[ale] OT: Craig Newmark of Craig's List on Net Neutrality")

[Daniel Howard]

Ah, finally some clarity!  In cable modems, starting with DOCSIS 1.1, 
voice/video conferencing over IP, or other high priority packets can be 
scheduled over the network such that a piece of the bandwidth is 
dedicated to their transport, and thus they don't suffer the congestion 
that can happen with best effort traffic normally sent over the network.

This is definitely a two-tiered network (in fact, DOCSIS permits lots of 
tiers: unsolicited grant service (highest quality), real time polling, 
unsolicited grant service with activity detection, non real time polling 
service, and best effort).  If anyone would like more info on this, you 
can buy the book "Broadband Last Mile Access Technologies for Multimedia 
Communications", where I wrote the chapter on cable :-)

Cable modem networks were 'net neutral' when DOCSIS 1.0 was deployed 
because they only offered best effort data service.  Ever since DOCSIS 
1.1, the network was designed at the MAC and the PHY level to offer 
variable tiers of service depending on the tradeoff between performance 
and bandwidth savings on the network.  VOIP packets can be given 
guaranteed slots in the stream, and even given lower orders of 
modulation to make them more robust in the face of interference, both of 
which reduce the total network bandwidth available to other services.

So, I do not support legislation that prevents service providers from 
offering higher QoS service, and charging more for it.  It does take 
more of their resources and they should be able to charge the consumer 
more for it.

I do, however, feel that service providers must be prevented from 
purposefully eliminating or reducing quality of service on best effort 
flows in order to make customers use their higher priced service, which 
sounds like the "anti-trust applied to Net Neutrality" but more 
specifically applied to best effort data service flows over their 
networks, not to the entire pipe.

One service provider, Madison River Communications, tried to block 
Vonage packets in order to force customers to use their telephony 
solution, and the FCC went after them.  What they did is wrong and 
should be prevented.  What is more subtle, would be a service provider 
throttling back a particular packet stream used by a third party 
offering a service over best effort traffic so that the packet error 
rate was higher than it should be, or the data rate less than it would 
otherwise be.  I do believe we need legislation to prevent service 
providers from doing this, as it will hamper innovation by third parties 
like Vonage who offered me cheap VOIP years before it was available from 
Comcast.

My two cents,
Daniel



Message: 6
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:56:11 +0000
From: "H P Ladds" <householdwords at gmail.com>
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: Craig Newmark of Craig's List on Net Neutrality
To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>

OK -- time to tidy-up issues of this debate.

I've heard that proponents of a two-tiered Internet are for "Net
Neutrality." IMHO a tiered Internet structure is not "neutral," and using
the term "Net Neutrality" to describe a two-tiered Internet is a bit um...
counter intuitive.

To clarify the debate -- what bill(s) are we talking about, and which ones
are you for/against:

S. 2360 -- no two-tiered Internet
S. 2917 -- no two-tiered Internet
S. 2686 -- anti-trust applied to Net Neutrality
HR. 5417 -- no two-tiered Internet
HR. 5273 -- FCC may investigate complaints
HR. 5252 -- FCC to study issue