How do you create the illusion of a best-efforts content-indifferent network other than by doing it?
From: Richard Bennett [mailto:richard@bennett.com]
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 23:08
To: Bob Frankston
Cc: 'Vint Cerf'; 'Lauren Weinstein'; nnsquad@nnsquad.org; Dave Farber
Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: Dave Farber Warns Against Net Neutrality (Washington Post)I
Application developers want to be able to act as if the network were perfectly transparent, neutral, and reliable. The goal of a good network architecture is to create that illusion for them. That's not to say that the means by which this illusion is created demand a passive network or a passive network operator. You can have a network that looks to you like it's a fat dumb pipe or you can have one that really is, but you can't have both. Why does anyone care, anyhow?
RB
Bob Frankston wrote:
The only difference between internetworking and networking is whether we have a flat address space or a two-tier address space. Otherwise it’s a network. Sure, I’d prefer ambient connectivity (http://rmf.vc/?n=IAC) but if we’re not willing to take the next step then it’s a just a network and whatever applied to the Inter-network applies to the network. And that includes being indifferent to the content of the packets.
So I’m confused. If the success of the Internet as a concept is do being agnostic about traffic then why would we want to declare the end of a very successful experiment and revert to the old days when the network operator shaped the network to favor certain services. The majority may to do the same-old in lock-step but the future lies with those who are ahead of or maybe just away from the crowd. Who knows which will be the new same-old?
Ideally there would be no need for regulation and we would instead apply antitrust to remove the conflict of interest in inherent in funding the network by selling services. Service-funding is the telephony model. And as long as we’re stuck in telephony then insisting that bits are bits (as I explain in http://frankston.com/?N=IPM3) the FCC is honoring the experiment by trying to assure it continues. I do believe that it’s awkward to do so by adding more rules but it’s better the giving up entirely on the successful experiment.
The problem with turning the Internet over to the regulators at this
point is two-fold, as I see it. In the first place, the Internet
community hasn't done an adequate job of explaining the design rationale
for the system as it exists today. You can see from my paper that basic
concepts like end-to-end have been justified according to a multitude of
different reasons. When we see this in tech specs, it's a clue that the
principle in question is more a side-effect than a true principle. The
"stupid network," end-point-heavy formulations are misleading. People
treat the Internet like a network, because that's what they need. The
architecture of an Internet is simply agnostic about questions of
network reliability, traffic shaping, active queue management, and tiers
of service simply because they're out of scope; they're network issues
rather than Internetwork issues. An Internet isn't neutral or
non-neutral; if anything, it's neutral about neutrality. The real
rationale for the datagram network architecture was to create a space
for experimentation; that's why everybody embraced it as soon as it was
formulated. This internetting thing was actually a flop; we actually
have one big network made of self-similar parts, not a bunch of
different ones. Interconnection works best if everybody runs all the
same protocols, so we do.
So when you ask the FCC and similar bodies in other countries to
regulate the Internet, they will happily take the task, but they're
simply going to fall back on their telephony models because lawyers are
addicted to precedent and nobody has given them a better frame of
reference. And once the regulators start making rules, you're going to
lose the little bit of dynamism that's still in the Internet; how much
technical progress has there been in the phone network since the
Carterfone rules went down? Not a hell of a lot. I don't want the one
big network frozen like a fly in amber just yet.
Vint Cerf wrote:
> Dave,
>
> I think some very serious effort is underway at FCC to be much more
> precise about what is meant and measurable about the notion of
> transparent and non-discriminatory service. I agree that clarity is
> important here. I think it is possible to achieve clarity and that it
> is important that we attempt this because to ignore the problem space
> is to leave the users very much at risk.
>
> vint
>
> On Sep 26, 2009, at 4:42 PM, David Farber wrote:
>
>> Vint, believe you misinterpret what I said in writing and
>> interviews. I have never said that regulation is not good. What I
>> have said is that hazy and ambiguous terms that have been used on
>> dangerous to innovation. Suppose you were about to build a new
>> building and the regulations said it should be "reasonable", "open",
>> "fair". An architect attempting to design such a building would face
>> a very confused task. You may have the building mostly built and
>> then find that your assumptions about what these terms mean were
>> wrong. You may face lawsuits by your neighbors over what these terms
>> mean as well as facing the need to sue the city etc.
>>
>> The bane of many such regulations is that all it does is to slow down
>> innovation and create jobs for lawyers.
>>
>> I'd be happy to join a SMALL group which attempted to create a set of
>> principles and a framework for regulation which avoided these pitfalls.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> I have said often that leaving the future of the Internet to the
>> Congress is even more dangerous. Witness the 96 act and what it did
>> to the CLECs.
>> On Sep 26, 2009, at 7:51 AM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>>
>> I think Dave's position, which is largely unchanged, is that
>> regulation is never right. Plainly, I disagree here and believe that
>> it is entirely possible to establish a fair framework in which it is
>> not necessary for broadband service providers to do anything more
>> than manage congestion and allocation of capacity in a fashion
>> commensurate with the service level to which the users have subscribed.
>>
>> vint
>>
>> On Sep 25, 2009, at 10:43 PM, Lauren Weinstein an architect
>>>
>>> Dave Farber Warns Against Net Neutrality (Washington Post)
>>>
>>>
>>> --Lauren--
>>> NNSquad Moderator
>>
>>
>>
>
--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC
--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC