At root, the network neutrality/anti-regulation debate represents an attempt to introduce something that’s beyond best effort packet delivery (e.g., premium QoS); if we build fast, overprovisioned, architecturally clean best effort packet networks, QoS should satisfy no need and deliver no discernable benefit.
Thus, if we have fast, overprovisioned, architecturally clean best effort packet networks, the whole network neutrality/anti-regulation debate becomes effectively moot.
Joe St. Sauver
Joe St. Sauver’s talk at the Northwest Academic Computing Conference contains a lot of what people need to know about what we are calling “Network Neutrality.”
Focusing on Network Convergence (elimination of costly redundant separate networks for voice, video and data) as a desirable goal, Joe illustrates that under-provisioning bandwidth and over-complicating network architectures such as offering QoS or implementing ATM are the leading threats to convergence (with over-regulation close behind).
Joe draws a line between the ad hoc consumer market and the managed enterprise market and alows as how convergence is desirable and happening in both markets.
It would be interesting to see how the dinosaurs and the telco shills encounter Joe’s argument. Let’s ask Richard Bennett! (And while we have his attention let’s annoy him with Kristoff’s hippily illustrated presentation, “Tripping on QoS“).
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Doug Alder 07.07.06 at 4:04
My bet would be that the Telcos would counter by saying who is going to pay the costs for setting up that overprovisioning. Yes we have an excess of fiber on the backbones and some muni rings but that doesn’t carry to the last mile and much of it is either dark fiber or “underlit” fiber both instances of which would require serious capital investmet in hardware to change. In addition if everything is then best effort there is no good way to recover those costs other than increasing access charges. Once you agree to that (increasing acces fees) the telcos then can say well that’s what we were doing with a tiered system making those who want QoS pay for it to subsidize the costs etc.
Of course that falls down somewhat in that tiered service depends on ability to pay the extra fees whereas raising the fees for best effort affects everyone equally.
I’m all in favour of network neutrality (such as it is - today’s peering stucture already imposes some QoS filtering on packets) and operating on a best effort basis, and I’m certainly not in favour of the telco/cableco determining whose packets get to travel over their networks based on how much they paid for the privledge. Someone someway has to pay for the massive network infrastructure changes required to allow convergence over a best effor t network.
Frank Paynter 07.07.06 at 8:33
It can all be paid for through the miracle of fixed asset accounting! You take your EBITDA, and you smooosh around the Depreciation and Amortization part until the Taxes look good… meanwhile you leaven it with loans leveraging your infrastructure values so you have Interest expenses to write down (which has a further salubrious effect on your tax structure) and then you restate your net Earnings so that you can prove to the street that you grew a quarter of a percent in the last quarter so your stock keeps easing up (adding further write-down value to the gross value of stock options you’ve distributed and spreading the tax burden to the lucky winners who hold the options), and then you pass out free lube with the CDs you send out to your retail customers and you ask them to evaluate your Income Statement and Balance Sheet in the context of BOHICA.
Everybody wins when the telcos play the game!
J. Alva Scruggs 07.07.06 at 9:01
The telcos cry that public good is best served by private interest. People hear that as individual interest, which makes sense to them and go along with easing things for the telcos, who could never on their own pay for infrastructure or win the concessions needed to place it. Then the telcos cry again. Alack! Alack! Forces beyond our control make more concessions necessary. You don’t want to kill a public good, do you?
The problem is a fundamental one. The use of spin changes relatively autonomous individuals into consumers who get presented with a locked in choice, said lock-in explicated deftly at the Bb Gun.
For the politically liberal-minded, a lousy status quo is better letting arsonists roam through the house. If these politically liberal-minded people had a significant legislative jacquerie with which to incentivize the telcos — I’m thinking double barreled nationalization and prison terms for the management — then we might get somewhere more positive. The cost of one wingnut war could be plowed into fast, cheap pipe. Because having that is a public good.
J. Alva Scruggs 07.07.06 at 9:02
a lousy status quo is better than letting arsonists roam through the house