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2015-10-26 Thread Richard Bennett
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Richard Bennett



Re: On a future of open settlement free peering

2014-07-29 Thread Richard Bennett
 and Netflix are actually their 
own worst enemies, see: 
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521706465 , page 13, and 
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521389953 , page 8.


So yeah, the demand for free and open interconnection is front and 
center, and it tends to submerge questions about the obligations of 
traffic sources to deliver to the best locations in an efficient way. 
There certainly are opportunities for abuse on both sides of the gateway.


RB

On 7/29/14, 10:30 AM, William Herrin wrote:

Howdy folks,

It seems to me that we're moving in a direction where either
ratioless, high-capacity settlement-free peering will be a industry
requirement exercised voluntarily, or where some heavy-handed
government regulation will compel some kind of interconnection that
the holdouts find even less desirable. I can only hope the holdouts
will see the light before the weight of government crashes down on
them -- regulation has no winners, only losers and bigger losers. And
sometimes the worst thing that can happen is you get what you ask for
with no opportunity to later change your mind.

I'm curious what lies beyond that horizon. If we stipulate for the
sake of the discussion that open peering is the way it going to be, a
critical part of network neutrality, what exactly will that mean?


Will it be permissible for one network to ask the other to pay a
one-time port cost for the initial interconnect, assuming its
representative of the actual cost of a one-time equipment addition?

To what degree is redundancy a requirement? If a network refuses to
peer in more than one chancy location, does that mean their peering
policy isn't really open?

Will a network be compliant if the open peering connections are only
available in its own data center? Or will they need to be available in
neutral data centers?

Would a refusal to connect to neutral peering fabrics constitute a
refusal to connect to smaller networks? Or is it reasonable to state
that anybody who can't come up with 10 gig ports and cross-connects
isn't of threshold size?

Can a peering policy be open if it's regionally restricted? If my
peering points for the mid-Atlantic states only announce routes tied
to my mid-Atlantic customers and only propagate your routes to those
mid-Atlantic customers, is that acceptable behavior? Or have I
mis-served my customers if I don't pull all of them to the location
you find it convenient to peer?


Food for thought,
Bill Herrin




--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum



Re: On a future of open settlement free peering

2014-07-29 Thread Richard Bennett
So when you said: I can only hope the holdouts will see the light 
before the weight of government crashes down on them you were positing 
an unlikely outcome? For  what purpose, trolling?


BTW, I'm not a lobbyist, but you already knew that.

RB

On 7/29/14, 4:12 PM, William Herrin wrote:

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 6:21 PM, Richard Bennett rich...@bennett.com wrote:

It's interesting that an FCC ban on paid peering (or on-net transit if you
prefer that expression) is now seen as a plausible and even likely outcome
of the FCC's net neutrality expedition.

I don't think an FCC ban on paid peering is a plausible outcome this
go-around. The question, as I understand it, is reclassification of
broadband. If they actually go for reclassification, then you guys are
screwed. Paid peering would be the least of the dominoes to fall in
the follow-on rulemaking which would be necessary as a result of
reclassification.

Reclassification might bring a serious discussion of L1/L2 structural
separation to the table. It wouldn't be the FCC's first foray into
structural separation and as far as I know the laws which allow are
still on the books.

If I was one of the eyeball network lobbyists, I'd be begging the FCC
to let me try open peering and give it a chance to achieve the
commission's public policy objectives WITHOUT reclassification.

But then I guess that's why I'm not a telecom-paid lobbyist, eh? ;)

Regards,
Bill Herrin






--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-28 Thread Richard Bennett
It's hard to see a revolution when you're in the middle of it. As 
consumers transition from watching multicast TV on the networks' 
schedule past time-shifting and on to VoD, the traffic demands on the 
infrastructure will grow by 25 - 40 times. Similarly, the Internet will 
shift from a tool for reading web sites and watching occasional cat 
videos to a system whose main job (from the perspective of traffic) is 
video streaming. The magnitude of the change will necessarily cause a 
re-evaluation of the norms for interconnection, aggregation, content 
placement, and protocol design.


I think it's a mistake to approach this transformation in a nothing to 
see here, move along manner. It's reality that packet networks are 
statistical, especially at the level of aggregation and middle-mile 
distribution. The Internet's traditional financial model is one in which 
infrastructure providers make the most serious investments and edge 
services extract the highest profits. This model may not be the most 
sustainable one, and it may not be consistent with supporting the 
upgrades the infrastructure needs for adaptation to this new 
application.  Alternative models - such as Europe's open access regime - 
fare even worse in this regard than the vertical integration model 
that's the norm in North America and East Asia.


I don't claim to have all the answers here, or even any of them, but I 
think it's important to keep an open mind and pay attention to what 
works. I'm also not enthusiastic about relying on government programs to 
upgrade infrastructure to fiber of some random spec, because the entry 
of government into this market suppresses investments by independent 
fiber contractors and doesn't necessarily lead to optimal placement of 
new fiber routes. The First Net experience is proving that to be the 
case, I believe.


In other words, the Internet that we have today isn't the best of all 
possible networks, it's just the devil we know.


RB


On 7/28/14, 10:56 AM, William Herrin wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:53 AM, Richard Bennett rich...@bennett.com wrote:

You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing?
That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more traffic while I sit back
and call you a crook for not anticipating my innovation.

Right, because how could anyone anticipate that more than a handful of
folks might want to use 5 or 6 mbps of traffic on a 25mbps flat-rate
product for hours at a time. How rude to suggest that an allegedly
high speed network designed only to handle the traffic demands of web
browsing is little different than that age old confidence scheme, the
pig in a poke.

Regards,
Bill Herrin





--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-28 Thread Richard Bennett
Owen, your mother should have told you that you need to play nice if you 
want the other children to play with you.


On 7/28/14, 12:02 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Richard Bennett rich...@bennett.com wrote:


I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay 
for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that 
what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of strong net 
neutrality? Professor van Schewick is pretty clear about making the users pay for 
the edge providers in her tome on Internet architecture and innovation.

This is as absurd as the people you shill^wpoopy-head (per your request) for.

The users pay either way.

Either the content provider(s) pay the carriers and then bill the users (at a 
mark up) or the users pay directly (hopefully without the markup).

We are, after all, not talking about data that Netflix wants to inflict on the 
unsuspecting user. We are talking about data that the user REQUESTED from 
Netflix.

Saying “Content providers should pay” sounds great, because it sounds like it 
gives the end-user a free ride, but the reality is a little different.
Let’s have a look at the unintended consequences of such a policy:

1.  End users get billed more by the content providers to cover 
this additional cost.
2.  Content providers have to mark up what they are charged by the 
end-user’s ISPs, and they want to charge a uniform
rate to all customers, so the most likely result is that they 
bill end users based on a marked up rate from the most
expensive eyeball ISP they are forced to pay.
3.  As a result of these additional charges, you create barriers to 
competition in the content space which begins to turn
content into more of an oligopoly like access currently is. Its 
a giant step in the exact opposite direction of good.

Frankly, I give Netflix a lot of credit for fighting this instead of taking the 
benefits it could provide and screwing over their customers and
their competition.



Competition is a wonderful thing where it can work, but it's not a panacea, 
especially for the poor and for high-cost, rural areas. Communication policy 
has pretty much always relied on some form of subsidy for these situations, 
that's the universal service fee we pay on our phone bills.

How would you know… Let’s _TRY_ it and see what happens? Subsidy for those 
situations is probably necessary, but so far, subsidy has always been 
structured to subsidize monopolies and block competition (at the 
request(demand) of the very people you shill^wpoopy-head for).

If we changed the subsidies a tiny bit so that all subsidized infrastructure 
was built in a manner open to multiple higher-level service providers (e.g. 
subsidized open fiber builds to serving wire centers with colocation 
capabilities) and made those facilities available to all service providers on 
an equal footing (same cost, same ToS, same SLA, same ticket priority, etc.) I 
bet you’d see a very different situation develop rather quickly.


Susan Crawford explicitly complains that American ISPs gouge the rich by 
charging more than the OECD norm for high-speed (50 Mbps and above) service, but she 
fails to point out that they also charge less than the norm for low-speed (15 Mbps and 
below) service.

Whatever… The bottom line is that overall, throughout the US, even in the most 
densely populated areas, we are far behind what you can get in places like NL, 
KR, SG, SE, etc. and paying generally more for it.


I think it's easy to create unintended consequences if you don't look at how 
specific regulations affect real people, no matter how high-minded and 
principled they may appear at the surface.

OK, so please tell me what are the horrible unintended consequences of making 
layer 1 an open platform available on an equal footing to all competing L2+ 
providers that want to compete? As you point out, most L1 has been built with 
taxpayer money and/or subsidy, so what’s the horrible downside to letting it 
actually work or the taxpayers instead of the oligopolistic law firms 
masquerading as communications companies?

Owen


RB


On 7/27/14, 7:08 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

Conflating zero-rating with NN is not necessarily helpful.  I somehow doubt 
that is ultimately what convinced all those groups to suddenly come out against 
NN at the last minute.

The EFF did recently address the issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divide

quote

However, we worry about the downside risks of the zero rated services. Although 
it may seem like a humane strategy to offer users from developing countries 
crumbs from the Internet's table in the form of free access to walled-garden 
services, such service may thrive at the cost of stifling the development of 
low-cost, neutral Internet access in those countries

Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-28 Thread Richard Bennett

On 7/28/14, 12:39 PM, William Herrin wrote:
There is nothing new under the sun, no matter how much you may protest 
otherwise...


This is a self-fulfilling prophecy that reflects the intense 
conservatism of a certain part of the Internet establishment. I'm 
inclined to go for new services, new norms, and progress. But that's 
just my personal bias, not a law of nature.


RB

--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
This is one of the more clueless smears I've seen. The astroturf 
allegation is hilarious because it shows a lack of understanding of what 
the term means: individuals can't be astroturf by definition; it takes 
an organization.


Groups like Free Press are arguably astroturf because of their funding 
and collaboration with commercial interests, but even if you buy the 
blogger's claim that AEI is taking orders from Comcast (which it isn't), 
it doesn't pretend to be speaking for the grassroots. After 76 years in 
operation, people engaged in public policy have a very clear idea of the 
values that AEI stands for, and the organization goes to great lengths 
to firewall fundraising from scholarship. AEI's management grades itself 
in part on being fired by donors, in part; this is actually a goal.


The thing I most like about  AEI is that it doesn't take official 
positions and leaves scholars the freedom to make up their own minds and 
to disagree with each other. Although we do tend to be skeptical of 
Internet regulation, we're certainly not of one mind about what needs to 
be regulated and who should do it. AEI is a real think thank, not an 
advocacy organization pretending to be a think tank.


The article is riddled with factual errors that I've asked Esquire to 
correct, but it has declined, just as it declined to make proper 
corrections to the blogger's previous story alleging the FCC had 
censored 500,000 signatures from a petition in support of Title II. See: 
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality?fb_comment_id=fbc_734581913271304_735710019825160_735710019825160#f35206a395cd434


The blogger came to my attention when he was criticized on Twitter by 
journalists who support net neutrality for that shoddy piece of 
sensationalism; see the dialog around this tweet: 
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/489212137773215744


The net neutrality debate astonishes me because it rehashes arguments I 
first heard when writing the IEEE 802.3 1BASE5 standard (the one that 
replaced coaxial cable Ethernet with today's scalable hub and spoke 
system) in 1984. Even then some people argued that a passive bus was 
more democratic than an active hub/switch despite its evident 
drawbacks in terms of cable cost, reliability, manageability, 
scalability, and media independence. Others argued that all networking 
problems can be resolved by throwing bandwidth at them and that all QoS 
is evil, etc. These talking points really haven't changed.


The demonization of Comcast is especially peculiar because it's the only 
ISP in the US still bound by the FCC's 2010 Open Internet order. It 
agreed to abide by those regulations even if they were struck down by 
the courts, which they were in January. What happens with the current 
Open Internet proceeding doesn't have any bearing on Comcast until its 
merger obligations expire, and its proposed merger with TWC would extend 
them to a wider footprint and reset the clock on their expiration.


Anyhow, the blogger did spell my name right, to there's that.

RB

On 7/22/14, 9:07 AM, Paul WALL wrote:

Provided without comment:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality

Drive Slow,
Paul Wall


--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Net Neutrality...

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
Minor nit: McDowell is a former two term commissioner, but was not a 
chairman. He is, however, a real standout in terms of understanding the 
Internet and has many of the most coherent comments of any commissioner 
since his appointment. He was a leader in the campaign to push back the 
attempts of the ITU to establish sovereignty over interconnection and to 
apply telecom tariffs to the Internet.


It's worth noting that there was a time when Internet policy at the 
national level was not the ideological exercise that it has become. 
There was very little difference between Clinton's last FCC chairman 
(Kennard) and Bush 43's first chairman (Powell) on the general approach 
of the federal government to the Internet. Powell was, after all, the 
chairman who first articulated Internet Freedom goals in his famous 
Four Freedoms speech in Boulder in 2004; see: 
http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V3I1/JTHTLv3i1_Powell.PDF


It's a shame that people can't discuss principles of network policy 
today without first signing a loyalty oath to one of the political 
parties. It seems to me that Kennard, Powell, Wheeler, McDowell, and 
current commissioner Pai have all articulated great ideas about Internet 
policy that stand on their own without regard to political affiliations.


RB

On 7/16/14, 7:50 AM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:

Relevant article by former FCC Chair

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/14/this-is-why-the-government-should-never-control-the-internet/


--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony 
organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public 
Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are legit? 
Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.


It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net 
neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the 
pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy 
Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in 
America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising 
networks.


Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that 
nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free 
broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia 
were required to charge the poor:


A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of 
neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put an end to 
the practice, widespread in developing countries 
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/, 
of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz has 
reported 
http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/, 
companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike up 
deals 
http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/ 
with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones version of 
their service without charging customers for the data.


It is not clear whether operators receive a fee 
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/ 
from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are widespread. 
Internet giants like it because it encourages use of their services in 
places where consumers shy away from hefty data charges. Carriers like 
it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a gateway to the wider 
internet, introducing users to the wonders of the web and encouraging 
them to explore further afield—and to pay for data. And it’s not just 
commercial services that use the practice: Wikipedia has been an 
enthusiastic adopter of zero-rating as a way to spread its free, 
non-profit encyclopedia.


http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-access-to-wikipedia-and-facebook/

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

RB


On 7/27/14, 5:07 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

Now, this is astroturfing.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180781/leading-civil-rights-group-just-sold-out-net-neutrality


On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Richard Bennett rich...@bennett.com 
mailto:rich...@bennett.com wrote:


This is one of the more clueless smears I've seen. The astroturf
allegation is hilarious because it shows a lack of understanding
of what the term means: individuals can't be astroturf by
definition; it takes an organization.

Groups like Free Press are arguably astroturf because of their
funding and collaboration with commercial interests, but even if
you buy the blogger's claim that AEI is taking orders from Comcast
(which it isn't), it doesn't pretend to be speaking for the
grassroots. After 76 years in operation, people engaged in public
policy have a very clear idea of the values that AEI stands for,
and the organization goes to great lengths to firewall fundraising
from scholarship. AEI's management grades itself in part on being
fired by donors, in part; this is actually a goal.

The thing I most like about  AEI is that it doesn't take official
positions and leaves scholars the freedom to make up their own
minds and to disagree with each other. Although we do tend to be
skeptical of Internet regulation, we're certainly not of one mind
about what needs to be regulated and who should do it. AEI is a
real think thank, not an advocacy organization pretending to be a
think tank.

The article is riddled with factual errors that I've asked Esquire
to correct, but it has declined, just as it declined to make
proper corrections to the blogger's previous story alleging the
FCC had censored 500,000 signatures from a petition in support of
Title II. See:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality?fb_comment_id=fbc_734581913271304_735710019825160_735710019825160#f35206a395cd434

The blogger came to my attention when he was criticized on Twitter
by journalists who support net neutrality for that shoddy piece of
sensationalism; see the dialog around this tweet:
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/489212137773215744

The net neutrality debate astonishes me because it rehashes
arguments I first heard when

Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett

I prefer the term poopy head because it's so much more sophisticated.

RB

On 7/27/14, 5:39 PM, goe...@anime.net wrote:

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014, Richard Bennett wrote:
This is one of the more clueless smears I've seen. The astroturf 
allegation is hilarious because it shows a lack of understanding of 
what the term means: individuals can't be astroturf by definition; 
it takes an organization.


Individuals can be paid shills though.

-Dan


--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
Maybe it would help if you tried to address the issues in a serious way 
instead of just trying to be cute.


Just a thought...

RB

On 7/27/14, 8:52 PM, Matt Palmer wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 08:16:36AM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

  On 28-Jul-2014 8:06 am, Matt Palmer mpal...@hezmatt.org wrote:

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 05:28:08PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that
net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money
from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of
super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most
profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line
retailers, and advertising networks.

I've got to say, this is the first time I've heard Verizon and Comcast
described as poor and disadvantaged.


Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when
that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who
provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to
Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

[...]


Internet Freedom? Not so much.

I totally agree.  You can't have Internet Freedom when some of the
richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers,
on-line retailers, and advertising networks, are paying to have eyeballs
locked into their services.  Far better that users be given an
opportunity to browse the Internet free of restriction, by providing
reasonable cost services through robust and healthy competition.

Or is that perhaps not what you meant?

I think he meant the actual poor people that broadband subsidies and free
walled garden internet to access only fb and Wikipedia are supposed to
benefit, but I could be wrong

I've got a whopping great big privilege that's possibly obscuring my view,
but I fail to see how only providing access to Facebook and Wikipedia is (a)
actual *Internet* access, or (b) actually beneficial, in the long run, to
anyone other than Facebook and Wikipedia.  I suppose it could benefit the
(no doubt incumbent) telco which is providing the service, since it makes it
much more difficult for competition to flourish.  I can't see any lasting
benefit to the end user (or should I say product?).

- Matt



--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the 
eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge 
providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC 
to impose under the guise of strong net neutrality? Professor van 
Schewick is pretty clear about making the users pay for the edge 
providers in her tome on Internet architecture and innovation.


Competition is a wonderful thing where it can work, but it's not a 
panacea, especially for the poor and for high-cost, rural areas. 
Communication policy has pretty much always relied on some form of 
subsidy for these situations, that's the universal service fee we pay on 
our phone bills.


Susan Crawford explicitly complains that American ISPs gouge the rich 
by charging more than the OECD norm for high-speed (50 Mbps and above) 
service, but she fails to point out that they also charge less than the 
norm for low-speed (15 Mbps and below) service.


I think it's easy to create unintended consequences if you don't look at 
how specific regulations affect real people, no matter how high-minded 
and principled they may appear at the surface.


RB


On 7/27/14, 7:08 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:


Conflating zero-rating with NN is not necessarily helpful.  I somehow 
doubt that is ultimately what convinced all those groups to suddenly 
come out against NN at the last minute.


The EFF did recently address the issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divide 



quote

However, we worry about the downside risks of the zero rated services. 
Although it may seem like a humane strategy to offer users from 
developing countries crumbs from the Internet's table in the form of 
free access to walled-garden services, such service may thrive at the 
cost of stifling the development of low-cost, neutral Internet access 
in those countries for decades to come.


Zero-rating also risks skewing the Internet experience of millions (or 
billions) of first-time Internet users. For those who don't have 
access to anything else, Facebook /is/ the Internet. On such an 
Internet, the task of filtering and censoring content suddenly becomes 
so much easier, and the potential for local entrepreneurs and hackers 
to roll out their own innovative online services using local languages 
and content is severely curtailed.


Sure, zero rated services may seem like an easy band-aid fix to lessen 
the digital divide. But do you know whatmost 
http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/more-competition-essential-for-future-of-mobile-innovation.htmstakeholders 
http://a4ai.org/policy-and-regulatory-best-practices/agree 
http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/27.aspxis a 
better approach towards conquering the digital divide? 
Competition—which we can foster through rules that reduce the power of 
telecommunications monopolies and oligopolies to limit the content and 
applications that their subscribers can access and share.  Where 
competition isn't enough, we can combine this with limited rules 
against clearly impermissible practices like website blocking.


/quote





On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Richard Bennett rich...@bennett.com 
mailto:rich...@bennett.com wrote:


So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony
organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public
Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are
legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced
that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers
money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the
pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and
most profitable companies in America, the content resellers,
on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when
that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who
provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to
Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies
of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put
an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/,
of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz
has reported

http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/,
companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike
up deals
http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/
with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones
version of their service

Re: Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

2014-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett

In fact Netflix is asking to connect to eyeball networks for free:

http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html

 Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll 
for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or 
intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the 
services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, 
they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge.


This isn't the traditional understanding of net neutrality, but this is 
the beauty of murky notions: they can be redefined as the fashions 
change: You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of 
web browsing? That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more 
traffic while I sit back and call you a crook for not anticipating my 
innovation.


Very wow.

RB


On 7/27/14, 9:49 PM, Matt Palmer wrote:

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 09:08:17PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for
the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge
providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the
FCC to impose under the guise of strong net neutrality?

In a word: no.  Net neutrality is about everyone paying their own way to get
their packets to where they want them to go.  Netflix doesn't get to use the
Internet for free; they pay a whole heck of a lot each month to L3 and
Cogent.

- Matt



--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum



Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

2014-07-11 Thread Richard Bennett
Actually, there are some examples of this, and I'm surprised Mr. Temkin 
didn't point them out. I've been told by rural telcos (RLECs) that 
there's a consolidated mini-exchange in Idaho that was originally built 
with some support from the state in order exchange phone calls within 
Idaho that would otherwise have to be sent to Denver or Seattle for 
interconnect. The RLECs subsequently used the facility for peering 
between their broadband networks, and at some point Netflix, at its own 
expense, installed some of its proprietary servers and paid for a 
circuit to Seattle. The part that excited the RLECs was Netflix footing 
the bill to move its traffic from Seattle to Idaho.


The RLECs told me they're not overjoyed by the cost of moving all that 
traffic 50 miles on their own networks, but it beats moving it all the 
way from Seattle. I thought that was funny since Comcast moves Netflix 
traffic 100 miles from their nearest exchange point in San Jose to my 
home in the East SF Bay. Looking at the traceroute, it all passes 
through SF, but Netflix doesn't have facilities there.


Richard


On 7/11/14, 9:50 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:

I’m always surprised that folks at smaller exchanges don’t form consortiums to 
build a mutually beneficial transit AS that connects to a larger remote 
exchange.

For example, if your 19 peers in Denver formed a consortium to get a circuit 
into one (or more) of the larger exchanges in Dallas, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, 
or Seattle with an ASN and a router at each end, the share cost of that link an 
infrastructure would actually be fairly low per peer.

Owen



--
Richard Bennett




Re: rich...@bennett.com has shared Cable companies astroturfing support against FCC Title II regulation | Electronista

2014-06-06 Thread Richard Bennett

Dear NANOG,

I didn't send this.  Sorry to disappoint the speculators.

Richard

On 6/6/14, 10:29 AM, rich...@bennett.com wrote:

  Cable companies astroturfing support against FCC Title II regulation | 
Electronista 
http://www.electronista.com/articles/14/06/06/one.group.hired.known.false.grassroots.campaign.generator.to.sink.measure/#sUBFuKpvB3FAOPyL.03
---
rich...@bennett.com shared this using Po.st: http://www.po.st


--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: rich...@bennett.com has shared Cable companies astroturfing support against FCC Title II regulation | Electronista

2014-06-06 Thread Richard Bennett

Is there any reason you would?

On 6/6/14, 4:39 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

Any particular reason you wouldn't send such a thing? It is interesting, 
operationally relevant, and timely.



--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: rich...@bennett.com has shared Cable companies astroturfing support against FCC Title II regulation | Electronista

2014-06-06 Thread Richard Bennett
I wanted the NANOG community to know that someone is impersonating me. I 
don't send off-topic links from dodgy blogs to email lists.


I now have a pretty good idea as to who the impersonator is; it seems 
that Gilmore has too much time on his hands.


RB

On 6/6/14, 5:06 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

I believe I listed 3.

And there are multiple times I have posted similar items in the past.

Just curious about the speculators thing. But I think we're off-topic, so 
apologies to the audience for extra email in their inboxes. I've sent reply-to to my 
personal address to avoid this blowing up (although I don't know if mailman will respect 
that).



--
Richard Bennett
Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy
Editor, High Tech Forum




Re: The growth of municipal broadband networks

2011-03-26 Thread Richard Bennett
The principle that kept telegraph and telephone apart wasn't a 
functional layering concept, it was a technology silos concept under 
which all communication networks were assumed to be indistinguishable 
from their one and only one application. If you read the Communications 
Act of 1934, you'll see this idea embodied in the titles of the act, 
each of which describes both a network and an application, as we 
understand the terms today. Wu wants to make law out of the OSI model, a 
very different enterprise than traditional telecom regulation.


On 3/25/2011 10:27 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

aka the separation principle ( Tim Wu - the Master Switch)

What surprised me is that when I put his point to Richard R.John at the
Columbia Big media event back in Nov
http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=1563  - John totally agreed with it, citing the
precedent of the telegraph companies being locked out of the telephone
business back in the day.

  j


On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 10:52 PM, George Bonsergbon...@seven.com  wrote:


It is only in very recent times that we have been able to overlay
Internet on both cable and television, and to have television
competition via satellite.

In the old days the phone company didn't provide content.  You
called someone and the people at each end provided the content or the
data going over the network.  The phone company simply provided the
network.  I still believe the biggest mistake we made was breaking up
the Bell System.  We should have let them be, regulated the crap out of
them, and then said no, you can't get into the business of providing
content.  They system should have been left as a regulated public
utility.


To that end, I think the US would be much better off with fiber to the
home on a single distribution infrastructure.  That could be owned and
operated by the municipality (like the water system) or owned and
operated by a corporation granted an exclusive right to service an

area

(think telephone, at least pre CLEC).

Yup, bring back The Bell System.



Where you immediately run into a snag is the next layer up.  Should

the

government provide IP services, if the fiber is government owned?
Should private companies be required to offer competitors access to
provide IP services if the fiber is privately owned?

I would say they provide network access only, not content.  They would
be kept out of providing content and kept in the business of reliably
connecting content to consumer.  That would be their focus.


Having looked around the world I personally believe most communities
would be best served if the government provided layer-1 distribution,
possibly with some layer 2 switching, but then allowed any commercial
entity to come in and offer layer 3 services.

I don't.  What happens when the government then decides what content
is and is not allowed to go over their network?  If one had a site that
provided a view that the government didn't like, would they cut it off?
I want the government very strictly limited in what they can and cannot
do and I want them to have to go to an outside entity for things like
lawful intercept because it is another check on their power.  A private
entity might insist that there is a proper warrant or subpoena while the
government might simply decide to snoop first, get the paperwork later.
Keeping the network at arm's length from the government helps to make
sure there is another entity in the loop.


For simplicity of
argument I like people to envision the local government fiber agency
(like your water authority) dropping off a 1 port fiber 4 port copper
switch in your basement.

Big difference.  Water is not a good analogy.  The content in that
case is from a central source and everyone gets the same thing.  With
the network, you have people communicating back and forth and much of
that communications is private or expected to be private (say, a phone
call or a secure financial transaction).  If a private entity screws up,
it is much easier to fine them or fire the person responsible than it is
to punish a government department or fire a government worker.  Besides,
we really don't need yet more people on the government payroll.

Though I do agree that it is a natural monopoly.  It should be managed
by a regulated utility that is explicitly prohibited from providing the
content, only provide access through the network.








--
Richard Bennett




Re: The growth of municipal broadband networks

2011-03-26 Thread Richard Bennett
   I think the motive for the traditional separation actually was
   completely different from the one for new separation. Silos had the
   effect of limiting competition for specific services, while the avowed
   goal of functional separation mandates is to increase competition.
   Opportunities for service competition between the telegraph and
   telephone networks were limited by technology in the first instance -
   you couldn't carry phone calls over the telegraph network anyway
   because it was a low bandwidth, steel wire system with telegraph office
   - to telegraph office topology - but you could carry telegrams over the
   phone network, but only if permitted by law.
   In a sense, ARPANET was telegraph network 2.0, and even used the same
   terminals initially. Paper tape-to-tape transfers became ftp, the
   telegram became email, and kids running paper messages around the
   office became routers switching packets.
   The layer 0 model has some merit, but has issues. In areas nobody wants
   to provide ISP services, and there is still a tendency toward market
   consolidation due to economies of scale in the service space.
   Facilities-based competition remains the most viable model in most
   places, as we're seeing in the UK where market structure resembles the
   US more than most want to admit: Their two biggest ISPs are BT and
   Virgin, the owners of the wire, and they have less fiber than we have
   in the US.
   Creating the conditions for network competition is a hard problem with
   no easy answers.
   RB
   On 3/25/2011 11:48 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

 I take your point, the separation was of a different order. But a
 separation, nonetheless. The motive is not so much different.

   I think we can all accept that traditional telephone regulation is
   rapidly losing its grip as the beast morphs. Now that applications
   outnumber networks new problems require new solutions.

   I've heard Allied Fiber's Hunter Newby argue convincingly that really
   it's about separating Level 0 - the real estate, the wires and the head
   end premises - from everything else, and facilitating sufficient open
   access to guarantee healthy competition in services.

   And yes, where there's a monopoly there will have to some price
   regulation. At least that's traditional.
   As we've seen in the UK, while it's not so much a stretch to impose
   even higher level unbundling on the telcos, when it comes to the cable
   industry it's going to be a very painful pulling of teeth.
   [1]http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=46077id=e938181
   7-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10
   j
   On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 2:01 AM, Richard Bennett
   [2]rich...@bennett.com wrote:

 The principle that kept telegraph and telephone apart wasn't a
 functional layering concept, it was a technology silos concept
 under which all communication networks were assumed to be
 indistinguishable from their one and only one application. If you
 read the Communications Act of 1934, you'll see this idea embodied
 in the titles of the act, each of which describes both a network and
 an application, as we understand the terms today. Wu wants to make
 law out of the OSI model, a very different enterprise than
 traditional telecom regulation.

   On 3/25/2011 10:27 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

 aka the separation principle ( Tim Wu - the Master Switch)
 What surprised me is that when I put his point to Richard R.John at
 the
 Columbia Big media event back in Nov
 [3]http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=1563  - John totally agreed with it,
 citing the
 precedent of the telegraph companies being locked out of the
 telephone
 business back in the day.
  j
 On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 10:52 PM, George
 Bonser[4]gbon...@seven.com  wrote:

 It is only in very recent times that we have been able to overlay
 Internet on both cable and television, and to have television
 competition via satellite.

 In the old days the phone company didn't provide content.  You
 called someone and the people at each end provided the content or
 the
 data going over the network.  The phone company simply provided the
 network.  I still believe the biggest mistake we made was breaking
 up
 the Bell System.  We should have let them be, regulated the crap out
 of
 them, and then said no, you can't get into the business of
 providing
 content.  They system should have been left as a regulated public
 utility.

 To that end, I think the US would be much better off with fiber to
 the
 home on a single distribution infrastructure.  That could be owned
 and
 operated by the municipality (like the water system) or owned and
 operated by a corporation granted an exclusive right to service an

 area

 (think telephone, at least pre CLEC).

 Yup, bring back The Bell System.

 Where you immediately

Re: FCC dealt major blow in net neutrality ruling favoring, Comcast

2010-04-12 Thread Richard Bennett
One of the things I like about e-mail lists is learning things about 
myself that I never knew before, especially regarding my occupation. For 
the last 9 months or so I've been working part-time with a Washington 
think tank in an analyst capacity, not as a lobbyist, and not on the 
Comcast payroll. My views about Internet regulation precede this job and 
haven't been altered by it. For purposes of the present discussion, I'd 
rather be known as the guy who wrote the first IEEE 802 standard for 
Ethernet over twisted pair, or designed the Wi-Fi MAC protocol, or the 
DRP for UWB, or something like that.


As Suresh notes, the idea that the FCC overstepped its bounds in the 
Comcast order is hardly controversial. It's not even a matter of opinion 
any more, as the decision written by the most liberal judge on the 3rd 
Circuit, David Tatel, means it's the law. The debate about how to 
regulate the Internet is now premised on the fact that the old rationale 
doesn't hold up to scrutiny, so deal with it.


RB

On 4/11/2010 11:23 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Paul WALLpauldotw...@gmail.com  wrote:
   

It should probably be noted, for purpose of establishing bias, that
Richard is a Washington lobbyist, hired to represent Comcast on
regulatory matters.  What he views as overstepping legal bounds,
others may view as protecting consumers...
 

Hell, funnily enough Susan Crawford warned at the time that the FCC
action wouldn't stand up in court the way it was done.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/comcast_vs_the_fcc_a_reply_to_susan_crawfords_article/

--srs
   


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: FCC dealt major blow in net neutrality ruling favoring, Comcast

2010-04-12 Thread Richard Bennett
   You're speculating that ITIF gets funding from Comcast, and therefore
   guessing I'm singing Comcast's song. But you don't know whether Comcast
   actually is an ITIF sponsor, just as you don't know whether Google,
   Intel, and Microsoft are ITIF sponsors. And then you're speculating
   again regarding the relationships between sponsors and fellows.
   Paul, it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about re:
   Internet regulation policy or the nature of DC think tanks, so why you
   you just STFU rather than embarrass yourself further?
   RB
   On 4/12/2010 12:08 PM, Paul WALL wrote:

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Richard Bennett [1]rich...@bennett.com wrote:

One of the things I like about e-mail lists is learning things about myself
that I never knew before, especially regarding my occupation. For the last 9
months or so I've been working part-time with a Washington think tank in an
analyst capacity, not as a lobbyist, and not on the Comcast payroll.

You neglected to mention that the think tank (where I'm from in
Houston, we call them lobbys) is funded by Comcast, among other big
cable/telecom players.

Drive Slow,
Paul Wall

--

References

   1. mailto:rich...@bennett.com


Re: FCC dealt major blow in net neutrality ruling favoring, Comcast

2010-04-12 Thread Richard Bennett
   Thanks for pointing that out.
   RB
   On 4/12/2010 2:06 PM, Stonix Farstone wrote:

   On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Richard Bennett
   [1]rich...@bennett.com wrote:

 One of the things I like about e-mail lists is learning things about
 myself that I never knew before, especially regarding my occupation.
 For the last 9 months or so I've been working part-time with a
 Washington think tank in an analyst capacity, not as a lobbyist, and
 not on the Comcast payroll. My views about Internet regulation
 precede this job and haven't been altered by it. For purposes of the
 present discussion, I'd rather be known as the guy who wrote the
 first IEEE 802 standard for Ethernet over twisted pair, or designed
 the Wi-Fi MAC protocol, or the DRP for UWB, or something like that.

   You might want to ring up the IEEE and get them to fix their egregious
   omission of your name as the designer of the Wi-Fi MAC protocol.
   [2]http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.11-2007.pdf

   Participants

   At the time the draft of this revision was sent to sponsor ballot, the
   IEEE 802.11 Working Group had the following officers:

   Stuart J. Kerry, Chair Al Petrick, Vice-Chair and Treasurer Harry R.
   Worstell, Vice-Chair Tim Godfrey, Secretary Nanci Vogtli, Publicity
   Standing Committee Teik-Kheong Tan, Chair, Wireless Next Generation
   Standing Committee Terry L. Cole and Simon Barber, Technical Editors

   Richard H. Paine, Chair, Task Group k Bruce P. Kraemer, Chair, Task
   Group n Sheung Li, Vice-Chair, Task Group n Lee Armstrong, Chair, Task
   Group p Clint Chaplin, Chair, Task Group r Donald E. Eastlake III,
   Chair, Task Group s Charles R. Wright, Chair, Task Group t Stephen
   McCann, Chair, Task Group u Pat R. Calhoun, Chair, Task Group v Jesse
   Walker, Chair, Task Group w Peter Ecclesine, Chair, Contention-Based
   Protocol Study Group

   When the IEEE 802.11 Working Group approved this revision, Task Group m
   had the following membership:

   Bernard D. Aboba Osama S. Aboul-Magd Santosh P. Abraham Tomoko Adachi
   Jonathan R. Agre Jon Adams Carlos H. Aldana Thomas Alexander Areg
   Alimian Keith Amann Veera Anantha Merwyn B. Andrade Carl F. Andren
   Scott Andrews David C. Andrus Hidenori Aoki Tsuguhide Aoki Michimasa
   Aramaki Takashi Aramaki Sirikiat Lek Ariyavisitakul Lee R. Armstrong
   Larry Arnett Yusuke Asai Arthur W. Astrin Malik Audeh Geert A. Awater
   David Bagby Michael Bahr Dennis J. Baker

   Robert O'Hara, Chair Terry L. Cole, Editor

   Ramanathan Balachander Simon Barber Richard N. Barnwell John R. Barr

   Kevin M. Barry Charles R. Bartel Burak H. Baysal John L. Benko Mathilde
   Benveniste Don Berry

   Nehru Bhandaru Yogesh B. Bhatt Bjorn A. Bjerke Simon Black Scott Blue

   Jan Boer Herve Bonneville William M. Brasier Alistair G. Buttar Pat R.
   Calhoun Nancy Cam-Winget Necati Canpolat Bill Carney Pat Carson Broady
   B. Cash RongFeng Chang Clint F. Chaplin Amalavoyal Chari James Chen

   Jeng-Hong Chen Shiuh Chen Ye Chen Yi-Ming Chen Alexander L. Cheng Hong
   Cheng

   Greg L. Chesson Aik Chindapol Sunghyun Choi Won-Joon Choi Liwen Chu
   Dong-Ming Chuang Ken Clements

   John T. Coffey W. Steven Conner Charles I. Cook Kenneth Cook Steven
   Crowley Marc de Courville Rolf J. De Vegt Sabine Demel Yoshiharu Doi
   Brett L. Douglas Baris B. Dundar Chris Durand Roger P. Durand Sebastien
   Dure Yaron Dycian Donald E. Eastlake Peter Ecclesine

   Copyright © 2007 IEEE. All rights reserved.

   vvi

   Copyright © 2007 IEEE. All rights reserved.

   Richard Eckard Jonathan P. Edney Bruce Edwards John Egan Stephen P.
   Emeott Marc Emmelmann Darwin Engwer Joseph Epstein Patrik Eriksson
   Mustafa Eroz Andrew X. Estrada Christoph Euscher Stefano M. Faccin John
   C. Fakatselis Lars P. Falk

   Steve W. Fantaske Michael Faulkner Paul H. Feinberg Alex Feldman
   Matthew J. Fischer Wayne K. Fisher Michael D. Foegelle Brian Ford

   Guido Frederiks Benoit Fremont Takashi Fukagawa Hiroshi Furukawa James
   Gardner Monisha Ghosh James P. K. Gilb Jeffrey M. Gilbert Tim Godfrey
   Sandesh Goel Wataru Gohda Sudheer Grandhi Gordon P. Gray Paul K. Gray
   Larry Green Daqing Gu Srikanth Gumamdi David Gurevich Fred Haisch
   Robert J. Hall

   Neil N. Hamady Seishi Hanaoka Christopher J. Hansen James J. Harford
   Daniel N. Harkins Brian D. Hart

   Chris Hartman Thomas Haslestad Amer A. Hassan Vann (William) Hasty
   James P. Hauser Yutaka Hayakawa Shigenori Hayase Kevin V. Hayes
   Haixiang He

   David J. Hedberg Robert F. Heile Gregory Scott Henderson Eleanor
   Hepworth

   Frans M. Hermodsson

   Karl F. Heubaum Odagiri Hideaki Guido R. Hiertz Garth D. Hillman
   Christopher S. Hinsz Michael M. Hoghooghi Allen Hollister Hooman Honary
   William D. Horne Henry Horng Yungping A. Hsu David Hunter Muhammad Z.
   Ikram Daichi Imamura Yasuhiko Inoue Kazuhito Ishida Takashi Ishidoshiro
   Takumi Ito

   Lakshmi Iyer Eric A. Jacobsen Marc

Re: FCC dealt major blow in net neutrality ruling favoring, Comcast

2010-04-10 Thread Richard Bennett
The FCC is structured in such a way that the chairman calls all the 
shots on policy matters. In this instance, the former chairman, Kevin 
Martin, was responsible for the Comcast order but the current chairman, 
Julius Genachowski, had to defend it in court. Some wags insist that the 
defense was a bit lackluster because Genachowski didn't much care for 
the legal basis of the Comcast order, which relied on a lot of smoke and 
mirrors to regulate aspects of edge network behavior that Congress never 
told the FCC to regulate. The defense relied on some legal theories that 
weren't used in the order itself, and that's a no-no in an appeal. The 
court took the rather extraordinary step of suggesting arguments that 
the FCC could have used in the appeal that it didn't use.


 The murky status of Internet regulation is actually quite enjoyable to 
network operators and to policy wonks alike because it allows maximum 
freedom of action. This will continue, of course, until Congress tells 
the FCC to go regulate the Internet according to some yet-to-be-defined 
framework.


RB

On 4/10/2010 1:36 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

On Apr 9, 2010, at 7:04 PM, Jared Mauch wrote:

   

  I believe you are doing a disservice to the FCC by making these inflammatory 
statements.
 

And here I thought I was defending them for being different  better than the 
last group.

The point is, joe asked about the FCC that made a ruling.  The staffers who 
work hard (and deserve lots of credit for working hard) do not make those 
rulings.  The political appointees and their handlers in the administration 
make those rulings.  Those appointees are very different than the last group.  
And I think this is a very good thing.

For instance, could you in your wildest dreams have imagined the last group sending their 
top people to NANOG, and those people standing around asking people to talk to them?  
That was AWESOME, and very different than the last FCC.

And I don't think there is anything wrong with thinking of it that way.

-- TTFN, patrick

  There are plenty of GOOD people at the FCC, I'm guessing you may not have 
spent much time talking to them.  (I met with the FCC about CALEA due to concerns 
about there being no mature 10G intercept platforms.  There are vendors that are 
shipping devices that are not CALEA compliant, but may be compliant under other 
lawful intercept methods/statutes).
  
  You have to understand that there are political appointees (that must be confirmed) and the regular staffers that operate in this space.  The federal register and comment process is abundant, allowing people to file comments on nearly anything the government is discussing.
  
  If you've not engaged in getting the daily notices from the Federal Register, and did not file form 445, you may want to take a look at it.  Phone the FCC.  Phone the DoJ and ask for the CALEA Implementation Unit, the folks there are behind thehttp://askcalea.net  website.
  
  As with many things, there is a lot of (mis-)information out there.
  
  (Gotta run kids are bleeding!).
  
 



   


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: [NANOG] Roport on internet business

2009-12-23 Thread Richard Bennett
It's actually available for free on the World-Wide Internet at 
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Mobile_Internet_Report_Key_Themes_Final.pdf 
, but you can purchase a paper copy if you'd rather. It's pretty slow 
going as it's mostly power points, some with lots and lots of words, but 
some of the graphs and insights are intriguing, esp. as they related to 
the non-USA parts of the world.


The authors are pretty well convinced that the demand for more wireless 
spectrum will be handled by spectral efficiency improvements and 
deployment of more towers, they stress the importance of replacing 
copper with fiber and microwave in the middle mile, and don't think the 
telcos are doing the right things. There's a lot of discussion about how 
the wireless networks will handle voice and best-efforts at the same 
time which many will find troublesome, I suppose, but overall I'd give 
it 4 out of 5 stars.


RB

On 12/23/2009 3:01 PM, Scott Weeks wrote:

--- taka...@cpqd.com.br wrote:
From: Takashi Tometaka...@cpqd.com.br

Morgan Stanley has released a very interesting report on internet business with 
some tips to net operators:

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobile_internet_report122009.html
---


It must be purchased:

--
The Mobile Internet Report

To receive a printed copy of The Mobile Internet Report, please contact your 
Morgan Stanley Representative. To purchase a copy, please click here.
--

scott

   





Re: [NANOG] Roport on internet business

2009-12-23 Thread Richard Bennett

Maybe we need to pass some laws that ban copper wire outdoors.

On 12/23/2009 4:22 PM, Jared Mauch wrote:

On Dec 23, 2009, at 6:11 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:

   

The authors are pretty well convinced that the demand for more wireless 
spectrum will be handled by spectral efficiency improvements and deployment of 
more towers, they stress the importance of replacing copper with fiber and 
microwave in the middle mile, and don't think the telcos are doing the right 
things.
 

I know, watching my local incumbent they are not replacing damaged copper with 
fiber.  I think they must have warehouses of it someplace.  I can't imagine 
that it is good to replace buried copper w/copper during the wintertime.  If 
you're out doing it, might as well *actually* install fiber in the conduit.

(Unless it's about unions/job protection for the copper guys).

- Jared (not saying unions are bad, but when you operate two assets and have a 
different union for each, it can limit your potential significantly).





Re: news from Google

2009-12-11 Thread Richard Bennett
Microsoft just wants your cash, but Google wants your personal 
information so they can sell it over and over again. The entire Google 
business model is at odds with notions of personal privacy, so it's not 
even a question of the occasional excess on their part. Schmidt did what 
Michael Kinsey calls a gaffe: when a politician accidentally tells the 
truth.


On 12/11/2009 12:36 PM, Seth Mattinen wrote:

Scott Weeks wrote:

--- m...@sizone.org wrote:
From: Ken Chase m...@sizone.org

topically related, it's actually news from Mozilla:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142106/Mozilla_exec_suggests_Firefox_users_move_to_Bing_cites_Google_privacy_stance?source=rss_news 


from the horse's mouth, as it were.

So, how bout that DNS.



Um, yeah.  Them there micro$loth folks is W more privacy 
oriented than them google rascals.





It's better than the maybe you shouldn't be doing things you don't 
want people to know about statement. That right there gives me some 
insight on where Google wants to go in the future with privacy.


~Seth



--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: news from Google

2009-12-04 Thread Richard Bennett
   Bruce Williams wrote:

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Paul S. R. Chisholm
[1]psrchish...@gmail.comwrote

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Ken Chase [2]m...@sizone.org wrote:

We all know that google is leveraging cross-referenceable information

from all

of its services for its profit/advantage ...

/kc
--
Ken Chase - [3]...@heavycomputing.ca - +1 416 897 6284 - Toronto CANADA
Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151

Front St. W.

Ken, this was addressed in the announcement:

[4]http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html

We built Google Public DNS to make the web faster and to retain as
little information about usage as we could, while still being able to
detect and fix problems. Google Public DNS does not permanently store
personally identifiable information.

[5]http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#account
[6]http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#shared
[7]http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#info

Is any of the information collected stored with my Google account?
No.
Does Google share the information it collects from the Google Public
DNS service with anyone else?
No.
Is information about my queries to Google Public DNS shared with other
Google properties, such as Search, Gmail, ads networks, etc.?
No.

Hope this helps.  --PSRC

And this will never change? Not even when you check the box for the latest
update that says it changes some terms and here is the link,,,

Bruce

   The Adsense tracking cookie was once an opt-in, but after Google
   acquired that company and crushed the competition it became an opt-out,
   unbeknownst to many consumers. This is the way these generally go.
   Google will be all sweetness and light until they've crushed OpenDNS,
   and when the competitor's out of the picture, they'll get down to the
   monetizing.
--
Richard Bennett

References

   1. mailto:psrchish...@gmail.com
   2. mailto:m...@sizone.org
   3. mailto:k...@heavycomputing.ca
   4. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html
   5. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#account
   6. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#shared
   7. http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#info


Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-25 Thread Richard Bennett
   Thank you for your insights.
   Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:00:52PM -0800, Richard Bennett wrote:


I haven't found a good source who knows what's going on outside his own
network.


Mr. Bennett,

You know when I first read your post, I assumed you were just ignorant
and confused about the topic of peering on the Internet. Then I saw you
actively refusing to listen to intelligent feedback by some of the most
experienced network operators and peering managers in the industry,
dismiss any idea that you didn't agree with as part of the Google
conspiracy, and further embarrass yourself with comments which proved
you lacked understanding of even the most basic concepts of peering or
inter-network traffic exchange. Normally I would just write you off as
another Dean Anderson style nutjob, but I'm afraid that your ramblings
are so wrong and your closed-mindedness is so severe that you are
actually dangerous to anyone who might happen to read your comments and
think that they are in any way correct. Therefore, I think it is
important for all of us that you be refuted.

I'll start with a few points from your post and comments. You said:



I'm not sure that your 'on-net routes' is the same product as the Paid
Peering that Norton is interpreting; the Arbor study found a large
increase in the traffic that moves through these transit bypass paths,
and that's the actual story. While this service may have been
available for a while, its use is radically increasing. That's data,
BTW, not anecdote, so if you have a problem with the Arbor data,
you'll need some data of your own to refute it.


For starters, if you aren't sure what on-net routes and paid peering
even are, maybe you shouldn't be trying to comment on them. Second, the
Arbor study said absolutely NOTHING about an increase in traffic that
moves via peering vs transit, to say nothing of paid vs settlement free
peering. Arbor is completely and totally unable to identify anything
about money exchanged for bits in general, and from a technical
perspective there is absolute no difference between a paid and non-paid
peering.

You seem to be convoluting the purported increase in traffic between
tier 2 networks with a completely absurd belief that all traffic
between tier 1's was transit and all traffic between tier 2's is
peering. In reality, tier 2's routinely buy from and sell to each other,
peer with some tier 1's, and sell paid peering between themselves when
the business opportunities arise.

You later go on to state:



The Arbor study is evidence that traffic is shifting, and the
carrier-neutral peering site managers I've spoken with tell me they're
making something like 300 cross-connects a month. Do you think all
those cross-connnects are implementing settlement-free peering or
conventional transit agreements? I'm surmising that they aren't.


You have absolutely no basis to make the determination about what
percentage of the crossconnects are peering and what percentage are
transit. This is what we tried to explain to you with the you can't
know this about any network but your own answer, which you seemed
completely incapable of understanding. The reality is that no one can
know the answer for anything but themselves. For my network, I'd say
much less than 20% of our crossconnects are peering, with the vast
majority being customers, and a significant amount being intra-network
capacity (intra-pop, metro, and long-haul circuits) and transit. The
number may vary between networks, but again you have absolutely zero
basis to make any kind of claim about peering let alone settlement-free
vs paid based on the number of crossconnects in a colo.

Most of the other arguments are either meaningless or fall apart once
you remove some of the fundamental misunderstandings above, but there
are still plenty of other things which are completely absurd. For
example, you said:



Paid peering is a better level of access to an ISP's customers for a
fee, but the fee is less than the price of generic access to the ISP
via a transit network. The practice of paid peering also reduces the
load on the Internet core, so what's not to like? Paid peering
agreements should be offered for sale on a non-discriminatory basis,
but they certainly shouldn't be banned.


Paid peering (or peering of any kind) is absolutely no guarantee of
better access to any network, nor is it guaranteed (or even likely) to
reduce costs. There is also no such thing as load on the Internet core
to reduce, and this further illustrates a complete failure to understand
how the Internet works in general.

Paid peering is simply another form of transit, where two networks agree
to exchange money for the service of delivering connectivity. The only
difference is that you're only selling a portion of the routing table
rather than the whole thing, for a specific subset of routes which
have different properties than the rest. In the case of paid peering,
the different property

Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-25 Thread Richard Bennett
Now you've descended from Steenbergen's hair-splitting between on-net 
routes (the mechanism) vs. on-net access (the actual product) into 
Simpson's straight-up lying. ITIF is not opposed to network neutrality 
in principle, having released a paper on A Third Way on Network 
Neutrality, http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=63. There is not a single 
ultra-conservative on the ITIF board, they're all either moderate 
Democrats or moderate Republicans.


I'm letting most of this childish venting slide, but I will point out 
the bald-faced lies.


RB

William Allen Simpson wrote:

They're opposed to net neutrality, and (based on his comments and several
of the papers) still think the Internet is some kind of bastard child 
that

needs adult supervision in the middle -- by which they mean themselves
/in loco parentis/.

Looking at the board, it's populated by ultra-conservative wing-nut
Republicans, and some Conservadems (as we call them in political circles,
they call themselves centrists) from the New Democrat Caucus for
bi-partisan cover.  And lots of lobbyists -- Federal lobbyists -- who
seem to list their educational clients on their bio, but not whether
they are also employed by a firm that represents other clients


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-25 Thread Richard Bennett
   I didn't bring this discussion over here, hippie.
   Randy Bush wrote:

Would you care to elaborate on how the investigation of someones
funding sources is operationally relevant to the rest of the list?


please no

we have a greedy troll.  stop feeding it.  procmail is your friend.

randy



--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC


Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-25 Thread Richard Bennett
   Click through to the PDF, it's a 16 page paper.
   RB
   [1]valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:

On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:32:02 PST, Richard Bennett said:


   ITIF is not opposed to network neutrality
in principle, having released a paper on A Third Way on Network
Neutrality, [2]http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=63.

All of four paragraphs, which don't in fact address what the provider is or is
not providing to Joe Sixpack - point 1 says discriminatory plans are OK as long
as the discriminatory are on display in the cellar of the ISP office, with no
stairs, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory
with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

And points 2 and 3 are saying that this should all be overseen by the same
agencies that oversaw the previous decade's massive buildout of fiber to the
home that was financed by massive multi-billion dollar incentives.

Oh wait, those billions got pocketed - if the massive fiber buildout had
happened, we'd have so much bandwidth that neutrality wouldn't be an issue...

But then, the Republicans keep saying they are not opposed to health care
reform in principle either...


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC

References

   1. mailto:valdis.kletni...@vt.edu
   2. http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=63


Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-25 Thread Richard Bennett
(pardon me if this message is not formatted correctly, T-bird doesn't 
like this list)


I agree that this is not the proper venue for discussion of the politics 
of Internet regulation; the post I wrote for GigaOm has comments 
enabled, and many people with an anti-capitalist bone to pick have 
already availed themselves of that forum to advocate for the people's 
revolution. There are some technical issues that might be of more 
interest and relevance to operators, however.


* One claim I made in my blog post is that traffic increases on the 
Internet aren't measured by MINTS very well. MINTS uses data from 
Meet-me switches, but IX's and colos are pulling x-connects like mad so 
more and more traffic is passing directly through the x-connects and 
therefore not being captured by MINTS. Rate of traffic increase is 
important for regulators as it relates to the cost of running an ISP and 
the need for traffic shaping. Seems to me that MINTS understates traffic 
growth, and people are dealing with it by lighting more dark fiber, 
pulling more fiber, and the x-connects are the tip of the iceberg that 
says this is going on.


* A number of people said I have no basis for the claim that paid 
peering is on the increase, and it's true that the empirical data is 
slim due to the secretive nature of peering and transit agreements. This 
claim is based on hearsay and on the observation that Comcast now has a 
nationwide network and a very open policy regarding peering and paid 
peering. So if paid peering is only increasing at Comcast, now a top 10 
network, it's increasing overall.


* Some other people said I'm not entitled to have an opinion; so much 
for democracy and free speech.


I'd be glad to hear from anyone who has data or informed opinions on 
these subjects, on-list of off-. The reason you should share is that 
people in Washington and Brussels listen to me, so it's in everybody's 
interest for me to be well-informed; I don't really have an ax to grind 
one way or another, but I do want law and regulation to be based on 
fact, not speculation and ideology.


Thanks and have a nice day.

RB

Darren Bolding wrote:
Whether or not Mr Bennett has any idea what he is talking about- and I 
have started to develop an opinion on that subject myself- I really 
would rather not see Nanog become a forum for partisan political 
discussion.  There are _lots_ of places for that, which as a political 
junkie I read regularly. 

I like Nanog in part because it typically steers clear of this sort of 
thing (and you know the mailing list charter sez) and in some way 
serves as a refreshing change between reading Daily Kos and Powerline 
blogs.


I will also say that while Mr Bennett's affiliation and paycheck have 
some relevance to interpreting what he says, it isn't justification 
for tossing everything he says out.  If he seems to have no idea what 
he is talking about, that is reason for tossing out what he says.


One final point- referring to conservadems is about as telling about 
perspective as certain people referring to RINO's.  Bennett hasn't 
said anything blatantly partisan (perhaps he is to polished for that), 
his critics certainly have.  You diminish your argument by doing so.


I say all this even though some of the people getting engaged in this 
are people I've known for a while and respect a great deal, and others 
are ones I've read on Nanog for a number of years.


I'm actually intersted in the substantive content, but I'd rather 
avoid the rest if you wouldn't mind.


Thanks for listening,

--D


On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 7:13 AM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu 
mailto:valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:


On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:32:02 PST, Richard Bennett said:

ITIF is not opposed to network neutrality
 in principle, having released a paper on A Third Way on Network
 Neutrality, http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=63.

All of four paragraphs, which don't in fact address what the
provider is or is
not providing to Joe Sixpack - point 1 says discriminatory plans
are OK as long
as the discriminatory are on display in the cellar of the ISP
office, with no
stairs, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a
disused lavatory
with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

And points 2 and 3 are saying that this should all be overseen by
the same
agencies that oversaw the previous decade's massive buildout of
fiber to the
home that was financed by massive multi-billion dollar incentives.

Oh wait, those billions got pocketed - if the massive fiber
buildout had
happened, we'd have so much bandwidth that neutrality wouldn't be
an issue...

But then, the Republicans keep saying they are not opposed to
health care
reform in principle either...




--
--  Darren Bolding  --
--  dar...@bolding.org mailto:dar...@bolding.org   --


--
Richard Bennett
Research

Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-24 Thread Richard Bennett

Yes, it's a good old-fashioned Usenet-style flame-fest. Sort of.

It turns out you can say any damn thing you want about peering since 
nobody has any facts.


RB

Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

http://gigaom.com/2009/11/22/how-video-is-changing-the-internet/

Does the FTC's question 106 hurt paid peering or not?  88 comments.
Makes real interesting reading, I must say.

srs

  


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-24 Thread Richard Bennett
   I haven't found a good source who knows what's going on outside his own
   network.
   Randy Bush wrote:

It turns out you can say any damn thing you want about peering since
nobody has any facts.


not really.  it's just that those with the facts have no reason to blab
them and reasons not to do so.

randy


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC


Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-24 Thread Richard Bennett
   Speculation about how the money flows is a worthwhile activity.
   Paul Wall wrote:

On 11/25/09, Richard Bennett [1]rich...@bennett.com wrote:

It turns out you can say any damn thing you want about peering since
nobody has any facts.

Indeed you can.  This is one of things where the people with the hard
facts aren't talking due to NDA, regard for their pride, or both.  In
the absence of solid data, most journalists (and I use the term
loosely) take the high road, writing on only what they know about and
can back up with fact.  It is unfortunate that you approach this
differently, attempting to pass off Bill Norton's blog, itself very
flawed and comprised of error upon error which he simply refuses to
acknowledge or correct, as the new gospel.

You write that the shift of an enormous amount of Internet traffic
from transit to paid peering is new, that's what the data in the Arbor
Networks study shows. Nowhere in the Arbor study is there any
analysis of where money is passing hands, or any settlement-based vs.
settlement-free interconnection arrangement.  The report is a
scientific one based upon aggregated netflow/sflow data, which doesn't
take layers 8 and above into account.

Also suspiciously absent is any disclosure of employer affiliations
and biases.  You write that [you're] opposed to the
anti-discrimination rule that the FCC is considering.  What you
fail to mention is that you work for the ITIF, a Washington think-tank
allegedly funded by big cable.  Is it really any surprise that you
want to preserve this revenue stream?

Likewise, Norton neglects to mention that he works for NuMetra, a
company going around to content and broadband operators trying to
pitch a some black box which will enforce last-mile QoS and
automatically pay the friendly local Internet monopoly/duopoly in
settlement fees *on top* of your regular transit costs.  Of course
he wants Uncle Sam to back off; that's how his employer benefits.  It
is also important to consider Mr. Norton's role in Equinix, where he
worked in MARKETING, far distanced from the establishment of actual
peering agreements.  The real co-founders were Jay Adelson and Al Avery.

It is sad to see that Mr. Norton, once a valued member of the
community, so blatantly favoring the green stuff over fact-checking
and journalistic integrity.  One can only hope Om Malik will carry out
better due diligence in the future when hiring industry experts to
write for him.

Drive Slow,
Paul Wall

--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC

References

   1. mailto:rich...@bennett.com


Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

2009-11-24 Thread Richard Bennett
Of course, the FCC/FTC could always get involved and mandate full 
disclosure and peering neutrality.


That might be fun.

RB

Richard Bennett wrote:

   Speculation about how the money flows is a worthwhile activity.
   Paul Wall wrote:

On 11/25/09, Richard Bennett [1]rich...@bennett.com wrote:

It turns out you can say any damn thing you want about peering since
nobody has any facts.

Indeed you can.  This is one of things where the people with the hard
facts aren't talking due to NDA, regard for their pride, or both.  In
the absence of solid data, most journalists (and I use the term
loosely) take the high road, writing on only what they know about and
can back up with fact.  It is unfortunate that you approach this
differently, attempting to pass off Bill Norton's blog, itself very
flawed and comprised of error upon error which he simply refuses to
acknowledge or correct, as the new gospel.

You write that the shift of an enormous amount of Internet traffic
from transit to paid peering is new, that's what the data in the Arbor
Networks study shows. Nowhere in the Arbor study is there any
analysis of where money is passing hands, or any settlement-based vs.
settlement-free interconnection arrangement.  The report is a
scientific one based upon aggregated netflow/sflow data, which doesn't
take layers 8 and above into account.

Also suspiciously absent is any disclosure of employer affiliations
and biases.  You write that [you're] opposed to the
anti-discrimination rule that the FCC is considering.  What you
fail to mention is that you work for the ITIF, a Washington think-tank
allegedly funded by big cable.  Is it really any surprise that you
want to preserve this revenue stream?

Likewise, Norton neglects to mention that he works for NuMetra, a
company going around to content and broadband operators trying to
pitch a some black box which will enforce last-mile QoS and
automatically pay the friendly local Internet monopoly/duopoly in
settlement fees *on top* of your regular transit costs.  Of course
he wants Uncle Sam to back off; that's how his employer benefits.  It
is also important to consider Mr. Norton's role in Equinix, where he
worked in MARKETING, far distanced from the establishment of actual
peering agreements.  The real co-founders were Jay Adelson and Al Avery.

It is sad to see that Mr. Norton, once a valued member of the
community, so blatantly favoring the green stuff over fact-checking
and journalistic integrity.  One can only hope Om Malik will carry out
better due diligence in the future when hiring industry experts to
write for him.

Drive Slow,
Paul Wall

--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC

References

   1. mailto:rich...@bennett.com
  


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: {SPAM?} Re: IPv6 Deployment for the LAN

2009-11-07 Thread Richard Bennett
   The Wi-Fi MAC protocol has a pair of header bits that mean from AP
   and to AP. In ad-hoc mode, a designated station acts as an AP, so
   that's nothing special. There are a couple of non-AP modes for direct
   link exchanges and peer-to-peer exchances that probably don't set from
   AP but I'm not sure about that.
   Adrian Chadd wrote:

On Sat, Nov 07, 2009, Bernhard Schmidt wrote:



As already said, wireless in infrastructure mode (with access points)
always sends traffic between clients through the access point, so a
decent AP can filter this.


How does the client determine that the traffic came from the AP versus
another client?



Adrian




--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC


Re: {SPAM?} Re: IPv6 Deployment for the LAN

2009-11-07 Thread Richard Bennett

It's not all that easy unless the dude has hacked the device driver.

Owen DeLong wrote:

And of course, a rogue RA station would _NEVER_ mess with that bit
in what it transmits...

Uh, yeah.

Owen

On Nov 7, 2009, at 2:41 AM, Richard Bennett wrote:


  The Wi-Fi MAC protocol has a pair of header bits that mean from AP
  and to AP. In ad-hoc mode, a designated station acts as an AP, so
  that's nothing special. There are a couple of non-AP modes for direct
  link exchanges and peer-to-peer exchances that probably don't set 
from

  AP but I'm not sure about that.
  Adrian Chadd wrote:

On Sat, Nov 07, 2009, Bernhard Schmidt wrote:



As already said, wireless in infrastructure mode (with access points)
always sends traffic between clients through the access point, so a
decent AP can filter this.


How does the client determine that the traffic came from the AP versus
another client?



Adrian




--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: Congress may require ISPs to block fraud sites H.R.3817

2009-11-05 Thread Richard Bennett
I think the idea is for the government to create an official blacklist 
of the offending sites, and for ISPs to consult it before routing a 
packet to the fraud site. The common implementation would be an ACL on 
the ISPs border router. The Congress doesn't yet understand the 
distinction between ISPs and transit providers, of course, and typically 
says that proposed ISP regulations (including the net neutrality 
regulations) apply only to consumer-facing service providers.


If this measure passes, you can expect expansion of blocking mandates 
for rogue sites of other kinds, such as kiddie porn and DMCA scofflaws.


RB

Steven Bellovin wrote:


On Nov 5, 2009, at 5:56 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:


On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:40:09 CST, Bryan King said:

Did I miss a thread on this? Has anyone looked at this yet?



`(2) INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS- Any Internet service provider that, on
or through a system or network controlled or operated by the Internet
service provider, transmits, routes, provides connections for, or 
stores

any material containing any misrepresentation of the kind prohibited in
paragraph (1) shall be liable for any damages caused thereby, including
damages suffered by SIPC, if the Internet service provider--


routes sounds the most dangerous part there.  Does this mean that if
we have a BGP peering session with somebody, we need to filter it?


Also transmits.  (I'm impressed that someone in Congress knows the 
word routes)


Fortunately, there's the conditions:

`(A) has actual knowledge that the material contains a 
misrepresentation

of the kind prohibited in paragraph (1), or



`(B) in the absence of actual knowledge, is aware of facts or
circumstances from which it is apparent that the material contains a
misrepresentation of the kind prohibited in paragraph (1), and



upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, fails to act expeditiously
to remove, or disable access to, the material.


So the big players that just provide bandwidth to the smaller players 
are
mostly off the hook - AS701 has no reason to be aware that some 
website in

Tortuga is in violation (which raises an intresting point - what if the
site *is* offshore?)

And the immediate usptreams will fail to obtain knowledge or 
awareness of

their customer's actions, the same way they always have.


Note the word circumstances...


Move along, nothing to see.. ;)


Until, of course, some Assistant U.S. Attorney or some attorney in a 
civil lawsuit decides you were or should have been aware and takes you 
to court.  You may win, but after spending O(\alph_0) zorkmids on 
lawyers defending yourself



--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb








--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: Congress may require ISPs to block fraud sites H.R.3817

2009-11-05 Thread Richard Bennett
IANAL, but I wouldn't set too much stock by that order - there are 
numerous errors of fact in the opinion, and much of it relates to the 
lack of due process in the maintenance of a secret blacklist. It was 
also a state law, not a federal one, so there was a large jurisdictional 
question (the Commerce  Clause concern.)


As people in Washington are saying around the net neutrality debate 
these days: anything goes is not a serious argument.


RB

Steven Bellovin wrote:


On Nov 5, 2009, at 7:44 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:

I think the idea is for the government to create an official 
blacklist of the offending sites, and for ISPs to consult it before 
routing a packet to the fraud site. The common implementation would 
be an ACL on the ISPs border router. The Congress doesn't yet 
understand the distinction between ISPs and transit providers, of 
course, and typically says that proposed ISP regulations (including 
the net neutrality regulations) apply only to consumer-facing service 
providers.


If this measure passes, you can expect expansion of blocking mandates 
for rogue sites of other kinds, such as kiddie porn and DMCA scofflaws.



It's worth looking at hhttp://www.cdt.org/speech/pennwebblock/ -- a 
Federal court struck down a law requiring web site blocking because of 
child pornography.


--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb







--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: ISP port blocking practice/Free Speech

2009-10-26 Thread Richard Bennett
The U. S. Congress is on the spot already, proposing strict scrutiny 
tests for filtering and forwarding decisions of all kinds.


RB

Randy Bush wrote:

should we now look forward to deep technical opinons from law clerks

  


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: SA pigeon 'faster than broadband'

2009-09-11 Thread Richard Bennett
If this news had come out a little earlier, some pigeon breeding 
programs may have qualified for broadband stimulus grants. Edible, 
self-replicating IP carriers are pretty special anyhow.


Scott Weeks wrote:

--- n...@foobar.org wrote:
So, good news all around.  Let's hope that IP over carrier pigeon will 
soon become a thing of the past.

-


4GB = 32Gb

32Gb in 2 hours is 4.45Mbps.  That's a pretty good DSL upstream bandwidth.

scott




  


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

2009-08-27 Thread Richard Bennett
The background issue is whether satellite-based systems at around 200 
Kb/s and high latency can be defined as broadband. Since everyone in 
America - including the Alaskans - has access to satellite services, 
defining that level of service as broadband makes the rest of the 
exercise academic: everyone is served. There's no economic argument 
for government subsidies to multiple firms in a market, of course.


It's more interesting considering that DirecTV is about to launch a new 
satellite with a couple orders of magnitude more capacity than the 
existing ones offer. I seem to recall their claiming that the service 
would then improved to some respectable number of megabits/sec. 
Satellite ISPs locate their ground stations in IXP-friendly locations, 
so there aren't any worries about backhaul or fiber access costs.


But to your actual question, under-served is of course quite 
subjective and cost is clearly part of it.


RB

Frank Bulk - iName.com wrote:

As one of the workshops discussed, does the definition of underserved and
unserved include the clause for a reasonable price?  


If the price is unreasonable, do you think its government money well-spent
to subsidize bringing a competitor to a market that couldn't make it before?
Or are there perhaps other ways to deal with that pricing issue?

Frank

-Original Message-
From: William Herrin [mailto:herrin-na...@dirtside.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:46 PM

To: Fred Baker
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

snip

Really where they need the swift kick in the tail is in the product
tying where you can't buy a high speed connection to J. Random ISP,
you can only buy a high speed connection to monopoly provider's
in-house ISP. Which means you can only get commodity service since
monopoly provider isn't in the business of providing low-dollar custom
solutions. But it sounds like that's outside the scope of what
Congress has approved.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

  


--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




RE: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

2009-08-26 Thread Richard Bennett
The trouble with broadband in rural America is the twisted pair loop lengths
that average around 20,000 feet. To use VDSL, the loop length needs to down
around 3000, so they're stuck with ADSL unless the ILEC wants to install a
lot of repeaters. And VDSL is the enabler of triple play over twisted pair.

And apparently a number of rural cablecos, who have a suitable copper co-ax
plant, haven't seen fit to offer what they call data service. It's ironic,
since cable TV was actually invented to help the rural user. 

Apparently the purpose of the definition is to ensure that the subsidies
don't do down the rathole of supporting easy upgrades, but as others have
mentioned, one definition for broadband isn't very useful unless it's
something like 10 times faster than what I had yesterday. 

I like to say first gen broadband is 10 times faster than a modem or 500
Kb/s; second gen is 5 Mb/s, and third is 50 or faster.

Richard Bennett

-Original Message-
From: Eric Brunner-Williams [mailto:brun...@nic-naa.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:00 AM
To: Luke Marrott
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

In the applications I wrote earlier this month for BIP (Rural Utilities
Services, USDA) and BTOP (NTIA, non-rural) infrastructure, for Maine's 2nd,
I was keenly aware that broadband hasn't taken off as a pervasive, if not
universal service in rural areas of the US.

I don't think the speed metric is the metric that will make non-adoption in
sparce clustered demographics distinguishable from adoption in denser
demographics. I suspect that issues like symmetry of state signaling,
latency, jitter, ... metrics that resemble what I looked for from MPI runs
when benchmarking parallel systems, will characterize applications that may
be distinguishable from the adoption, market penetration, renewal criteria
from the applications that for reasons I can only conjecture, the standard
triple play killer apps, which simply aren't driving broadband (whatever
that is) adoption in rural areas. And no, I don't know what those
better-than-triple-play-killer-apps-in-suburbia are.

My meta-point is that I suspect there are two broadbands, one where
triple-play sells recurring subscriber drops, and one where it doesn't, and
for the later a better definition would be more useful than a definition
that reads (in fine print) not available here.

Eric


Luke Marrott wrote:
 I read an article on DSL Reports the other day ( 
 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Please-Define-Broadband-104056)
 , in which the FCC has a document requesting feedback on the 
 definition of Broadband.

 What are your thoughts on what the definition of Broadband should be 
 going forward? I would assume this will be the standard definition for 
 a number of years to come.

 Thanks.

   






RE: ATT. Layer 6-8 needed.

2009-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
I'm not a lawyer either, but I know how ISPs are regulated in the US. The
actual framework is the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, to wit:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-151A1.pdf

. To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and
interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful
Internet content of
their choice.
. To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and
interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications
and use services of their
choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
. To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and
interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their
choice of legal devices that
do not harm the network.13
. To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and
interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among
network providers,
application and service providers, and content providers.14
 
All of this is subject to a reasonable network management exception. There
is some disagreement about what consitututes reasonable network management
at the fringes, but the FCC is on record that spam killing and DDOS attack
mitigation are reasonable. Some people want to add a fifth
non-discrimination rule.

In the case of the ISPs and carriers who blocked access to 4chan for a while
Sunday, since that was done in accordance with DDOS mitigation, there's not
any issue as far as the FCC is concerned, but that hasn't prevented the
usual parties from complaining about censorship, etc. 

Richard Bennett

-Original Message-
From: Patrick W. Gilmore [mailto:patr...@ianai.net] 
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 8:35 AM
To: nanog - n. am. network ops group list
Subject: Re: ATT. Layer 6-8 needed.

On Jul 27, 2009, at 11:22 AM, Hiers, David wrote:

 Im not a lawyer, but I think that the argument goes something like 
 this...

 The common carriers want to be indemnified from the content they 
 carry. In other words, the phone company doesn't want to be held 
 liable for the Evil Plot planned over their phone lines.  The price 
 they pay for indemnification is that they must not care about ANY 
 content (including content that competes with content offered by a 
 non-carrier division of the common carrier).  If they edit SOME 
 content, then they are acting in the role of a newspaper editor, and 
 have assumed the mantle of responsibility for ALL content.

Famous two cases, Prodigy  Compuserve.  Overturned many years ago.   
If you edit some content you are not automatically liable for all content.

No ISP is a common carrier.  That implies things like you must provide
service to everyone.  Some common carriers get orders like you must
provide service in $MIDDLE_OF_NOWHERE.

ISPs can, under certain circumstances, get a mere conduit style immunity.


 Carriers can, however, do what they need to do to keep their networks 
 running, so they are permitted disrupt traffic that is damaging to the 
 network.

 The seedy side of all of this is that if a common carrier wants to 
 block a particular set of content from a site/network, all they need 
 to do is point out some technical badness that comes from the same 
 general direction.  Since the background radiation of technical 
 badness is fairly high from every direction, it's not too hard to find 
 a good excuse when you want one.

That, I believe, is much harder.  But IANAL.

Hell, I Am Not An ISP even. :)

--
TTFN,
patrick







RE: ATT. Layer 6-8 needed.

2009-07-27 Thread Richard Bennett
Corporate PR staffs don't generally work on Sunday, but when ATT came into
the office today they drafted this statement:

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800cdvn=newsnewsarticleid=26970 

Beginning Friday, an ATT customer was impacted by a denial-of-service
attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent
this attack from disrupting service for the impacted ATT customer, and to
prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, ATT
temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our
customers. This action was in no way related to the content at
img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious
traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no
longer existed, ATT removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We
will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious
traffic to protect our customers.

Here's more (http://budurl.com/DDoSVideo) on ATT's efforts to prevent
denial-of-service attacks.

There's obviously a history of DOS attacks to and from 4chan and the
membership over the years, some of it quite righteous. The Anonymous
attacks against the  Cult of Scientology, for example, were very sweet. But
all you have to do is read the status page that moot posts on 4chan to
realize that they've been the target of a counter-attack for past three
weeks or so.

Richard Bennett

-Original Message-
From: Seth Mattinen [mailto:se...@rollernet.us] 
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 3:00 PM
To: 'nanog - n. am. network ops group list'
Subject: Re: ATT. Layer 6-8 needed.

Richard Bennett wrote:
 
 In the case of the ISPs and carriers who blocked access to 4chan for a 
 while Sunday, since that was done in accordance with DDOS mitigation, 
 there's not any issue as far as the FCC is concerned, but that hasn't 
 prevented the usual parties from complaining about censorship, etc.
 

If someone came out and said Hey, DDOS mitigation, please hold! that would
be cool, too. Based on the content of 4chan, it's either DDOS or someone
cried about the content. It looked like the latter.

~Seth