NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Who Confirms The Accuracy (or is it precision) Of ISP Usage [sic] Meters?
----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:30:25 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] read Who Confirms The Accuracy (or is it precision) Of ISP Usage [sic] Meters? Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: > From: "Kahn, Kevin" <kevin.kahn@intel.com> > Date: January 14, 2010 11:06:30 AM EST > To: "dave@farber.net" <dave@farber.net> > Subject: RE: [IP] re Who Confirms The Accuracy (or is it precision) Of > ISP Usage [sic] Meters? > > > The deeper issue is our willingness to accept the bad metaphor that > leads us to think we are using up the "Internet" as if we were > consuming electricity. > > Bob’s wrong – if you’re using bandwidth on a path, I can’t use it on the > same path. While we’re not talking about a finite natural resource, like > oil, or similar, we’re talking about what I’ll characterize as > financially limited finite resource: bandwidth. > > > > > > At least on this list inhabited by folks who actually do generally know > something about the technology could we manage to be precise in our use > of “bandwidth” (a measure of instantaneous transmission rate) and “ > transferred bit quantity”. Except in the case of a constant load over > the entire measured period, these are very different things. The > so-called “bandwidth caps” are for the most part not that at all. They > limit the total amount a user can transfer over some period (generally > it seems a month). I understand that there is likely a correlation > between people who transfer a lot of data over a month and those that > try to run a high instantaneous rate, but it is precisely the difference > that makes capacity caps unlikely to be the right tool. There may be > two problems that ISPs have. The most common is what capacity they > provision in their networks and capacity caps only address this > incidentally via the correlation above. For handling fairness on an > immediate basis they need not caps but rather better scheduling > algorithms for the traffic that penalize proportionally to the “excess” > traffic that users are generating right then. The other problem may be > one of costs related to disproportionate total traffic exchange (which > could justify a capacity cap) but this one doesn’t get spoken of much. > Placing a capacity cap on a user who goes out of her way to heavily use > the service only in off peak hours does nothing to help problem one. > Conversely, a user who stays well under the capacity cap but puts all > that load in the peak hour or two every day is impacting the system > considerably. Independent of any of our beliefs about what ISPs should > or shouldn’t do, or how neutrally they may do it, could we at least be > precise about what we are talking about on this issue? > > ____________________________________________________________ > Kevin C. Kahn > > Intel Senior Fellow, Director Communications Technology > > Intel Labs > > > > JF2-96 > > 2111 NE 25th Ave > > Hillsboro, OR 97124-5961 > > ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message -----