[ NNSquad ] Editorial Comment on "Entry level pricing"

[Neil Davies <semanticphilosopher@googlemail.com>]

Lauren

I could not let your editorial commentary (below), just pass:

    But the issues of sharing and oversubscription are relevant
    across all forms of Internet access, not just wireless.  ISPs
    make essentially arbitrary decisions about how many customers
    will share most elements of the physical plant.  Yes, DSL is a
    dedicated pair back to the CO or terminal, but after that it's
    just as subject to oversubscription performance problems -- from
    the subscribers' standpoint, as anything else.  And of course, as
    lowly subscribers, we usually have no clue how bad that
    oversubscription or other undercapacity problems will be at any
    given time.

While nothing you've said is false, it doesn't do justice to how
fundamental these issues of 'sharing' and 'the decisions' really are.
There is a real truth that is hinted here. One that, I believe, goes to
the very heart of how 'neutrality' can be expressed, and in principle
measured.  Let me see if I can explain.

It is all about experience (or emergent properties if you want to be
more formal) - specifically the delay and loss characteristics that
a subscribers traffic 'experiences'. That experience is, in turn, the
composite effect of a the 'sharing' and 'decisions' being made at the
network elements. As a subscriber I don't care about all that detail
I only care about the composite effect - the 'total' delay and loss
my traffic experiences.

This is not a concern about the fate of any individual data packets -
it is about the general trends, the distribution, of those delay and  
loss
characteristics over several packets.

What do I want? I want to know that my application will get (with a  
reasonably
high probability) sufficient of its data packets through the network  
so that
the application delivers a service to me that is fit-for-purpose. I  
want to
have a bound on the extremes of delay and loss delivered to my traffic  
which
is published and, preferably - at least for some of my applications -  
has
associated with it a contractual commitment to be delivered. I may  
even be
prepared to pay more for such a service - because I can now rely on it.

This is all measurable and quantitative. Aspects of neutrality can  
then be
expressed as 'deliver me the same loss and delay characteristics as X'  
- ISPs
can then express their services in those terms - and what their  
restrictions are
for getting that those services, be they by time of day or quantity  
over a time period.

Yes, all of this is as a result of the 'sharing' and the decisions -  
how the equipment
is configured, how much over-subscription etc. As subscribers we don't  
want to know how
bad the ISPs problems are -  we need to know is what we can rely on.

Neil