NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose
Brett Glass wrote: > By the way, it seems to me that the first order of business on this > list should be to define "network neutrality." I see network neutrality > as remaining neutral with regard to content providers, but not > necessarily with regard to applications. (There are good technical > reasons to do things like prioritize VoIP packets, for example.) > > --Brett Glass > > > I think defining neutrality in terms of pay for level of service is really hard. For example if I choose to pay for connectivity or direct peering for my servers with the ISP's that serve most of my customers I'm paying for a better service - the guy that doesn't pay gets worse service. It's not neutral but the net has operated that way for a long time. I could also pay somebody else (example akami) to co-locate servers in every ISP to improve the performance of my product. Again it happens all the time and the world hasn't ended. The next question is do we look at by protocol - it's unclear if Comcast et al. would start throttling bandwidth if I downloaded streaming content all day from Amazon unbox or a similar service. If they do, and they are not just hitting BitTorreent, then it's clear they are penalizing usage which as long as they disclose it and apply it evenly seems reasonable. I just got back from Australia and almost all ISP's there have download caps of some sort, it's not perfect but not too bad if you know what your limits are. On the other hand it's clear that ISP's can't support large numbers of peer to peer users - they simple haven't engineered their networks to support that traffic mix. Which comes back to the pitiful state of broadband in the US compared to countries like Japan and Korea. It seem the current fuss is as much about there being a limit that wasn't disclosed and resultant blocking / QoS in use that wasn't disclosed as it is about the actual limits. John Pettitt Disclosure: I used to be VP Engineering @ BitTorrent Inc. I'm not there any more and I'm not speaking for them. _______________________________________________ NNSquad mailing list information: http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad