* ISPs anymore for that matter? This is the 21 st century, there are tons of alternative ways to move data other than running them through ISP and telco profitable choke points, and all I am seeing is them scheming on how to turn the internet into another bastardized combination of the effen telco "plans" and cable TV "plans". Really, what for?
Where's the meshnetworking using long range free wireless and a robust 100% equal client / server model that we could be using instead of being forced through the middle man of isps and telcos for every damn single packet? And what mastermind thought it was a good idea to let them wiggle into the content business? That's a big part of the so called problem there, they want to be the tubes plus be the tube contents, and triple charge everyone, get paid both ends of the connection and a middle man handling fee for..I don't know, but that is what they are on the record wanting, and industry drools like this doofus are providing their excuses. Not content with hijacking all the physical wired reality, for 100 years now, they get to hijack all the useful wireless spectrum, and no, WIFI DOESN'T CUT IT. That's at the big fat joke level in the spectrum for any distance.
Net Neutrality is about censorship, not QoS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I hope he's not referring to QoS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I hope he's not referring to QoS... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words they use it more or less for what it's supposed to be for- to *make* stuff *work* rather than deliberately breaking stuff.
I think Richard Bennett thinks it's OK to break stuff if it allows the telecoms company to make money, he seems to think that they don't make enough or something, and he's quite happy for that to be at the expense of the users online experience
Parent
duopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
(That's more than 50 per state, so if you don't patronize one, it's not their fault.) That's hardly a duopoly situation.
It is a duopoly if you only have 2 choices for broadband, and many don't have 2 choices. If you're lucky you have a choice for cable and dsl, many can't get either, and even if you can sign up with a third party ISP they still use either the cableco's or telco's lines.
Rather, it's greed on the part of some bandwidth hogging users
No it's greed on the part of access providers. Nothing made them offer unlimited access plans, but once people took them up on the offer they are crying. It's nothing more than offering more than they can provide and that's a problem of their own making.
Now, if they want to start charging some people more for using more bandwidth then I want them to pay back the billions of taxpayer dollars [newnetworks.com] they got in subsidies to build out their infrastructure. They took the taxpayers' money and used it to boost their bottom line without doing what they were given the money do to.
FalconParent
No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Interesting)
A simplified economic model of the Internet calls for multiple level of service providers that sell bandwidth to each other. So I, as your ISP / backbone provider make as much money as bandwidth you can use. I have the option of enabling a technology that allows you to be more efficient and use less bandwidth, therefore pay me less. Meanwhile, this technology offers no benefits for me, in fact costs me money, the money needed to implement it and manage it.
To add insult to injury, this technology works properly only if all the hops between you and your destination have deployed it correctly. So a bunch of telcos who's primary business is selling bandwidth must go trough hoops to make your data transfer more efficient. No, it's not gonna happen.
To be successful, Multicast must be completely redesigned from an economical perspective such as to provide a immediate benefit for the provider that uses it (if this is at all possible), without reducing his revenue potential.
Parent
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Interesting)
A related point that seems to run through the article is that more bandwidth is not the solution. But he doesn't explain why - for example
It's interesting to note that ATT themselves have declared more bandwidth to be the solution. They didn't phrase it quite that way, but ultimately that's the conclusion an educated reader can draw from their research results. 1x the bandwidth of a 'managed network' requires 2x the bandwidth in a 'neutral network' to achieve the same throughputs, etc. Sounds like a lot, but then you realize that bandwidth costs are not linear, nor are management costs. In fact, they tend to operate in reverse economies of scale - bandwidth gets cheaper the more you buy (think of it as complexity O(x+n) due to fixed costs and the simple 1 to 1 nature of links), but management gets more expensive the more you do it because the 1-to-1 nature of links gets subsumed by having to manage the effects of all connections on each other n-to-n style for O(x+n^2). Ars Technica analysis of ATT report [arstechnica.com]
Parent
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is subtle, and I've only seen it now that I read the TFA although I've experienced it with our internet connection at work.
The sliding window mechanism of sending packets before the ACK of the previous one until you get NACK and then back off has an unpleasant side-effect. An ACK train coming back over three hops from the local P2P clients or ISP-based servers moves faster than one heading across the world over 16 hops with higher ping times. Therefore the sliding window opens more and the traffic over the three hops can dominate the link.
Now add that problem with BitTorrent clients reported earlier that try for max bandwidth. That can force the window even wider.
And once the DSLAM/switch/aggregation port is saturated with traffic, it will delay or drop packets. If those are ACKs from the other side of the world, that window closes up more. There goes the time-sensitive nature of VOIP down the toilet.
On a shared-media network like cable, it doesn't even have to be you. If two people on the same cable are P2P transferring between each other, there goes the neighborhood. They dominate the line and the chap only using Skype down the road wonders why he isn't getting the performance he needs.
I'm opposed to price-oriented non-neutral networks, your ISP charging Google for your high speed access to them. But a non-neutral network that does proper QOS by throttling bandwidth-heavy protocols that don't behave themselves on the network is acceptable. As long as the QOS only moves the throttled protocols down when needed.
Parent
Re:No, he's talking about replacing TCP/IP. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm opposed to price-oriented non-neutral networks, your ISP charging Google for your high speed access to them. But a non-neutral network that does proper QOS by throttling bandwidth-heavy protocols that don't behave themselves on the network is acceptable. As long as the QOS only moves the throttled protocols down when needed.
I work for an ISP, and net neutrality scares the hell out of me. We do not want to, and will not throttle back certain sites who won't pay us for premium access, or create a tiered pricing structure for our customers. What I want, is the right to manage my network to give my customers the best performance by de-prioritizing badly written, and poorly behaving protocols, AKA: 99% of all p2p stuff.
We also don't want to see content providers shift their bandwidth costs onto the ISP networks via the use of p2p. Why pay for expensive backbone links when you can shove 50% or more of your bandwidth onto your customers, and their provider's network? Either let us ISPs manage our networks, or we will start charging for upload bandwidth on a usage basis. I really don't want to do this, but if net neutrality becomes a reality, I see this becoming a very popular way to save on bandwidth costs. Blizzard already does it, patches for World of Warcraft are distributed via bittorrent. Why they think it is appropriate for their service to be offloaded onto my network is beyond me, but they do. When I can't rate limit bittorrent, and it becomes a huge bandwidth hog, my customers that patronize services that are the source of the problem will see their bills go up.
Thank you, I finally read a post from someone who gets it. I didn't think that would ever happen.
Oh, and any replies to the effect of, "well, its your own fault for not having enough bandwidth" can just go eat a dick. I have bandwidth, and that is not the point. The point is content providers should provide their own bandwidth, not leach it from the ISPs in the name of the heavenly, super great, don't ever question it, p2p software demi-god.
Man, I got way off target there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1: By discarding any QoS information in the packet as it crosses your perimeter, and replacing it based on a guess done by deep packet inspection. Not only is this modifying data that wasn't meant to be modified, and thus legally no different from the dubious practice of rewriting HTML pages to show your own ads, but it also opens the question of whether you can claim to be a common carrier as long as you open every envelope to look at
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If my company wants to use VOIP telephony between our branch offices and we want to pay extra for it to actually work right, but we don't want fully-private lines because it's wasteful and more expensive, then an ISP could offer us QoS on that basis. But they don't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It means they have to provide *gasp* an INTERNET CONNECTION! No ISP wants that, what with all the upgrades to existing equipment they'd have to make to make as much bandwidth as a customer bought available to them AT ALL TIMES.
It means smaller profits and higher customer satisfaction, which seems to be the seventh circle o
Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
limiting of certain types of traffic or certain pages (like the alt.* section of usenet) is fine.. if the ISP is upfront about it. If they had a cheap plan that limited you like that, and an expensive plan that had no restrictions, I'd be fine with it. Right now though, the ISP's like Comcast are trying to push "unlimited super-super high speed" while still doing the bandwidth limiting, which is the real problem in my book. I think the FCC just needs to set proper definitions so there isn't any confusion when you see commercials or ads for this stuff.
Parent
Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to add something; they may do this IF I HAVE ANOTHER VIABLE CHOICE. If ISPs didn't operate as minor monopolies, I'd be fine with them doing whatever (if they are honest about it), as long as I can find another service who doesn't.
Parent
Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie (Score:5, Interesting)
the real problem is the marketing people are defining service options that the networks are not capable of supporting. some services are making a profit to support other services that aren't, which is fine in, for example, pre-packaged computer bundles, but because with internet service this affects everyone, this is the end result - isp's don't have the ability to provide the level of service they advertise so they must resort to throttling, which is of course done arbitrarily to certain kinds of traffic as they are the biggest bandwidth users, rather than doing it generally.
if isp's just didn't spend so much time trying to hook those high bandwidth users up and made the prices of service to them higher, then the isp's could spend more money enhancing their bandwidth capacity instead of ending up having to explain why and what traffic they are shaping to keep use within the parameters of their networks.
there is many factors related to how network applications are written, how various tcp/ip stacks schedule, how effective QoS systems are, and how widely deployed they are, but there is one guaranteed way to ensure networks aren't bogged down by bulk traffic and streaming users - always keep traffic levels below about half of capacity. the line might be rated to transport data at a certain speed but when you fill that pipe past a certain point you wind up with a great deal of turbulence which leads to latency issues.
it's a bit similar to mastering levels in audio engineering - sure, you may have 120 dB of resolution in your recording medium, but the closer you get to filling all that space the less headroom you have for periodic spikes, which has lead in the commercial music engineering to more use of dynamic range compression, which produces a much 'duller' sound with less dynamics (some even say that this compressed dynamics leads to fatigue in the listener) - this problem never happened in cinema sound engineering because someone set a standard for how many dB average power should be targetted in a mix. Similarly, if the network provision industry would set a standard of aiming at around 50-60% utilisation average and accordingly adjusted planning for bandwidth upgrades and market penetration none of this would be a problem.
beancounters see the network capacity specification and expect that they can run the network at that level without any problems. But of course beancounters also rate the potential of a resource according to a percentage of customer turnover below a certain level, meaning they can cheapskate to some degree and of course being that businesses care more about the bottom line than good service, this is the sort of issue that cannot be solved by anything other than legislation.
i believe network neutrality as a concept misses the real point at issue here, which is simply businesses squeezing more money out of their lines than it is possible in real practise to allow, and pushing this limit just short of messing up the whole network. throttling bittorrent and streaming video is all about trying to hold back the flood of bandwidth demand so they can put off the upgrades for longer.
there would not be a problem if they just didn't provide more bandwidth on the local loop than can be carried through the peering connections.
Parent
Neutral net or no net, there is no other choice. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's how media companies will kill the free internet we all know and love:
The result will look like broadcast media does today, one big corporate billboard, instead of a free press. Just a little censorship is like being just a little pregnant.
Parent
Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie (Score:5, Informative)
He even deliberately misquoted another engineer to say the exact opposite of what they said; to the point that they logged onto the wikipedia talk page to complain. This was even after it was pointed out they never said what he wrote them saying and that the references disagreed.
He also thought that it was a good idea to get interviewed in articles in 'The Register' and then quoted himself in the wikipedia to 'prove' his points.
Oh yeah, and he used 'sockpuppets' to continue to also push his point of view while temporarily banned.
I could go on about this sleazebag for quite a while. When you even try to list the stunts he pulled it runs to several pages.
I would also challenge some of his depth of understanding, for example, at least at one point in time he didn't seem to have the slightest clue what a contended service is, which is kinda... basic. Really, really basic.
Really, he's just a bizarre guy, with bizarre views, and personality wise he's a total asshole.
(See wikipedia RFC, which contains references to a small fraction of his 'work' in the wikipedia if you want to get a measure of the man).
Parent
Re:It's not reality, it's all a lie (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/RichardBennett [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Get the gub'ment out of technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Twenty years ago, the goverment was making technology decisions about something called ARPAnet. Typical stupid, wasteful government program that never went anywhere, of course. Fortunately, private enterprise led the way with bold innovative paradigm-breaking optimized syngergies, which is why we can now have this kind of discussion here on the Compuserve forums!
Parent