Kevin, you're fighting a battle that was settled many years ago. We
already have bandwidth pricing and tiered services, and it's quite
well-accepted. I can buy a dial-up connection to the Internet, or
several flavors of DSL, or several flavors of cable modem service,
differentiated by bandwidth and a range of uses. And I'm able to buy
Internet access bundled with TV and telephone if I so desire, all of
them operating in separate frequency or time bands and providing the
necessary latencies to make the service work as desired. It's certainly
true that the rich can afford better networking services than can the
poor, but that's no different than access to fast cars, good health
care, safe housing and a host of other things. This is capitalism, and
after many years of experience we've learned it's better to allow
disparities between rich and poor than to go the Cuban route and make
everyone poor just to be perfectly fair.
So no, I'm not proposing a revolution and and end to capitalism. I am
proposing something a bit more practical, which is a scheme for proving
end users a way to tell their ISP which streams need low latency, which
are normal, and which don't care, so that the ISP can provide the best
networking experience for the range of customers. The architecture of
the IP frame permits this, of course, but it hasn't been widely used
outside private networks to date.
It's just a thought, and not highly germane to the issue of how best to
whack your ISP around.
RB
Kevin McArthur wrote:
I'll respond to the comments on my reply.
"I agree, Kevin, that as a matter of principle it's not the network's
job to "determine the value of bits", but I disagree that all bits are
therefore of equal value. We all know that some information is more
valuable to us personally than other information, and we're quite good
at sorting it all out. I propose that we communicate our own
determination to the network, and require it to convey bits (packets,
really) at the priorities we've specified. This is what we do in WiFi
networks with WME enabled, maintain separate priority queues for four
types of data, and it works quite well, and with no Telco in the
picture. "
You're mixing personal QoS which can occur at a residential router and
network QoS. We have personal technology, it works, anyone can go down
to a retailer and get a QoS router. Where your logic breaks down is
where your QoS preferences as a network user interfere with mine.
My priorities are not my neighbors priorities and they're certainly
not my ISPs. If I communicate that my bittorrent download is priority,
can we expect that an ISP will just accept that? If not, will they
want to bill for that 'priority' and will that not lead to the type of
competition differentials we're currently seeing for VoIP products in
Canada. The ISPs charging 'thinly veiled VoIP tax[es]' so that
competing services continue to work?
Some Questions:
Do you propose that we create a gradient of bandwidth pricing?
Would top priority bandwidth cost more?
Isn't this the two-tier scenario, and highly prejudicial to the poor?
Wouldn't this discourage the development of new media services that
require both high bandwidth and low latency?
Wouldn't this give a distinct competitive advantage to the ISP over
third-party competitors?
Doesn't this work as as a disincentive to create faster networks, as
if the normal pipe is purposefully broken or neglected, then all users
will be forced onto the priority pipe and therefore generate more
revenue for carriers?
Is it not just cheaper, easier and more socially fair that the
carriers be required to build their network's capacity in ratio to
overall usage so that all applications and participants get the best
possible service?
The business of packet priority is not a technical one, it is instead
a social question of considerable consequence.
Kevin McArthur
Richard Bennett wrote:
A few responses to some of the remarks on my article posted on
NNSquad, for the mutual benefit and what-not.
Kevin McArthur wrote:
It is not the purpose of a network to determine the value of bits,
nor is it right to treat any bit as better than another. A text
message might be really important to someone else, but my ability to
watch a streaming news report is really important to me. Which one
will the carrier prioritize? This isn't a determination they can
make, nor is it one where the value of the transmission can be
determined by the number or amount of bits traveling.
I agree, Kevin, that as a matter of principle it's not the network's
job to "determine the value of bits", but I disagree that all bits
are therefore of equal value. We all know that some information is
more valuable to us personally than other information, and we're
quite good at sorting it all out. I propose that we communicate our
own determination to the network, and require it to convey bits
(packets, really) at the priorities we've specified. This is what we
do in WiFi networks with WME enabled, maintain separate priority
queues for four types of data, and it works quite well, and with no
Telco in the picture.
Barry Gold wrote:
But even if the "excessive" user _were_ "blocking the line to
the...buffet" (presumably by filling the local loop up with his
packets), dropping packets is a useful solution. The ISP can (or
should be able to) program the cable modem to drop the packets
before they ever get on the local loop -- right there in the user's
house/apartment/business. Or if the user owns the modem, the ISP
can put a minimal router with usage control at the point where the
wire emerges from the user's building, or where it connects to the
main cable at the utility pole or undergound system.
As others have pointed out, the DOCSIS cable modem carrier doesn't
have the ability to instruct the user's modem to drop packets rather
than attempt to transmit them. Dropping packets also has no immediate
effect on the load on the local segment caused by BitTorrent
handshakes. Packet drop reduces the load on a segment caused by an
ongoing stream of TCP traffic, but it does nothing to reduce load
caused by SYN responses when the SYNs are coming from outside the
segment.
Andy Richardson wrote:
They can go in several different directions:
(1) upgrade their infrastructure to handle the traffic
(2) lower prices to make up for lower network performance
(3) lose customers until the problem basically fixes itself
(4) establish tiers of access w/ easily understood caps, charging
more for heavier access
(5) implement a shady scheme of network shaping and undocumented
caps until the market matures and rome burns, see option 3.
In fact, Comcast at least is doing all the above. Later this year,
they're rolling out an upgrade to 130/100 Mb/s service, which will
presumably complement the existing offerings, which include 4 and 6
Mb/s residential and a commercial service where it's OK to run
servers. The current flap over Comcast comes from people with want to
operate servers (BitTorrent Seeder is simply a server) in violation
of the TOS for residential accounts. Buy a commercial account and you
can seed to your heart's content.
RB
