NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: "The Customer is Always Wrong!"
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Good Overview Lauren, I was sitting here this morning pondering the same things. I, however wont be nearly as polite. It comes down to the users expect to be handed a "big pipe" at reasonable cost. We pay for it. We're paying some of the highest rates in the world, for what we techies find, is substandard, and under performing claims from the vendors. Just because one or two test streams from finely tuned speed testers show us 20mb of potential, we can still only average 3-5 mbps on live traffic, and see constant hair-balls at the borders between the disparate vendors, many intentionally induced. (OR BGP isn't taught anymore in networking school) We want to plug in and do anything we deem possible over an Internet connection, and if the pipe isn't as big as it needs to be, BUY MORE BANDWIDTH you cheap bastards, theres tons of it out there, dark, and waiting for a user. In fact, we know you've already got it there, just waiting for the right price to sell your oil, er...bandwidth when you get the right price. I won't even mention DWDM, or "bandwidth for nothing and our checks are free". We are not novices to the telco/ISP business, in fact many of us grew up there, and know the slimy games we've had foisted upon us in the past. We ain't buying it again. Your obfuscation on the Network neutrality issue is exemplary of what we expect from Ma Bell. Stop it! We mean it. You look stupid. With the eternal re-monopolization efforts of the incumbent telcos, and now their handmaidens the BIG ISP's, they've stumbled upon another way to get inside our pockets and squeeze... fake a bandwidth shortage. Claim its them nasty P2P apps. while their own Video over IP is an even bigger hog, Oh, and don't affect our balancing act of QOS so we can sell our VOIP, but WE ratepayers have to move over so THEY can pick our wallets any way they deem fine. We get the dregs to surf with, after all their high-income apps mysteriously trash our remaining purchased and paid for bandwidth. Anyone with a copy of Wireshark can look out and see whats on their cable, and all that digital nightmare doesn't help their connection one bit. (No pun intended). To use the utility analogy: We're paying for water, but it comes out of the pipe like a drinking fountain, not a firehose, and filling the tub takes a week. Network neutrality has been spun SO many times, (and mostly wrong) by the incumbents to generate a level of FUD in the GDP-consumer class to set a precedent for selling their snake oil to them at inflated prices. With little to NO hope of setting the record straight, (and that is that Neutrality is what we grew up with. NOT what they're trying to sell us), the battle boils down to expendable sales-liars versus the technocrats once again. This is in essence why we are going the Federal legislative route, because we KNOW your track record of buying influence, and corrupting state watchdogs to your view. Marc Lauren Weinstein wrote: The surest way to screw up future innovative applications would be for ISPs to make constraining assumptions about the future based on existing applications' performance. Discussing P2P behavior as if it were some monolithic, unchanging entity is simply wrong. What is P2P? BitTorrent? Skype? CNN live video feed fanouts? And what of changes to these existing apps? What of future apps? By definition, the sort of "intelligent" network being promoted by anti-neutrality folks will only perform well when applications toe the line according to yesterday's definitions -- stifling true innovation at its core. P2P paranoia and data jitter fetishes in this context are little more than attempts at obfuscation. The key "take away" lesson of the last few days here on the NNSquad list has been the spectacle of one technical party explaining what they needed from Internet access to conduct their business, and another technical party responding in essence "You don't need that! Make do! Be glad ISPs have deemed fit to provide you with any broadband at all!" Ah, future echoes of techno-arrogance in the finest tradition of Ma Bell's monopoly-era business practices. But this all helps to illuminate a crucial point. The technical details are important of course, but at this stage in debates about "network neutrality" and transparency it's far more important to establish first principles. Access to broadband Internet facilities is becoming as crucial to everyday life in key ways as access to power and water. Yes, any given individual can probably live without the Net, but around the world it has become clear that lack of quality Internet access will be as debilitating to success and advancement in the long run as being forbidden a basic education. There are disturbing parallels between these Internet-related controversies and the ongoing U.S. health care debate. In both cases, we have extremely large and powerful entrenched interests (giant ISPs, and enormous insurance companies) who act as "gatekeepers" to a range of services that consumers and subscribers want and need. These gatekeepers are hell-bent on protecting their turfs at all costs and on their terms, the real needs of broader society seemingly be damned. The question is, will society at large accept such a state of affairs -- like lambs to slaughter -- indefinitely? --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein |