NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Beyond Mumbo Jumbo re Intelligent Networks
A brief comment: my own experience with platform providers who have
dominant roles is that they often decide defaults in ways that
disadvantage competitors "on purpose". For example, Microsoft
installed and used IE in Windows in ways that disadvantaged alternative
browsers from playing the same role - in ways that users could
"theoretically" opt out, but in practice would shoot themselves in the
foot. I had the misfortune of being essentially required to listen to
all of the explanations by Microsoft as to why that was "good for users"
- many amounting to claims that Microsoft's engineers were more
efficient than having competitive companies that had to pay marketing
costs and other costs of being "not Microsoft".
There are strong business arguments for not allowing ISPs who also
compete with companies that enhance their platform to have any role in
setting default behaviors that advantage their own non-access-provision
businesses.
On 11/03/2009 01:42 PM, George Ou wrote:
> Going to keep this short.
>
> 1. Bennett and myself have been stating for years that transparency is a
> good thing, so stop implying that we are opposed to it. The concern I've
> had was that if it's imposed by the government, they might screw it up.
>
> 2. I'm fine with user or application preferences and I even think they
> should trump ISP default settings so long as they don't demand more priority
> (in traffic) than their contract specifies.
>
> 3. Having run many enterprise networks, I know that most users and
> applications don't have the capability or will to manage DiffServ so it was
> always up to the network administrator to do it at the router level using
> simple traffic classification techniques. The only difference here is that
> the network admin worked for the "customer" rather than the network
> operator, but the network admin had to abide by their contractual terms for
> QoS. The problem for residential customers is that they almost never have
> their own personal network administrator, so they need to outsource the work
> to someone, and there's no reason that someone couldn't be the ISP.
>
> 4. The fundamental disagreement we have is that you don't even believe that
> the ISP should be able to have default settings to cover those who choose
> not to manage their own networks. Users and applications who don't want the
> ISP to manage their networks should be allowed to opt out by setting their
> own priority preferences. There is no reason to oppose default settings for
> the ISP. If BitTorrent wants to set uTorrent to real-time priority, they
> can do so and the ISP will honor it, but I doubt BitTorrent would do this
> with a straight face. When their users start complaining about BitTorrent
> breaking their VoIP or gaming application, it's on them.
>
> 5. I think the FCC can oversee the industry, but they should not be in the
> business of micromanaging networks and writing prescriptive rules about how
> QoS should be implemented. As David Farber said last week on a panel, the
> last thing we want is the IETF to have to go before the FCC to figure out if
> a new technology is "discriminatory" or not.
>
>
>
> George Ou
>
>
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NNSquad Moderator ]