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[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose


Brett Glass wrote:
> By the way, it seems to me that the first order of business on this
> list should be to define "network neutrality." I see network neutrality
> as remaining neutral with regard to content providers, but not
> necessarily with regard to applications. (There are good technical
> reasons to do things like prioritize VoIP packets, for example.)
>
> --Brett Glass
>
>
>   
I think defining neutrality in terms of pay for level of service is 
really hard.     For example if I choose to pay for connectivity or 
direct peering for my servers with the ISP's that serve most of my 
customers I'm paying for a better service - the guy that doesn't pay 
gets worse service.    It's not neutral but the net has operated that 
way for a long time.    I could also pay somebody else (example akami) 
to co-locate servers in every ISP to improve the performance of my 
product.  Again it happens all the time and the world hasn't ended.

The next question is do we look at by protocol - it's unclear if Comcast 
et al. would start throttling bandwidth if I downloaded streaming 
content all day from Amazon unbox or a similar service.  If they do, and 
they are not just hitting BitTorreent, then it's clear they are 
penalizing usage which as long as they disclose it and apply it evenly 
seems reasonable.  I just got back from Australia and almost all ISP's 
there have download caps of some sort, it's not perfect but not too bad 
if you know what your limits are.

On the other hand it's clear that ISP's can't support large numbers of 
peer to peer users - they simple haven't engineered their networks to 
support that traffic mix.     Which comes back to the pitiful state of 
broadband in the US compared to countries like Japan and Korea.    

It seem the current fuss is as much about there being a limit that 
wasn't disclosed and resultant blocking / QoS in use that wasn't 
disclosed as it is about the actual limits.



John Pettitt

Disclosure: I used to be VP Engineering @ BitTorrent Inc.   I'm not 
there any more and I'm not speaking for them.

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