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[ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to Preserve Rights (or something like that)

It is possible with currently available technology to constrain consumption rates using traffic shaping and rate limiting. In theory one does not need to know anything about the nature of the traffic - only its consumption rate - to apply limits. If multiple parties share common capacity, rate limiting could be put into effect if the aggregate flow nears the effective capacity of the shared channel. If user X is rate-limited to B bits/second, regardless of traffic type, this should protect other users who may need to be similarly confined when aggregate usage reaches supportable limits. B is presumably a function of available capacity and number of active users and will vary with time.

The problem is exacerbated by overly optimistic oversubscription of capacity. I understand that some "broadband" carriers may try to serve on the order of 300 users on an uplink of 4 Mb/s and downlink of 40 Mb/s for example. In the past, most Internet applications might have worked satisfactorily in this asymmetric mode but new P2P applications place a burden on up and down links and suggest different, more symmetric designs.

Adding capacity and reducing the number of subscribers served on a given common channel will help, of course, but rate limiting may still be needed to share the capacity more equitably.

As far as I can tell, none of these capacity sharing methods require deep packet inspection to be effective.

vint



On Mar 9, 2008, at 11:58 AM, Christian Kuhtz wrote:

So, how do you (and others who are advocating that this same point of view) propose to solve this (what we've now established) real operator issue?


On Mar 7, 2008, at 10:33 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:

it is not the header I am concerned about, it's the payload
'
On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:28 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:

Regarding this fear of packet inspection, I'd like to remind the contestants that the IETF isn't the only august body involved in network standards. The IEEE 802, whose work has ANSI standard status, says it's perfectly fine to look at a packet in order to classify its QoS requirements:

http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.11e-2005.pdf

"For Classifier Type 1, frame classifier is defined for both IPv4 and IPv6, shown in Figure 46 and Figure 46, and distinguished by the Version field. The subfields in the classifier parameters are represented and transmitted in the big-endian format. The classifier parameters are the following parameters:

— In a TCP or UDP header: Source Address, Destination Address, Source Port, Destination Port, and Version, plus

— One of the following:
— In an IPv4 header: Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) (IETF RFC 2472 [B22]) and Protocol, or
— In an IPv6 header: Flow Label.

The DSCP field will contain the value in the 6 LSBs, and the 2 MSBs are set to 0. The 2 MSBs of the DSCP field are ignored for frame classification. " p. 55.

Methods of traffic classification for the enforcement of QoS and quotas are good practice in modern Layer 2 networks of all kinds.

RB

Vint Cerf wrote:
Brett you are missing my point I think. I assume you do not force me to use any of your applications and that you off raw access to the internet in addition to other applications. If I am not subscribing to your application layer services I don't understand your argument that you need to examine my packet traffic. V

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>
To: 'Brett Glass' <brett@lariat.net>; Vint Cerf; nnsquad@brettglass.com <nnsquad@brettglass.com>; Vint Cerf; sean@donelan.com <sean@donelan.com>
Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org <nnsquad@nnsquad.org>
Sent: Fri Mar 07 17:17:03 2008
Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to Preserve Rights (or something like that)

Fine -- but it's not the Internet.

-----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: Friday, March 07, 2008 18:27
To: Vint Cerf; nnsquad@brettglass.com; Vint Cerf; sean@donelan.com
Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to
Preserve Rights (or something like that)

Vint:

To echo your message:

Our users voluntarily choose to use our service. We tell them in advance that our Terms of Service prohibit P2P and that our network will throttle or block it automatically -- and that, inasmuch as possible, we do not want to look at the content. Google seems to assert the right to inspect people's e-mail on the basis of a "click wrap" agreement that most users do not read at all and few would read all the way down to the end, where there is a very vague disclosure of Google's practices:


17.1 Some of the Services are supported by advertising revenue and may display advertisements and promotions. These advertisements may be targeted to the content of information stored on the Services, queries made through the Services or other information.

17.2 The manner, mode and extent of advertising by Google on the Services are subject to change without specific notice to you.

17.3 In consideration for Google granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Google may place such advertising on the

Services.

What's more, you inspect the contents of e-mail in an attempt to block spam, which requires far deeper inspection than we ever do to block network abuse.

How can you, as a representative of Google, repudiate our ISP for enforcing our terms of service and maintaining the quality of our service (which we spell out clearly to customers) when you do things that are much more invasive?

--Brett Glass

At 03:35 PM 3/7/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:


Brett, these users voluntarily choose to use the gmail application. We tell them in advance that we will select advertising based on the message contents. You seem to assert the right to inspect my packets even if all I am using is your packet transport service. V

----- Original Message -----
From: Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com>
To: Vint Cerf; Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org <nnsquad@nnsquad.org>
Sent: Fri Mar 07 14:21:24 2008
Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: Civil Rights Groups Wants P2P Throttling to Preserve Rights (or something like that)

At 12:59 PM 3/7/2008, Vint Cerf wrote:


the issue is whether I am using Brett's email services or not, as I
see it. He is right to resist abuse of email relays. He is also right
to limit total consumption. but I am not comfortable with the idea
that he could inspect my packet content and decide on the basis of
protocol or content what I can send.

Vint:

I find this highly ironic. As we are all aware, Google not only inspects the contents of GMail users' highly personal e-mail but uses them to target advertising at them. Certainly, this is far more egregious than simply monitoring (and no more than we need to!) to stop abuse.

--Brett Glass





--
Richard Bennett