NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: NY Times: People are watching much more online video
There is a fallacy in focusing on inbound/outbound traffic here because it's more about where the meter is than the direction. It would be better to talk about local vs distant but the problem is that it's about an abstract topology according to the accidental properties of the peering configuration. I agree that explaining this to people is a problem -- but that precise difficulty is the entire point of the Internet. We create applications without worrying about the accidental properties of the path and thus focus on discovering new possibilities. Those who focus only on the current costs from Thomas Malthus to those who argued that relational databases and higher level languages were too expensive to those who said that the Internet couldn't really be that cost-effective have proven dramatically wrong and had we heeded their warnings we'd be far worse off. Yet again and again we let ourselves be hobbled by business models which depend on high prices. Those who know history are frightened by the knowledge that their business model is doomed so they tell their shareholders stories about why this time history will stand still for them. And they give billions to the carriers in hopes that this time the paper pyramid won't collapse. -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Kriss Andsten Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 13:07 To: nick hatch Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: NY Times: People are watching much more online video On 31 okt 2008, at 05.27, nick hatch wrote: > I see Comcast's move to cap at 250GB as a sticking their toes in the > water, and perhaps trying to set a precident at the same time. I > don't see a techincal reason for the caps. They don't even > differentiate between outbound/inbound traffic. Considering their > network architecture where last-mile egress bandwidth is so scarce, > that alone makes the whole move seem like a farce. I'm not sure that I agree there. I don't think I've seen (which is not a synonym for "I categorically deny that it exists") a single capped service that differentiated between upstream and downstream bandwidth. Why? Support. It's easy enough to shape the available bandwidth for each direction independently if that's what you want to do, but it's a whole other ballgame explaining a differentiated quota to millions of users. > -Nick Kriss