[ NNSquad ] Vint Cerf talks with Peter Nowak about Google/Verizon deal.
Peter Nowak has interviewed Rick Whitt and Vint Cerf on the Google/Verizon deal. The audio is here: http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1565890135 Parsing of the interview is done for this story: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/08/13/net-neutrality-google-vint-cerf.html FYI, Kevin McArthur
[ NNSquad ] Re: Peering dispute cuts off Sprint-Cogent Internet traffic
George, In this case however, we're talking major carriers, which have many many peers (massively multihomed). There are multiple routes around, as evidenced by the fact that people are using proxying services to get around the damage at the application layer. As for BGP propagation, if its following the RFC then the routes are already advertised and before the peering agreement broke down, they just happened to be a shorter path. Once that peer dies, it should fall back to the longer paths in near real-time. (within moments, as soon as the bad route stops advertising (which it cant do if it cant reach the other end)) This is a core routing principle of the internet, and how it is supposed to be tolerant to attacks on infrastructure -- If this mechanism isn't working, then we have some serious resiliency problems on critical backbones. You would have to do something special to stop BGP from rerouting -- like, for example, falsely advertising a route that doesn't work while making it appear closer than the alternatives. You could also theoretically block the remaining peers from advertising routes to that network, but again, that would be a massive net neutrality violation as they would be actively blocking a pathway, and not simply just not peering. Essentially, saying if I don't want to peer with you, no one else can either. There's more going on here Kevin McArthur George Ou wrote: There's no violation of any RFCs here, it's a peering dispute which is quite common on the Internet. It's a long running myth that routes are automatically rerouted on the Internet. Unless one of the two end-points is dual-homed with 2 completely separate ISPs configured for BGP (or DNS remapping), any break in the route means a disconnection between the two points. Even when BGP does exist, it takes some time for the routes to propagate so there's always some outage for a period of time when there's a break in the link. George -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Barry Gold Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 1:38 PM To: NNSquad Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Peering dispute cuts off Sprint-Cogent Internet traffic From: Ed Jankiewicz [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Total Filtering As many news organizations are now reporting, Sprint-Nextel (Embarq) has decided to sever its Internet connection with Cogent, another Internet service provider. This action has caused a hole or rip in the internet, meaning that Sprint-Nextel (Embarq) and Cogent customers may find they cannot access resources hosted by the other company's customers. Similar standoffs have occurred in the past, and usually one company backs down after a few days, but no one can predict what will happen in this case. OK, so what has happened to the treats censorship as damage and routes around it Internet? Even if Embarq and Cogent are no longer talking to each other, the routers should be automatically finding routes via other carriers and sending the packets -- around Robin Hood's barn if necessary, but the Internet is supposed to be _robust_. Jon Postel designed it that way -- I've read the RFCs. That's what ARPA specified when they paid for the development of first the ARPANet and later the Internet -- and what NSF paid for when they branched off NSFNet and allowed commercial traffic. Are these guys programming their routers to just drop packets with certain destination IP addresses, instead of finding the shortest available route? I'm beginning to think that Congress (or perhaps an international body similar to the WTO) should make the core RFCs (IP, TCP, BGP, FTP, HTTP, SMTP, and RFC 822) have the force of law. And anybody who violates those protocols should be fined and/or have their connections turned off. -- Kevin McArthur StormTide Digital Studios Inc. Author of the recently published book, Pro PHP http://www.stormtide.ca
[ NNSquad ] Re: NY Times: Verizon offers system to improve P2P transfers
Verizon does continue to set itself apart. The statement: Pasko stressed, however, that Verizon wants to work with P2P companies that are focusing on delivery of legitimate media, like Pando -- not systems where anyone can upload anything, which usually means lots of pirated material. does strike me as having the potential to run into neutrality concerns when the carriers begin picking winners and losers in the P2P technology competition. As we all know, Bittorrent is open-source (and as a company, focused on legitimate media) while other solutions are either closed source or subject to content controls, patents and other nonsense. I'd hate to see the carriers giving competitive advantage to one but not the other just based upon their ownership of the gateway. As with most things, Verizon management should take note that open apis/public specifications would enable P2P software authors to take advantage of any locational data Verizon wants to publish about it's customers in a neutral fashion -- that said, most torrent clients will pick faster peers and as such will naturally tend to favor closer networks already. So ... while there is probably room for some optimization in transfers with a very large list of potential peers, more common transfers with only a few dozen peers would likely see no benefit as their clients are already capable of finding the fastest peers with which to participate. Anyway, certainly is a razors edge they're walking, Kevin McArthur Frank A. Coluccio wrote: Verizon continues to stand out from the pack in a growing number of new and interesting ways. Whether this reaching out to P2P users is legit, or involves hidden gotchas, remains to be seen. Although, if the abundance of bandwidth afforded by its FiOS offering is any indication of its philosophical bent, then I'd be inclined to think that it's for real, especially when one considers the efficiencies that Verizon itself stands to gain from this approach. The one potential cause for citing a gotcha that I can see, thus far -- and I've not looked at this in any depth, but this could play out to be large-- might involve how Verizon goes about influencing Layer 3 routing, since, in this case, we see a last mile network operator is having a say, albeit in collaboration with a P2P vendor, in where traffic is, and is not, being directed to and from. Thoughts on this or any other facet of this release? Anyone? --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Lauren Weinstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ NNSquad ] NY Times: Verizon offers system to improve P2P transfers Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:14:25 -0700 (PDT) NY Times: Verizon offers system to improve P2P transfers http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-P2P-Verizon.html --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator
[ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP)
Fred, I have to take exception to your suggestion that QoS is definitely required for proper VoIP operation. Most VoIP today operates without any specific QoS support -- even ISPs that offer this 'thinly veiled VoIP tax' have carried VoIP successfully without traffic management for years. I have worked as a VoIP software architect and can state unequivocally that QoS is not required for VoIP operation -- in fact, its not even close to the top reliability concern -- which is actually 'traffic management' of inbound ports. VoIP doesn't need QoS, and this is just another mechanism ISPs are using to leverage their own 'digital phone' offerings at the expense of the free market. For more details refer to Vonage Canada's filing about Shaw Cable to the CRTC that was made about Shaw's $10/mo VoIP QoS service. Maybe we should let the VoIP companies, not the incumbent competitors tell us what type of traffic management is required. From my perspective, they already have, and are against these types of anti competitive services. From my perspective, QoS is totally unnecessary on public links, and ample alternative business models exist to the carriers plans of radical over-subscription. $0.02 Kevin McArthur Fred Reimer wrote: Hmm. I have to agree with Brett on most of his comments. QoS is definitely part of the IETF RFC's. And QoS is definitely required for VoIP, in any network, for it to work properly. The problem is that there is no common global, or for that matter national, agreement as to how classifications and markings are done. Without that there would be little reason for the various network owners to trust each other. There may be one-off agreements between two ISP's or an ISP and a backbone carrier. However, unless there is a national/global standard then we would never get to the point where end-users can mark their own traffic as they see fit, and have those markings honored throughout the Internet as long as they complied with their agreement with their ISP. I disagree when it comes to the intelligence of the network, and whether network owners should be able to make policy as to what types of content is appropriate just because the routers and other network infrastructure devices have intelligence. The Internet is an end-to-end network, not a client-server network. Fred Reimer -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brett Glass Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 3:04 PM To: Bob Frankston; nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP) At 12:28 PM 2/29/2008, Bob Frankston wrote: If you require QoS for VoIP then you have the PSTN not the Internet. Period. QoS was (and is) part of the original design of the Internet. Note the Type of Service fields in both IPv4 and IPv6, as well as the push bit. (Interestingly, there's no shove bit. Don't know why. ;-) ) VoIP cannot rely on QoS because you don't have enough control over the network. I do have control over my local network and over my interface to my backbone provider. And when I prioritize VoIP on those, it helps tremendously. And VoIP does not rely on QoS -- I verified this with Tom Evslin who supplied much of the backbone for VoIP. VoIP becomes nearly unusable in times of heavy loads without QoS. In fact, it becomes unusable when someone on the same node runs unthrottled BitTorrent. That's why we prioritize and do P2P mitigation. Let's not base policies on misconceptions. I agree. Hopefully the above will clear up some of those misconceptions. Yes you can build your own intelligent network but let's not confuse it with the Internet. The Internet was never meant to be unintelligent. By design, it relies upon routers which have tremendous computing power and very large amounts of memory. (And it must. It can't scale or have redundancy without these things.) What's more, every end node is ITSELF a router and devotes intelligence to that. It is unreasonable to attempt to exile technology, innovation, or intelligence from any part of the Internet. If VoIP fails it fails. You may be able to say that, but we can't. We lose the customer if he or she can't do VoIP. And if you require real time HD streaming that may fail to. So what? I believe that it was you who, in a previous message, were voicing discontent with the performance of HD streaming on your FiOS connection. We can't support HD streaming on the typical residential connection, but we DO want to support it if the customer is buying sufficient bandwidth. If we don't, again, we're out of business. Or someone goes to the FCC and complains that we're not supporting that medium and must be regulated --Brett Glass
[ NNSquad ] Re: Global ISP content filtering information (from IP)
Lauren, In addition to what is at that location, I would point out that the organization that is associated with our (Canada) firewall just got a massive federal investment. You can find the details at, http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/bk/2005/bg20050124-eng.aspx . It has also been bragged about repeatedly in the house of commons and can mentions be found in hansard. /$3.5 million over five years was committed to fund *Cybertip.ca*, Canada's national tipline for reporting the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. This initiative fulfills the Government of Canada's commitment, made in the February 2004 Speech from the Throne to do more to ensure the safety of our children. The Strategy is supported by the reinstatement of child protection legislation, Bill C-2, on October 8, 2004, which will help reduce the risk of child sexual exploitation of children. Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada is leading efforts to implement the Strategy./ I still find it questionable whether or not this monitoring system is consistent with our privacy and telecommunications acts, as I am not aware of any review by the privacy commissioner or specific authorization by the CRTC (an arms length, independent, regulator) which is arguably required for any system that interferes with traffic under s.36 of the act. To my knowledge, the only time the CRTC was asked to authorize the blocking of these types of sites, they declined to permit their voluntary blocking. Some details @ http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/95518 As for the technical details, these systems appear to work by using something similar to a dnsbl, wherein if the subscriber tries to access an ip on the list, their traffic will be further scrutinized for blocking. They claim to have the ability to block at the url level, but that not all urls are monitored. Details of exactly how these systems work or what exactly they block is nearly impossible to scrutinize and this lack of transparency, and oversight has lead to a lot of criticism of the firewall. In recent months, they have taken a number of steps to address these criticisms, including better integration with law enforcement and the judiciary. Hope that helps add to the background, Kevin McArthur Lauren Weinstein wrote: --- Forwarded Message From: Seth Finkelstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 4:39 PM To: David Farber; ip Subject: libertus.net - ISP Censorware Voluntary / Mandatory ISP Voluntary / Mandatory Filtering http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-gl.html This page contains information about ISP-level filtering systems implemented, by various ISPs in various countries, to prevent accidental access to child sexual abuse material on web pages/sites. It has been researched and produced in the context of the Australian Federal Labor Government's 2008 plan to mandate that Australian ISPs block access to a vastly larger type and quantity of web pages. - -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php
[ NNSquad ] Re: Speculation, how ATT can implement copyright filtering without wiretapping/dpi...
I'm going to wind-down on this thread, but what would happen to video's like 'Telus Idol', that are very controversial in that copyright is not crystal clear, and the dealing likely fair (news reporting). See: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1999/125/ for the back story. Would the ISPs have the ability to censor negative media about themselves as has happened with the DMCA? When we mix copyright and net neutrality, we inevitably end up with censorship -- whether its blocking access to workers-for-change or blocking the viewing of telus idol. Any analysis of these types of systems has to presume the worst intentions by the carriers and media companies involved. We have a track record here, and it can't be ignored. Its unreasonable to think that the only thing a carrier need do to suppress bad pr is to kick it off the web and say 'sue us' in order to get it back online. The value of censoring, or delaying the release of the content drastically outweighs any potential damages and costs associated with a lawsuit. Any censorship system, no matter how well meaning, will be abused. K lynn wrote: substitute spam/mers. imo that is a worse problem. would you have every web developer code in such a manner that spammers can't get thru the forms and use your mail server? spam is illegal. would you ban exchange? which has legal uses but is used very often bt spammers? would any of this be an issue if it was a lone (read not wealthy) copyright holder complaining? is ap, reuters, cnn, etc complaining because people copy their pages (and give credit)? is most of youtube.com about to be prosecuted? or google? why is this discussion only about p2p? As I understand it, this list was formed in reaction to Comcast being caught red-handed ... engaging in responsible network management. If it's meant to be a piracy rights forum, I was mislead. It's important, I think, for us to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate forms of traffic control, as well as to identify the innocent victims of over-zealous enforcement of copyrights and all that. Large-scale piracy is a problem that cries out for a technical solution. The problem is too blatant to ignore and we all bear the costs of it. If half of residential broadband's capacity is devoted to stolen material, cleaning up these networks makes more available to the rest of us at lower cost. It can only help, as long as it's done right. The EFF argued with me at NN2008 that pirates would resort to crypto and all that to avoid detection, but that bird doesn't fly. In order to collude with someone you don't know to pirate MS Office, you need a rendezvous system of some kind, If that system is heavily cloaked to avoid detection it will be ineffective. The movement of piracy toward cloaked systems actually serves the aims of the content owners even better than immediate blocking or post-hoc prosecution. They want this sort of thing not to happen at all, naturally, but are willing to accept that a certain amount is unavoidable. The level of piracy we have today with Mininova, The Pirate's Bay and their kin is so blatant we can't really expect the content owners to do nothing about it. RB Edward Almasy wrote: On Jan 28, 2008, at 4:32 AM, Richard Bennett wrote: There is a risk of unfair shut-offs, but it's very, very small and can be dealt with after the fact in some reasonable way. I would suggest that the very existence of NNSquad belies this argument. It's likely that few if any on this list are spammers, however most here have been directly affected in one fashion or another by anti-spammer measures, and I would suspect many of us are here in part because of the prospect of similar unfair measures being introduced. Ed
[ NNSquad ] Re: Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)
I'll respond to the comments on my reply. I agree, Kevin, that as a matter of principle it's not the network's job to determine the value of bits, but I disagree that all bits are therefore of equal value. We all know that some information is more valuable to us personally than other information, and we're quite good at sorting it all out. I propose that we communicate our own determination to the network, and require it to convey bits (packets, really) at the priorities we've specified. This is what we do in WiFi networks with WME enabled, maintain separate priority queues for four types of data, and it works quite well, and with no Telco in the picture. You're mixing personal QoS which can occur at a residential router and network QoS. We have personal technology, it works, anyone can go down to a retailer and get a QoS router. Where your logic breaks down is where your QoS preferences as a network user interfere with mine. My priorities are not my neighbors priorities and they're certainly not my ISPs. If I communicate that my bittorrent download is priority, can we expect that an ISP will just accept that? If not, will they want to bill for that 'priority' and will that not lead to the type of competition differentials we're currently seeing for VoIP products in Canada. The ISPs charging 'thinly veiled VoIP tax[es]' so that competing services continue to work? Some Questions: Do you propose that we create a gradient of bandwidth pricing? Would top priority bandwidth cost more? Isn't this the two-tier scenario, and highly prejudicial to the poor? Wouldn't this discourage the development of new media services that require both high bandwidth and low latency? Wouldn't this give a distinct competitive advantage to the ISP over third-party competitors? Doesn't this work as as a disincentive to create faster networks, as if the normal pipe is purposefully broken or neglected, then all users will be forced onto the priority pipe and therefore generate more revenue for carriers? Is it not just cheaper, easier and more socially fair that the carriers be required to build their network's capacity in ratio to overall usage so that all applications and participants get the best possible service? The business of packet priority is not a technical one, it is instead a social question of considerable consequence. Kevin McArthur Richard Bennett wrote: A few responses to some of the remarks on my article posted on NNSquad, for the mutual benefit and what-not. Kevin McArthur wrote: It is not the purpose of a network to determine the value of bits, nor is it right to treat any bit as better than another. A text message might be really important to someone else, but my ability to watch a streaming news report is really important to me. Which one will the carrier prioritize? This isn't a determination they can make, nor is it one where the value of the transmission can be determined by the number or amount of bits traveling. I agree, Kevin, that as a matter of principle it's not the network's job to determine the value of bits, but I disagree that all bits are therefore of equal value. We all know that some information is more valuable to us personally than other information, and we're quite good at sorting it all out. I propose that we communicate our own determination to the network, and require it to convey bits (packets, really) at the priorities we've specified. This is what we do in WiFi networks with WME enabled, maintain separate priority queues for four types of data, and it works quite well, and with no Telco in the picture. Barry Gold wrote: But even if the excessive user _were_ blocking the line to the...buffet (presumably by filling the local loop up with his packets), dropping packets is a useful solution. The ISP can (or should be able to) program the cable modem to drop the packets before they ever get on the local loop -- right there in the user's house/apartment/business. Or if the user owns the modem, the ISP can put a minimal router with usage control at the point where the wire emerges from the user's building, or where it connects to the main cable at the utility pole or undergound system. As others have pointed out, the DOCSIS cable modem carrier doesn't have the ability to instruct the user's modem to drop packets rather than attempt to transmit them. Dropping packets also has no immediate effect on the load on the local segment caused by BitTorrent handshakes. Packet drop reduces the load on a segment caused by an ongoing stream of TCP traffic, but it does nothing to reduce load caused by SYN responses when the SYNs are coming from outside the segment. Andy Richardson wrote: They can go in several different directions: (1) upgrade their infrastructure to handle the traffic (2) lower prices to make up for lower network performance (3) lose customers until the problem basically fixes itself (4) establish tiers
[ NNSquad ] Re: Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)
Richard, another Trotskyite argument eh? All government services, whether libraries, roads, or the internet must take social concerns into account before pure market capitalism. What you're proposing a system where not only can you buy a nicer car, but you get to drive faster than everyone else, not stop at signals and force others to pull over to make way. In the real world, we reserve this type of priority for emergency vehicles -- and the internet should be no different. I wont bother to point out the technical fallacy with trying to compare Bandwidth and QoS, but clearly people will understand the difference in a real world example. If when buying groceries, another checkstand line is opened, it does not adversely affect those already queued. (Bandwidth) However, when you keep the same checkstand open and start letting people jump the line, you adversely affect those already queued. (QoS) You cant compare the two as if they have the same social affect. Kevin McArthur Richard Bennett wrote: Kevin, you're fighting a battle that was settled many years ago. We already have bandwidth pricing and tiered services, and it's quite well-accepted. I can buy a dial-up connection to the Internet, or several flavors of DSL, or several flavors of cable modem service, differentiated by bandwidth and a range of uses. And I'm able to buy Internet access bundled with TV and telephone if I so desire, all of them operating in separate frequency or time bands and providing the necessary latencies to make the service work as desired. It's certainly true that the rich can afford better networking services than can the poor, but that's no different than access to fast cars, good health care, safe housing and a host of other things. This is capitalism, and after many years of experience we've learned it's better to allow disparities between rich and poor than to go the Cuban route and make everyone poor just to be perfectly fair. So no, I'm not proposing a revolution and and end to capitalism. I am proposing something a bit more practical, which is a scheme for proving end users a way to tell their ISP which streams need low latency, which are normal, and which don't care, so that the ISP can provide the best networking experience for the range of customers. The architecture of the IP frame permits this, of course, but it hasn't been widely used outside private networks to date. It's just a thought, and not highly germane to the issue of how best to whack your ISP around. RB Kevin McArthur wrote: I'll respond to the comments on my reply. I agree, Kevin, that as a matter of principle it's not the network's job to determine the value of bits, but I disagree that all bits are therefore of equal value. We all know that some information is more valuable to us personally than other information, and we're quite good at sorting it all out. I propose that we communicate our own determination to the network, and require it to convey bits (packets, really) at the priorities we've specified. This is what we do in WiFi networks with WME enabled, maintain separate priority queues for four types of data, and it works quite well, and with no Telco in the picture. You're mixing personal QoS which can occur at a residential router and network QoS. We have personal technology, it works, anyone can go down to a retailer and get a QoS router. Where your logic breaks down is where your QoS preferences as a network user interfere with mine. My priorities are not my neighbors priorities and they're certainly not my ISPs. If I communicate that my bittorrent download is priority, can we expect that an ISP will just accept that? If not, will they want to bill for that 'priority' and will that not lead to the type of competition differentials we're currently seeing for VoIP products in Canada. The ISPs charging 'thinly veiled VoIP tax[es]' so that competing services continue to work? Some Questions: Do you propose that we create a gradient of bandwidth pricing? Would top priority bandwidth cost more? Isn't this the two-tier scenario, and highly prejudicial to the poor? Wouldn't this discourage the development of new media services that require both high bandwidth and low latency? Wouldn't this give a distinct competitive advantage to the ISP over third-party competitors? Doesn't this work as as a disincentive to create faster networks, as if the normal pipe is purposefully broken or neglected, then all users will be forced onto the priority pipe and therefore generate more revenue for carriers? Is it not just cheaper, easier and more socially fair that the carriers be required to build their network's capacity in ratio to overall usage so that all applications and participants get the best possible service? The business of packet priority is not a technical one, it is instead a social question of considerable consequence. Kevin McArthur Richard Bennett wrote
[ NNSquad ] Re: Richard Bennett on Comcast and Fairness (from IP)
Hi Lauren, where is the original source to this reply. I'd love to see the full context that the author seems to be talking about. [ Presumably the article of interest is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/06/richard_bennett_comcastle/ -- Lauren Weinstein NNSquad Moderator ] As for comments, it is interesting that a network engineer cannot see his inherent bias for the telecommunications perspective. Net Neutrality certainly isn't a science, rather it is a social-political issue, and one where the policy will probably have to drive the technology. The biggest item that I really disagree with is: But in the final analysis, we all know that some of our bits are more important than others, and the network will work better if the layer 3 and layer 2 parts can communicate that sort of information between each other. It is not the purpose of a network to determine the value of bits, nor is it right to treat any bit as better than another. A text message might be really important to someone else, but my ability to watch a streaming news report is really important to me. Which one will the carrier prioritize? This isn't a determination they can make, nor is it one where the value of the transmission can be determined by the number or amount of bits traveling. In essence, it presumes a state of operation where the network is always overloaded. A state of operation that is simply not necessary and can be solved with strong carrier service quality standards and adequate provisioning. Adding a bunch of equipment to manage scarcity, instead of just eliminating that scarcity is just a bad allocation of resources. It might make sense to the carriers, as it will allow them to derive revenue from artificially created resource scarcity, but it certainly doesn't help the consumer or the internet industries gain access to more bandwidth. I am content to advocate absolute neutrality, let the carriers charge based upon neutral usage, and have competition in Internet service resemble something similar to how power companies operate -- without any regard to how the service is used. Kevin McArthur Lauren Weinstein wrote: --- Forwarded Message From: David Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: ip [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:21:28 -0800 Subject: [IP] Interesting -- comment from author -- F.C.C. to Look at --- From: Richard Bennett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 4:23 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: F.C.C. to Look at Complaints Comcast Interferes With Net - New York Times As the author of the article in question, I'll gladly defend it. The fundamental point I was trying to make is simply that there's a huge hole in the architecture of the IETF protocol suite with respect to fairness. I'm a layer two protocol designer (Ethernet over UTP, WiFi 11n MSDU aggregation, and UWB DRP are in my portfolio), and in the course of my career have devoted an embarrassing amount of time to engineering fairness in network access. Most the younger generation takes it as given that if you understand TCP/IP you understand networking, but in fact most of the progress in network architectures over the last 30 years has been at layers 1 and 2. And with the TCP-centric mindset, they tend to believe that all problems of networking can be solved by the application of the right RFCs. But in fact we all connect to our ISP over a layer 2 network, and each of these has its own challenges and problems. The carriers are often criticized for not using packet drop to resolve fairness problems, but that's not really the scope of packet drop, which is actually a solution to Internet congestion, not to the lack of fairness that may (or may not) be the underlying cause of the congestion. We need a different solution to fairness at layer 3, especially on layer 2 networks like DOCSIS where packet drop closes the door after the horse has run off. The buffet analogy needs a little refinement. What the bandwidth hog does is block the line to the all-you-can-eat buffet so that nobody else can get any food. That's not a behavior that would be tolerated in a restaurant, and it shouldn't be tolerated in a residential network. Unfortunately, it wasn't the huge problem when DOCSIS was designed, so the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the technology don't address it, certainly not as well as Full-Duplex Ethernet, 802.11e WiFi, and DSL do. Some may argue that the Internet doesn't need a fairness system as it's mostly a local problem, and I have some sympathy for that point of view. But in the final analysis, we all know that some of our bits are more important than others, and the network will work better if the layer 3 and layer 2 parts can communicate that sort of information between each other. I don't view this as a moral problem as much as an engineering problem. Moral philosophy is certainly a fascinating subject (as is video coding), but it's outside
