Subject:
Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory
routers!
Date:
Sat, 29 Jul 2000 01:53:21 -0500 (CDT)
From:
Jim Warren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
If you provide content on the net, or search for or receive content on the
net, and dream of having truly competitive broadband ... this bullet's for
you!
This isn't paranoic rants without substance. It is hard evidence of
PLANNING and INTENT to discriminate against unfavored (competing?) content
providers and users by cable+content cartels such as AOL-TimeWarner and
AT&T-MediaOne.
This is a smoking gun -- but made visible for all to see, *before* the
trigger is pulled. Only Clinton-Gore's FCC, FTC and DOJ can install a
trigger-lock.
--jim, Jim Warren; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contributing Editor & technology public-policy columnist, MicroTimes
Magazine
Editorial contributor, Government Technology Magazine
At 2:09 AM -0400 7/27/00, James Love wrote:
CPT comments to July 27, 2000 FCC en banc hearing on AOL/Time Warner
merger [at the 7/27 FCC hearing]
...
2. The Open Access Issue.
... AT&T, Time-Warner and other companies are building new differentiated
levels of service for Internet content, and mechanisms to control and
manage Internet data.
The cable companies are buying technology from firms like Cisco
Systems. In its 1999 White paper, "Controlling Your Network - A Must for
Cable Operators," (http://www.cptech.org/ecom/openaccess/cisco1.html)
Cisco tells cable operators to build a "New World network," to replace
"the Internet" as it exists today.
The ability to prioritize and control traffic levels is
a distinguishing factor and critical difference between
New World networks employing Internet Technologies, and
"the Internet."
Part of the "New World" architecture is Cisco's Quality of Service "QoS"
model. According to Cisco:
. . . traffic-type identification allows you to isolate
different traffic types in your IP network. Through
Cisco QoS, you can identify each traffic type - Web,
e-mail, voice, video. Tools such as type-of-service
(ToS) bits identification allow you to isolate network
traffic by the type of application, even down to
specific brands, by the interface used, by the user
type and individual user identification, or by the site
address.
Admission control and policing is the way you develop
and enforce traffic policies. These controls allow you
to limit the amount of traffic coming into the network
with policy-based decisions on whether the network can
support the requirements of an incoming application.
Additionally, you are able to police or monitor each
admitted application to ensure that it honors its
allocated bandwidth reservation.
Preferential queuing gives you the ability to specify
packet types - Web, e-mail, voice, video - and create
policies for the way they are prioritized and handled.
For example, although voice and video traffic are
intolerant of delays and drops, you still might want to
ensure that lower-priority residential Web browsing is
allocated enough bandwidth to deliver an acceptable
level of service during peak usage.
Among other things, Cisco points out that:
QoS can also propel you forward by giving you the
information you need to offer advanced differentiated
services at a profit. For example, time-and usage-based
billing via NetFlow measurements provide you with a
means of encouraging (or shifting) demand during
periods of light network loading by offering off-peak
discount pricing.
And, with the new levels of service:
[cable companies] can optimize service profits by
marketing "express" services to premium customers ready
to pay for superior network performance.
To appreciate the significance of this new approach to Internet
traffic, consider the Cisco discussion of its Committed access rate (CAR)
technology, and its use to enhance or diminish the performance of content
services:
Committed access rate (CAR) is an edge-focused QoS
mechanism provided by selected Cisco IOS-based network
devices. The controlled-access rate capabilities of CAR
allow you to specify the user access speed of any given
packet by allocating the bandwidth it receives,
depending on its IP address, application, precedence,
port, or even Media Access Control (MAC) address.
For example, if a "push" information service that
delivers frequent broadcasts to its subscribers is seen
as causing a high amount of undesirable network
traffic, you can direct CAR to limit subscriber-access
speed to this service. You could restrict the incoming
push broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access
to the push information site to discourage its use. At
the same time, you could promote and offer your own or
partner's services with full-speed features to
encourage adoption of your services, while increasing
network efficiency.
. . .
Further, you could specify that video coming form
internal servers receives precedence and broader
bandwidth over video sourced from external servers.
With CAR, the choice is yours, and it's easy to make
constant revisions and adjustments as traffic patterns
shift.
With a plethora of new tools and mechanisms to identify, control and
discriminate the levels of quality for Internet content, cable companies
can do to Internet data traffic what they have done for years to video
content -- pick winners and losers, charge different content providers
different rates for access and exclude rivals.
...
[snip]
TACD Resolution Ecom 17-00
Merger of America Online and Time Warner and Privacy Protection
see: http://www.tacd.org/ecommercef.html#aolmerge
=======================================================
James Love, Director | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.O. Box 19367 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036 | fax: 1.202.234.5176
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