NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Google response to WSJ 12/15/08 "Fast Track on the Web" story
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com> wrote:
At 11:50 AM 12/16/2008, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
There is, of course, nothing non-neutral about using cache.
There certainly can be.
Brett, I am glad you wrote back. Usually our opinions are as perfectly opposed as is possible. But this time our opinions, I think, are not perfectly opposed over the whole range of issues in sight. But, I think, our opinions are opposed on the specific point I addressed.
Let's suppose Google is able to put a cache (a server, really, since it'd likely provide Google's applications rather than just caching) in the local telephone company's central office. Will a small startup -- maybe one that wants to compete with Google -- be able to do the same? If not, is this not a serious disadvantage for that smaller content provider?
One can indeed tell a story about the dangers of this style of cooperation of Google with ISPs, of the Hollywood movie business with ISPs, of the old Telephone Company Fragments with ISPs, etc.. For example, Google might offer routing services to the ISP in some central and/or peripheral places. After all, Google's specialty is effective use of (new and improved) statistics to predict behavior of people, packet flows, etc.. And if the ISP were to turn over some part of its routing to Google, well, because Google might have an interest in how its packets get handled vs. competitors', yes, indeed, here is an occasion for corruption.
So you are right, I should have been more precise in the sentence you quote. Some arrangements, whose description in newspaper articles might include the word "cache", can tend to corruption and violation of Net Neutrality. But Google's use of cache, situated in machines it owns, and Netflix's use of cache, situated in machines owned by Netflix customers, does not violate Net Neutrality. No more than does use of warehouses violate Freedom of the Roads.
My post was aimed at dealing with a specific claim about whether such cunningly placed server farms are required for video on demand. My point is that no such cunning, expensive, and hard to do, placement of server farms is required. Rather the cache (of the start of the movie) can be in the house of the viewer. Such caching deals with "jitter". The claim of the opponents of Net Neutrality is that we must destroy the Net so as to deal with the problem of jitter. But Netflix shows that we do not.
Similar claims are made about the problems of telephony over the Net. Again, we know that we need not destroy the Net to have VOIP.
Likewise, what happens if Google offers to co-locate its servers at larger ISPs and not smaller ones? (If the WSJ article is accurate, it's placed servers at some other ISPs but has not approached us to do so.)
--Brett Glass
I hope to post, again, something about the incorrect implicit assumption that the issue of Net Neutrality is mainly about Google vs other search machines, about Google vs Microsoft, about Amazon vs Barnes and Noble, etc.. No, the issue of Net Neutrality is about whether you and I can send packet streams back and forth without wiretapping, without third parties delaying/corrupting our streams, etc.. Large companies offering limited services which ride atop the Net are not the most important users of the Net. You and I are.
oo--JS.