NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad

NNSquad Home Page

NNSquad Mailing List Information

 

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[ NNSquad ] Re: UDP Wars 

Brett's correct on his first two points -

1) The Internet did indeed start as a loose federation of communicating networks.
2) To stop looking at it that way is a fundamental design change.

But this fundamental design change has been underway for some years now. Many, if not most folks connected to the Internet only use their network to Internet access. Domestic and SOHO Interneters rarely rarely use local FTP, telnet, networked file systems, or any other kind of Intranet communications. When my kids and I exchange files at home we email them to each other. Even though the computers may be only a few feet apart, the packets travel to the ISP and back over the internet.

ISPs and NAT router designers are aware of this, and the products and services are increasingly designed to support this model.

Bretts last point has been addressed here before (ad nauseum), but to recap - the ISP business is ALREADY an "unresponsive, homogeneous duopoly". I'm pretty much forced to buy acces from AT&T, the direct descendant of the old Bell System.

Steven Colbert explains it better here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6nuwQmhrZ8

-JB-


Brett Glass wrote: 
At 10:26 AM 12/3/2008, Lauren Weinstein wrote:

It's time that we stop looking at the Internet only as a patchwork
of independent, typically unregulated networks,

To do so would be to change the fundamental design of the Internet. Remember, the "Internet" was designed to be exactly that: a loose federation of independently owned, operated, and managed networks which could communicate -- if the owners so chose -- with one another. The institutions which designed and formed the Internet needed, and insisted upon autonomy -- including the ability to set their own management policies and terms of service. In doing so, they intended to depart from the business and operational models of the centrally managed, omnipresent Bell System monopoly that prevailed at the time.

and more in terms of
an overall interconnected system that may need some level and forms of
oversight similar to those long considered appropriate for other
critical utility-related functions.

Such burdensome regulation and micromanagement would, effectively, turn the Internet back into the Bell System of old, paving the way for a monopoly or at best a duopoly. This would be the worst possible outcome, in my opinion, for consumers and for consumer choice. And by unnecessarily imposing centralized control and eliminating diversity, it would stifle innovation. Any such regulatory system would also be subject to regulatory capture by large corporations (e.g. Google) which could see an advantage in bending the system to their specific interests.

In short, a "utility" model would kill the Internet as we know it, replacing it with an unresponsive, homogeneous duopoly which would hinder innovation as least as much as the Bell System of old did when it refused even to allow you to fit a plastic pipe over the mouthpiece of your phone. And because the regulation would always cover the one or two providers available to you (no independents such as my own company would be able to survive), you'd have no opportunity to find another provider that might be more hospitable.

--Brett Glass