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[ NNSquad ] Re: Google response to WSJ 12/15/08"Fast Track on the Web" story

I think the bottom line is clear:
- Google is *paying* ISPs for the hosting of their boxes and caching
- Google will get better performance of their own content through these proprietary arrangements than any of those Internet content providers that DO NOT pay the ISPs for that caching.

Google is paying for better delivery performance of their content over other providers, plain and simple. 

Just because others "have the opportunity" to pay ISPs for the same privilege does not absolve Google from the accusation of being *completely* hypocritical to their pro-net-neutrality stance.

It's not clear to me whether Net Neutrality is a realistic goal, but Google's hypocrisy does need to be called out. 

For what its worth, this whole brouhaha seems to me to be geek wars between Akamai and Google.  Akamai is using their vast delivery data (20% of the Net) to get into the advertising and ad targeting space with their Advertising Decisions Solutions, and Google is responding with this CDN-like effort after all of the press of the Google/YouTube needing Akamai streaming for the YouTube live concert.

Thanks,

Travis



On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Vint Cerf <vint@google.com> wrote:
single mode fiber capacity is on the order of 38 THz of analog bandwidth

Vint Cerf
Google
1818 Library Street, Suite 400
Reston, VA 20190
202-370-5637

On Dec 15, 2008, at 6:05 PM, Waclawsky John-A52165 wrote:

I'm not so sure ....the core network has a lot of capacity via optics
with the equipment at the end points supporting nearly 1 trillion bps
today on a single "light pipe" (88 x 10 Gbps color) - this was unheard
of just a few years ago. The electronics at the end of the fiber link is
the limiting factor - Moores law does effect that. I asked the question
at GlobeComm (two weeks ago): what was the theoretical capacity of a
fiber link? I was told there was none (at least today) and everyone was
shaking their head yes (100% consensus). I am always suspicious about
claims of scarcity and never under estimate human ingenuity (in search
of a buck) ability to solve the problem which I see as a loose corollary
of Moore's law, IMHO   :-)   My 2 cents..   

-----Original Message-----
From: nnsquad-bounces+jgw=motorola.com@nnsquad.org
George Ou
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 3:24 PM
To: 'John Bartas'; 'Lauren Weinstein'
Subject: [ 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
Behalf Of John Bartas
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 2:53 AM
To: 'Lauren Weinstein'
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



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.



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
Behalf
Of
Lauren Weinstein
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 9:52 PM
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


ts-o
f-caching.html

--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator