NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Google response to WSJ 12/15/08 "Fast Track on the Web" story
John, content caching will always be the solution for large scale video distribution. Networks will get 10s, 100s, 1000s of times faster but the same relative bottlenecks will be there and we'll run in to the same problems as the bitrates of the video increases proportionally with capacity. Distributed caching solves the unicast problem which replicates transmissions millions of times over the same infrastructure and that's just silly. Caching will never become "obsolete" no matter how fast the network gets because it's a 10,000-fold performance multiplier. In fact, if network prioritization is the "fast lane", then content caching is the "warp lane" which exceeds the speed of light since you don't even have to bother re-transmitting the content. No, network prioritization is not a content accelerator because it doesn't prevent you from having to send the same content millions of times. "I spent most of 2007 working on a VoIP analysis device (Packet Island) and the vast majority of VoIP jitter problems we saw were caused by crappy local ISP networks" That's what I said in my network management report, jitter mostly happens where there is the largest bottleneck which will always be broadband. All Net Neutrality legislation proposed so far specifically targets broadband and prevents jitter-mitigation and legitimate bandwidth management techniques. Broadband by definition will always be the bottleneck because if broadband speeds up 10-fold, the core and distribution part of the Internet will also have to speed up 10-fold to keep up. So your theory that we can simply grow out of these bottlenecks with "Moore's law" (which talks about transistor count BTW) is simply wrong. George Ou -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of John Bartas Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 2:53 AM To: 'Lauren Weinstein' Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Google response to WSJ 12/15/08 "Fast Track on the Web" story There's some careless assertions in Georges post. First, content caching is not the ultimate anything; just a stopgap. Moore's law will accelerate the backbone with faster routers and media, whereas company-specific co-located servers will always have an overhead. Even if the co-lo server storage was free, the cost of a Chennai staff to manage the extra data copy is pretty well fixed, and eventually a faster backbone would make it uneconomical. Like all forms of caching, progress will either obsolete it or commoditize it. This day will come a lot faster if U.S. providers realize they are not going to make a killing holding people's content hostage with QoS schemes. Also "Network prioritization is designed for a totally different purpose but people confuse it for a content delivery mechanism when it isn't." is misleading. Network prioritization has a lot of flavors, and some can be a great content delivery accelerator. The duopoly shows every sign that they will use it this way as soon as they can get away with it. And jumping ahead, I see someone's still floating the argument that NN is bad for Jitter. I spent most of 2007 working on a VoIP analysis device (Packet Island) and the vast majority of VoIP jitter problems we saw were caused by crappy local ISP networks - too many hops and route flap between the phone and the backbone. The biggest ISPs are the worst. The backbone itself is fine. NN won't hurt jitter. Despite this, I'm inclined to agree with George that minor legislation is not the answer - Congress is clueless and the Duopoly PR machine is too good at muddying the water for a serious policy debate. Ultimately it will have to be a tightly regulated public utility; with a strict cap on profits. Only by stripping off the profit motive can the net stay free. -JB- George Ou wrote: > Now you know why every Net Neutrality bill ever proposed all specifically > target broadband and they don't apply to the type of non-neutral advantages > that large dotcom companies can buy. > > Content caching [usually in the form of Content Delivery Networks (CDN)] is > ultimate fast track mechanism for content distribution. Content caching is > the only model that supports on-demand high quality video, not P2P or > network prioritization. Content caching shows why the Internet never has > and never will be equal. The Internet is only equal to those who can buy > the same infrastructure but it's never been equal to everyone at any price. > Richard Bennett also debunks this myth that everything has to be equal here > http://bennett.com/blog/2008/12/google-gambles-in-casablanca/. > > > > Network prioritization is designed for a totally different purpose but > people confuse it for a content delivery mechanism when it isn't. Network > prioritization ensures that a network can support multiple applications as > well as possible. That means bandwidth should be intelligently prioritized > in favor of interactive applications with low duty cycles over background > applications with non-stop usage. That means background applications aren't > affected in terms of average bandwidth but the interactive application > improves substantially. This does not conflict with the purpose of protocol > agnostic network management which is designed to ensure equitable > distribution of bandwidth between customers of the same broadband service > tier. This system relies on a priority budget system to prevent users and > application developers from abusing the system by labeling every packet as > top priority. > > The other purpose of network prioritization is to mitigate jitter (large > spikes in packet delay) which can even occur at very low network utilization > levels. To fix this, we have to deliver the packets out-of-order such that > the network toggles between packets of different applications at a higher > rate which prevents real-time applications from timing out. Some will > consider this "cutting in line" but it isn't because some applications pack > the line with 10 to 100 times more packets and a smart network will quickly > alternate between the different applications to prevent starvation. > > I cover this in my new report on network management released last Thursday. > http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=205 > > > > The problem with Net Neutrality legislation is that they either try to ban > network prioritization outright (Wyden bill in 2006) or they try to prohibit > differentiated pricing and give everyone priority regardless of source > (Snowe/Dorgan and Markey in 2006). The anti-tiering legislation effectively > breaks prioritization because if every packet is prioritized, then no one is > prioritized. If we can't look at the source of the packets, we can't > determine whether people have exceeded their budgets and it's impossible to > enforce a fair prioritization scheme. If we can't have differentiated > pricing, then there's no effective way we can give people a priority budget > which means there's no way to enforce a fair and meaningful prioritization > scheme. The end result is that all the Net Neutrality proposals make it > impossible to have a network prioritization system which makes broadband a > less useful network that multitasks poorly. > > > > George Ou > > -----Original Message----- > From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org > [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of > Lauren Weinstein > Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 9:52 PM > To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org > Cc: lauren@vortex.com > Subject: [ NNSquad ] Google response to WSJ 12/15/08 "Fast Track on the Web" > story > > > Google response to WSJ 12/15/08 "Fast Track on the Web" story > > http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-o > f-caching.html > > --Lauren-- > NNSquad Moderator > > > > >