NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose
On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com> wrote:
At 11:48 PM 11/7/2007, Robb Topolski wrote:
While I agree that Net Neutrality has been sometimes described as preventing the situation of paying extra for higher performance of favored applications, it is not an apt description.
Using the Comcast P2P interference as an example, in this case, Comcast has degraded the performance of a non-favored application.
Or, from Comcast's point of view, it is preventing network abuse and stopping customers from violating the terms of their contracts.
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
No. There is no good reason, except in the special case that you have a mix of applications which just about exactly saturates some link. In this case, under reasonable models. some small degree of delay to email might reduce lags in the delivery of packet streams of, oh say, n movies. But even a very small lead cache for a few movie streams will deal with this unusual case, without delaying our emails. The seemingly reasonable argument in favor of "QoS" is actually a conscious fraud of the Duopoly. Well paid spokemodels for the Duopoly scream, and ignorant reporters, repeat: "We the Duopoly are limited in bandwidth. The rich and growing variety of Net applications requires subtle constant monitoring by us of each and every packet stream. We must sometimes degrade entire classes of packets streams, so that we may roll out our own competing Net application, which will get all its packets delivered on time and under the price of yours. Ah, sorry, please ignore last sentence! We the Duopoly meant to say: We must monitor your packet streams so that we may hold for ransom juicy income producing streams^W^W^W^W^W^W^W manage the terribly limited bandwidth for our benefit^W^W the benefit of all.".
We are lucky that the space of figures-of-merit for Net connections is low dimensional, and not very curved. This is central to the discussion of common carriage for the Net, and central to the task of NNSquad: if there were many dimensions, beyond bandwidth and startup lag, to the goodness of a Net connection, then perhaps the Duopoly's claims might be in some small part, justification for allowing the Duopoly a more free hand in monitoring and degrading our packet streams. Also, it would be much harder for NNSquad to detect unfair diddling with our packet streams. But the fact is that if we give two numbers, we have specified how good a Net connection is.
GIVE ME THE BANDWITH AND LATENCY LIMIT I PAID FOR!
DO NOT WIRETAP ME DO NOT DEGRADE MY STREAMS.
For if you do, I will produce evidence gathered by the hardworking folk of NNSquad, who use this small suite of Net tests, which give me back two numbers: bandwidth and lag.
To be further explicit: We are lucky it is only two numbers, else writing a common carriage law, and enforcing such a law, would both be harder that they actually are.
DUOPOLY WE WILL KNOW THE NUMBERS AND YOU WONT GET AWAY WITH TAKING OUR NET!
oo--JS.