NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Selected comments on the FCC case
Comparing Lariat with Verizon in terms of public policy doesn't make sense. Unlike the large ISPs it doesn't have exclusive control over people's ability to communicate. It's more like a local restaurant than a supermarket. It's not a connectivity provider and if people choose to buy Lariat's SERVICES that's up to them. We're talking about the implications of giving a small number of companies control over our ability to communicate. The real question is not whether ISPs can manage their networks. The real question is why ISPs own our networks. Once you've given up not just control but ownership of the henhouses to the foxes the game is over. The question we must ask is why have given the foxes control? We're left with little to ask other than how many hens do foxes need to meet their own nutritional needs before the rest of us get any. The answer is a lot and, to stretch the analogy too far, they are threatened by what we can do with those we do get. Or, to be more direct, their service revenue is threatened by abundance and their data revenue is threatened by abundance. If the FCC hasn't learned the most basic lesson of marketplaces from CLEC debacle and if it is structurally incapable of seeing anything in terms of connectivity rather than services then we are wasting time petitioning an institution which is protecting its children and is a clear danger to our economy and our must fundamental rights. -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Brett Glass Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 22:41 To: Vint Cerf Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Selected comments on the FCC case At 08:24 PM 2/14/2008, Vint Cerf wrote: >let me just take up one point about abuse. > >If you were protecting against DOS, I would agree. Use of P2P often constitutes a denial of service attack. Before we began to engage in P2P mitigation, we saw situations where all the bandwidth we could afford to give to an entire neighborhood was hogged by a few college kids running Ares, Limewire, and BitTorrent. Other customers were ready to quit. That's what motivated us to start developing P2P mitigation. >If you are >protecting against email spam, I would agree that it makes sense for >you to do that for the email service that YOU offer Unfortunately, it is not practical to limit it to that. We must also prevent outgoing spam to avoid being blacklisted and firewalled and to avoid being cut off altogether by our upstream providers. One of our upstream providers has gone as far as to mandate blocking of outgoing TCP Port 25 sessions, except those from our own mail servers and those of business customers. And we monitor carefully to ensure that these aren't being exploited, too -- both by gathering statistics (we're not using deep packet inspection for this purpose because it is too computationally expensive) and by watching spamtraps and blacklists. >but that deep >packet inspection to detect spam at the packet layer is not >appropriate nor perhaps even desired by subscribers to email services >other than the broadband ISP's. Our customers have thanked us many times over when we've told them that their machines have become "spambots." But again, deep packet inspection is not the best way to detect spam. It's better at detecting P2P, worms, and other problems. >For example, I use coxnet cable but >email service comes from others. I would not like coxnet to examine >my email traffic to "protect" against spam. I would expect to get >this service, if desired, from my email service provider. It's Cox who would be blacklisted and firewalled if your machine was sending spam (either because you were a spammer or because your system had been commandeered). It has the right to institute safeguards against this. Cox used to be one of the biggest sources of spam on the Net; now that they're being good Netizens, the amount of spam we're seeing from them has dropped dramatically. (Verizon and RoadRunner are now at the top of the list.) --Brett Glass