This policy means that no matter how abundant the capacity is locally I can't take advantage of the abundance. That's a serious public policy issue - why should local connectivity be limited for any reason? It's like being told that I can't leave my driveway because the highway downtown is congested.
I don't want to belabor this but it's one more conflict between the concept of telecom as path dependent and the concept of the Internet as path-indifferent. -----Original Message----- From: Livingood, Jason [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 19, 2008 23:40 To: Bob Frankston; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today Hi Bob. Some replies below and some general comments following the IP post you linked to below. But first, I just wanted to clarify that the FCC filing today was about our congestion management practices (present and future), rather than the recently-clarified 250GB byte limit. Jason -----Original Message----- From: Bob Frankston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 9/19/2008 11:19 PM To: Livingood, Jason; 'Ted Koppel'; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today No surprise that I have a basic problem with the very idea that Comcast is engineering my connectivity with a subset of applications in mind (http://www.frankston.com/?name=IPNeutralPurpose) among others. [JL] I read that and noted you wrote "The important point is that there is no need for you to make any assumptions about the devices in my house or the protocols I use." [JL] That was actually one of the many design goals with the new congestion management system. So I think we basically agree on that. ;-) One question is whether the cap will apply to local connectivity as well as distance. Is there a limit to how long I can watch a broadcasts of local city hall meetings? I presume the answer is "yes" and that it is a policy question. [JL] A byte is a byte, no matter how far it traveled, what kind of data it is, who it is from, etc. Is there any technical reason why local traffic can't escape the cap? Clearly the cap doesn't apply to traffic with my house (except when I need to bridge from my Verizon connected devices to my Comcast devices). [JL] Well, for one, we'd have to start looking at the destination and source addresses, and that's something I think most people would prefer to avoid.
