That is a good explanation of pure net neutrality. Unfortunately, that is not what the FCC wanted. The FCC wanted to regulate ISPs like a phone company - but the court said that ISPs aren't phone companies (despite their sale of phone services). The FCC plan was to require "transparency" in the sense of ability for the FCC to access every router on the 'net to make sure that all traffic is treated equally - no QOS, no time sensitivity, and no market for priority (like the Google/T-Mobile deals and the YouTube Indian soccer deal). Personally, I'm in favor of letting the marketplace determine what gets shipped where on the Internet. That said, the last-mile monopoly needs to be broken or at least leveled. If Comcast does me wrong, I want to be able to use Qwest (or someone) for equal service, but that's not possible at this point. Instead, Comcast has to get really crappy for me to switch to a lesser service.
As for Owen's BitTorrent question - ISPs can detect BitTorrent solely from volume of traffic and behaviour. It's pretty obvious. Comcast, in particular, established a policy that limited the total amount of bandwidth per month at a level far above the average user but which does infringe on heavy BitTorrent users. Ray Parks [email protected] Consilient Heuristician Voice: 505-844-4024 ATA Department Mobile: 505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax: 505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:505-951-6084 Scott R. Powell wrote: > This seems a pretty clear explanation of the issue and everyone trusts > Cal, right? > > http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~raylin/whatisnetneutrality.htm > > Scott > > On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 12:16 PM, <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > I understand that the ruling simply stated that the FCC has little > or no right to regulate the internet, specifically not to require > "net neutrality" allowing Comcast to limit certain activities. I > believe that the ruling can result in selective practices perhaps > censorship by the ISPs. Not a good thing, but perhaps someone has > more detailed info. > > best Paul > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Owen Densmore <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Sent: Thu, Apr 8, 2010 11:30 am > Subject: [FRIAM] Net Neutrality Ruling > > Has anyone made sense of the ruling in Comcast's favor? > > As I understand, they cut down bit-torrent due to bandwidth usage. > But that makes no sense, it is not a real-time protocol. If they > wanted to manage bandwidth, they would presumably go after Hulu, > Amazon, Netflix etc. > > I'm not even sure how successful a bit-torrent block would be -- > each person chooses their own port address. There is a default port > but all are warned to change it for security reasons. And there are > no bit-torrent servers, but lots of peers sharing. Any file you > download are fragments from several peers. > > -- Owen > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
