Net Pioneers Say Open Internet Should Be Separate

angry tapir writes "The US Federal Communications Commission should allow for an open Internet separate from specialized services that may prioritize IP traffic, a group of Internet and technology pioneers has recommended. The document, filed in response to an FCC request for public comments on proposed network neutrality rules, steers clear of recommending what rules should apply to the open Internet. Among the tech experts signing the document are Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Bruce Perens, founder of the open-source software movement; Clay Shirky, an author and lecturer at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program; and David Reed, a contributor to the development of TCP/IP and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab."

Wait a second

[Lanteran]

is this making any sense to anyone? The entire internet should be open, we net neutrality lovers shouldn't be relegated to our own little corner. I for one, won't stand by while the internet is turned into the next radio or TV. Some other things: how will one access this 'second' internet anyway? and won't we just have a repeat after the ISPs notice how much bandwidth we're hogging? How long until we have to have a 3rd 4th and 5th internet? What if ISPs block access to the open internet to save money? IMO this idea is fundamentally flawed.

Segregation doesn't work

[rsborg]

When one part has the money and the other part is where the "poor" or "undesireables" go, this is not going to end well.

We had a chance in the past few years to make internet access a protected right and utility, much like access to power or water... but we failed and now it's going to kill the internet.

Rent-seeking predatory corporation are already licking their chops at all the potential "synergy" and "monetization" they can make of the soon-to-be-gone public commons. Once there is blood in the water, it will be a feeding frenzy for all these local monopolies.

Re:Fence Sitting

[SpaceLifeForm]

The non-neutral Internet should be ipv6 only and preferably over fibre. Old ipv4 Internet should remain as is.

Re:Fence Sitting

[Bruce Perens]

It's a matter of getting all of the various parties on the signature list. Some of them are polar opposites. As one of the signers, I should note that politics is often the art of getting along with people you don't really approve of.

Re:Internet2 was great for academia..

[Ichijo]

What I think they're saying is that advertised speed and bandwidth for "internet service" must be the minimum allowed for any Internet site.

So if your cable company's 38 Mbps network is shared among 500 subscribers, then they would have to advertise your connection as 76 kbps, even though you usually get 5+ Mbps and never see below 3 Mbps.

I'm afraid that would just confuse people even more.

Re:Bruce Perens, founder of the open-source softwa

[Bruce Perens]

Actually, Christine Petersen coined the term "Open Source" at the meeting where the formation of a separate Open Source campaign was first discussed. She was at the time married to the nanotechnology guru Eric Drexler. I created the Open Source Definition 9 months before ESR got involved, as the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And I'm pretty clear that RMS writings came long before CaTB.

Re:Internet2 was great for academia..

[jc42]

The authors of this work may believe that an open Internet will succeed on its merits alone. I don't.

Why not? That's what happened with the first Internet. Take a look back at the 1980s. At that time, there were lots of proprietary networks, one per vendor, and it was difficult or impossible for users of different vendors' equipment to communicate with each other. But over in academia, the open Internet was alive and getting attention. When it went "public" and finally allowed connections to businesses and homes, everyone jumped on it. The vendors all tried their mightiest to convince everyone that they had a better network, but everyone wanted the one that was open and could connect everyone to everyone, even if it might not be the perfect one in all its details. Eventually, one by one, the vendors grudgingly moved onto the Internet, as they realized that they couldn't compete with an open network.

The obvious prediction would be that the same thing will happen after the corporations succeed in taking control of the Internet. It will devolve into a set of "walled gardens", one per comm company, with limited communication between people on different parts of the Internet. If someone can come along and offer an alternative that connects everyone to everyone else, people will once again jump on it wherever they are permitted access.

Maybe this is how IPv6 will take over. The people working on it should be pushing for ways to sneak it into our homes and businesses in a manner that's beyond the control of the powerful commercial interests. If they can manage this, we can relegate IPv4 to the backwaters of walled gardens like IBM's and DEC's networks were back in the 1980s. The comm companies can then control the connectivity in their walled gardens all they like, and their customers will slowly find ways of getting onto the real, open Internet2, just as we all did in the early 1990s.

My opinion...

[Kokuyo]

...and you may, of course, disagree with me, is that the internet WOULD be open if there was an open market. As it stands, this market is only available to a small percentage of companies, because investment is so high. After all, every company needs their own network. Reselling makes even inventive and unconventional companies dependant on the network provider's prices. This means that onlyx a very select few companies control access to the network. In Switzerland, that's basically two companies: Swisscom for DSL and Cablecom for, you guessed it, cable. There cannot be real competition with only two networks.

I propose that the government should own the network (as it should gas, water and electricity lines, railways, streets and so on) and 'hire' a company to maintain and upgrade it. This should happen in a non-profit fashion and the available capacity should then be sold at the lowest price possible to providers (of internet, TV, phone services and so on). There would only be one line to your house for all data related services.

I just don't quite see how it could ever be a good idea to privatize infrastructure the public is so very dependant on.

Ad Hoc The Planet!

[VortexCortex]

I'm observant of the fact: I'm being irradiated by no less than 6 strong WiFi signals networks at any given time (12 at the moment) in Houston.

Turn all those into ad-hoc networks, and connect the overlapping nets together. It's not much different than the wired web. It's still a bunch of routers between me and my destination that I really don't trust.

Whatever happened to Packet Radio [wikipedia.org]?

Personally, having a BBS back in the day, I envisioned The Open Internet as a fusion between HAM radio & high speed FidoNet. Where anyone could just hook up a signal repeater and join what we call "the cloud" today... Today's Internet is so far from "the cloud", it should really be called "the grave", yeah, see, it's actually in/near the ground & everyone eventually gets there if they try hard enough -- plus, "in the grave" sounds exactly like how using dial-up (or any AT&T service) actually feels.

When I found out "the Internet is going to be Wired?!" I thought, nah, this is a just a phase, our wireless utopia will be here soon, boy was I wrong -- totally underestimated the telco's greed & unwillingness to spend money on infrastructure.

Naturally I was equally unimpressed with "Internet2". This most recent "Open Internet" sounds just as closed as ever to me.

Cellular packet data is closer to what I call "the cloud", Wimax, and LTE, etc is getting there, but if we're using wires for the majority Internet mk2, count me out... Meanwhile, I'll be hooking up my wifi router to my HAM equipment & building a truly open global ad hock WiFi network [wikipedia.org] instead.