NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments by American Consumer Institute -- misunderstandings in masquerading as facts.
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Brett is very concerned about his private networks. I only
care about the faux-public networks. Maybe that explains the difference in our
points of view. There is a very reasonable basis for disagreement with claims
and stories masquerading as facts. The fundamental flaw in the facts is the Malthusian
assumption of a fixed pie for a fixed purpose served by an omniscient provider..
There is no sense of the Internet be a dynamic rather than a phone system. Let's start with the idea that we have a tragedy of the
commons! We're not talking about cows fighting over grass. The reason it's a
problem is that you can't divide cows into arbitrarily small pieces – you
have a breakage problem. We’re talking about flows of bits that easily
mixed and with best efforts you get a shot at your portion. Let's not base policy on foolish zero-sum stories that don't
apply! As I don't care what people do with their private networks
or transports. I care very much what people do with faux-public networks that they
control to the exclusion of the rest of us. Bandwidth is a result of policy and
not fundamental and we must not let those who slice and dice the commons justify
their action as if bits were cows. As to the "facts" "FACT 1. The Internet has finite capacity at any point
in time". This is not true -- we can't determine the capacity unless we
lock it down to specific measures. It's a Heisenberg thing. We don't exhaust it
-- we chose choose a particular policy and implementation at a point in time. We
shouldn’t use bad design decisions to treat scarcity as necessary. See my
HD comments for more on this. "FACT 2. The Internet is a common user network." The
current prototype might be a network but overall the Internet emerges from our
usage just like the road system does -- any path you drive is part of the
system. We do the networking - the network is just a metaphor. We don’t
have the physical encumbrances of driving and we don’t use up the
Internet. "FACT 3. There are network externalities." More
like a truism but is utterly wrong to use that as an argument to say that the
current network operator/owner should be judge and jury. "FACT 4. Usage is not uniform across all users."
Again a truism but the statement that five percent of the users are abusers is
just inflammatory. With best efforts we get a shot -- the violators are those
who promise too much and then blame users and not themselves for the failure to
deliver on the promises "FACT 5. There is always a potential congestion
problem." POTENTIAL! The only solution, when we have a problem, is to find
ways to increase effective capacity or to find uses that match the capacity.
It's not to pretend to keep untenable promises by picking winners. You don’t
punish those whose use you don’t like because of some theory of morality.
More important is to take advantage of opportunities and not depend on false promises.
Remove the chokepoints, don’t treat them as intrinsic! Better let each of
us remove them without depending on a network manager from on high. "FACT 6. All common user networks are subject to
management and usage rules." Not at all true—especially in the US where
we’re supposed to have laws to solve problems but the default is freedom.
The road laws resolve conflicts between big vehicles and don’t apply to
flows. We can’t manage our way out of self-imposed scarcity –
in fact we’ve managed ourselves into scarcity! -----Original Message----- Worth reading -- the American Consumer Institute has
filed some excellent comments with the FCC outlining the various
positions on "Network Neutrality." Network Management Facts and the Tragedy of the Commons American Consumer Institute "ConsumerGram" The debate over elements of the Net Neutrality (NN)
policy platform promoted by a handful of advocacy groups is now focused
on what techniques, if any, Internet service providers (ISPs)
should be permitted to use for the purpose of managing congestion over
their private networks. This ConsumerGram provides a set
of facts on which there seems to be no reasonable basis for
disagreement, shows how these facts are important in resolving the network
management debate, reviews the main elements of the positions
of the contending parties, and offers a consumer welfare
perspective on the issues and their possible resolution. This
ConsumerGram shows that, ignoring the facts on net management can lead to
the wrong conclusions and policies that ultimately reduce economic
benefits for the vast majority of online consumers. Issues to Be Resolved A coalition of advocates united by concerns about threats
they perceive to NN recently petitioned the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to find unlawful Comcast's interference
with selected peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet traffic. The
interference involved applications enabled by P2P protocol that permit
users to exchange large files including high resolution movies and
other bandwidth intensive content, but requires so much
bandwidth that it can slow down all traffic on the network. Comcast
claims the right to manage its network and asks the FCC to declare that
its practices are reasonable and fully consistent with the
FCC's Broadband Policy Statement. Dozens of parties
commented on the petition and what follows summarizes some of the main
positions and their implications for consumers. More at: http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519870280 |