NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] re Will Netflix destroy the Internet?
----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2010 21:48:45 -0400 From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] re Will Netflix destroy the Internet? Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> 3CDB951A-E94A-11DF-89D0-B506C6F4DBAC: Begin forwarded message: From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2-39@bobf.frankston.com> Date: November 5, 2010 8:11:18 PM EDT To: "'Farhad Manjoo'" <Farhad.Manjoo@Slate.com> Cc: <dave@farber.net> Subject: RE: [IP] Will Netflix destroy the Internet? The key sentence is, perhaps "This article also erroneously stated that at peak hours Netflix accounts for one-fifth of North American broadband capacity. It accounts for one-fifth of all traffic, not of all available bandwidth". The phrase "available bandwidth" continues the misunderstanding because it represents provisioned capacity not what would be available if the network users had a say in the capacity. It's as if we looked at the capacity of 1970 vintage computers and worried about using up the capacity. We have to remember that demand has been creating supply throughout the history of the Internet. But the telecommunications system is measured in terms of the provisioned capacity. Thus a copper wire is provisioned as 56Ibps (or less phone line). The Internet has grown because we've discovered what we can do with the available resources, not just the capacity as given. That same phone wire, as DSL, carries a few megabits. At least it did 25 years ago. Today it should be ... well, we don't know because it's locked within the business of telecom and we aren't allowed to discover what is possible. The problem is not too much demand but our inability to create supply using the available resources and our inability to add physical capacity. Even though I have FiOS there is no mechanism for just buying the fiber itself so I cannot discover what I can do with the physical medium. Of course FiOS is architectural choice that makes it difficult to get at the potential of the fiber because it is implemented as a passive distribution system when it would've been so much more if it was designed to provide opportunity rather than delivery on the carriers business model and no more. So, once again, we're told we're using up the Internet when it's really the telecom business model that is taking potential abundance and locking it down very tightly to make sure we don't forget that the purpose of telecommunications is to profit the network owners and not serve the communities. And the FCC serves the needs of these owners that's what seemed to make sense in 1934 during the Great Depression. I wrote about this back in 1997 in http://rmf.vc/?N=BeyondLimits and lots more since then including http://rmf.vc/?N=BroadbandInternet, http://rmf.vc/?n=AssuringScarcity. Yet we continue to force the Internet into the business model of telecom and that doesn't make sense. It's also useful to look at the history of roads and how they were financed to service communities http://lsb.scu.edu/~dklein/papers/privateTollRds.html and http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Klein.Majewski.Turnpikes. -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net] Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 11:32 To: ip Subject: [IP] Will Netflix destroy the Internet? Begin forwarded message: From: Bob Poortinga <nnsquad@k9sql.us> Date: November 4, 2010 1:24:59 PM EDT To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] Will Netflix destroy the Internet? Some very interesting statistics on current internet use: <http://www.slate.com/id/2273314> -- Bob Poortinga K9SQL Bloomington, IN US ------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message -----