‘No such thing as net neutrality’: II

Fri,03 Jul 2009 10:36 GMT -4:00 http://www.p2pnet.net/story/24436

- “I’m kind of a unique ISP as I support Net Neutrality,” said TekSavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault (right) when we asked him for his views on Tom Koltai’s post.

Tom’s an Australia economist and regular contributor who at one point in his life was an Internet Service Provider — an ISP.

The topic of net neutrality is major and yesterday he posted an item in which he states there’s no such thing

Says Rocky »»»

From where I sit, if the demand goes up, you up your network capacity to accommodate.

Controlling how individuals surf in order to not keep investing isn’t the way to go.  There are plenty of opportunities to make money, even when the demand goes up.

Net Neutrality is most threatened when an entity has absolute control (and no transparency) on the population’s ability to have online choice.

I think different ISPs should have the ability to provide different choices for internet access (as we do — a capped and an unlimited service).  In my mind, so long as choice exists (which is what Bell and the like are trying to remove), the population can select, knowingly being aware of what they’re getting.

I also think some of the discussion Tom speaks of doesn’t consider the varying technologies.

Cable is affected in clusters (by locale) but DSL isn’t, so disproportionate use becomes very technology specific and pretty much subjective.

Bottom line, if you control traffic in any obstructive way (slowing/stopping/filtering/etc), it’s for profit margins, or to disadvantage competition. So from a law or regulatory perspective, I’d say, if an ISP doesn’t believe in Net Neutrality principles that’s fine.

But if they’re a regulated monopoly regulated to strictly be a dumb pipe or unbiased carrier, they have an obligation to not impose their retail way of business on other ISPs.

It’s anti-competitive!

Transfer of blame

Yesterday among other things, Tom stated»»»

There’s something about owning/running a network you built every step of the way the Telcos/RBOCs will never quite grok. You know every point of failure, potential failure, chewing gum and shoelace repair location in the whole network. It’s yours. You created it. Therefore, when some little kid comes along with Napster and tries to take it down by filling up all the MRTG graphs, you start a battle of wits.

It’s you versus the kid. He wants to rape your entire bandwidth and you have another 25,000 customers don’t really want him too.

So you watch graphs, you reconfigure routers; you purchase expensive $24,000 Alteon smart switches so you can traffic shape the little kid.

However, he gets his mates in on the Napster thing.

Suddenly there’s not just one leak in the dam; the whole network in multiple locations around the country is holier than a set of fishnet stockings.

You’re left with no choice: all the Napster traffic has to be routed via an alternative source. You buy a satellite feed and divert all the P2P traffic straight out the dish on top of the roof to Pas-8.

Hah! fixed his wagon and his little mates. They’re now Sprint’s problem. The other customers click on blissfully unaware you just single-handedly fought off the invading Mongol hordes to ensure the MRTG graph didn’t blip over 90 %

What’s all this about? There’s no such thing as net neutrality.

And in a comment post to Readers’ Writes, he says

@Devil’s Advocate Says: “…when some little kid comes along with Napster and tries to take it down…”

Shortsightedness (or lack of foresight) always seems to be followed by transfer of blame.

There are very obvious reasons providers would even have to think of traffic management.

1) They didn’t anticipate the growth rate, so SUFFICIENT RESOURCES weren’t built in;

2) They continued to OVERSELL what they already couldn’t provide, by an astronomical factor;

3) They began operating an array of THEIR OWN CONTENT services, and needed to steal back some of the resources they didn’t have.

@RW - you forgot the fourth thing.

4) Bandwidth to the USA for countries not in the USA costs a bloody fortune. In fact to be precise, 1n 1994 I was paying $88,000 for a 2 Megabyte link (that’s one DSL connection worth of bandwidth) from Sydney to Coos Bay Oregon.

So don’t try to tell me that I wasnt warranted in trying to stop little Johnny. I was.

The arrogance of Americans and Canadians in regards to the amount of bandwidth available and what it shoud cost is amazing.

The orignal Internet was USA concentric - that is no longer necessarily the case - yet it is cheaper often to buy a link from singapore to America than from singapore to Malaysia (just across the harbour).

Outside of the USA ISP’s have to backhaul 10,000 miles in some instances just to connect. To have that backhaul used up by just 2 or 5 or 10 users is bullshit. That is reality.

There are 6 billion people in this world of those only 335 million live on the American Northern Continent. Why is it that the American minority see fit to instill their standards, expectations and consumer waste habits on the rest of the world ?

/Angry Rant Mode /off

@ Robert - Yep - P2P is great from the ISP point of view if it community based. This rtequires every ISP to install a Torrent Seeder and an ED2K server. However, I can’t recomend this superior technology solution at this time for obvious legal reasons.

@surfer and @dresdnik - Yes we do already pay for content. ut not in the $35,00 blueray example. We pay for content in that the cvontent uses up part of out monthly allowance - ISP capacity (preventing other activities from occurring that might benefit the GDP) and of course in Disk storage, hardware expendioture at the local, ISP and RBOC levels. So actually, a 90 minute movie if you download it using P2P actually costs $1.05 in the USA, about $1.65 in Canada. I blogged about this in January this year in the real value of a DVD movie.

@ Readers Write - Smoker on a bus ? Yep in my original article I stated the smoker has two choices - smoke and upset everyone or get off the bus and catch the next one. - Unfortunately we really do only have one Internet Bus. So like Mommy says - play nicely and the toys will last a lot longer.

@Reader’s Write - Solar Cell Battery Recharge Time - You have a point but as an economist I have to retort - it’s a rather selfish one. Your battery recharge time don’t affect the GDP of the entire country - just yours.

And on the subject of Turd Sandwich - there is a saying, you cant polish a turd. Unfortunately the Mythbusters proved that one wrong –> http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html

P2P does affect the GDP of the entire country - and not just the content industry. I have tried to make suggestions to them, they don’t really want to listen. I am referring to every E-Commerce page on the Internet is harder to to get to BECAUSE of P2P traffic - both genuine downloader traffic AND industry spoling attempts.

Does that mean you should stop using P2P software ?

NO! But just maybe, we could all conserve it a little bit - sort of like letting the old lady cross on the pediastrian crossing when you dont have too.

Just an idea, no-one has to give up their selfish P2P practices (This statement excludes the old folks home IT dude - you keep on downloading at full speed) - I’m just suggesting that during the fianncial crisis it is a bit unfair for all of us to continue as before and put our heads in the sand…. “I’m not hurting anyone, I’m just downloading a couple of files that have already been ripped.” - Great download them - but just like turning off the light switch to conserve power - possibly we could all utilise P2P in a more eco concsious manner. (Eco towards other Internet users).

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009




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