Re: U.S. Finance Sector Weighs In on Net Neutrality

[Greg Poirier <grep () reflexsecurity com>]

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 19:09 +0100, Drsolly wrote:
> No - if I buy 1 megabit, I don't really expect to get more than 1 megabit, 
> even though it means that when my pipe is saturated, access to my server 
> will get slower.

Content providers are paying for bandwidth directly to their upstream
provider with no guarantee of symmetric availability at any given
end-point.  That's how things are, it's fair, it's expected.  Not
everyone has a 1Mb connection to teh intarweb.

An interesting analogy would be if Microsoft purposefully didn't allow
competing browsers to be installed on Windows unless those competing
browsers paid compilation fees.  Your software will compile once you
give us any sum of money we ask for.  The only problem with this analogy
is that in the case of the internet, there's no switching to Linux.
 
> I'm still having trouble understanding this whole issue. If its about 
> banning discriminatory pricing, then it flies in the face of all normal 
> commercial practice. You simply do not charge everyone the same price. 
> For example, people who buy big volume, usually get offered a better 
> price.

While I don't support government regulation of commerce, I do think this
is pretty crumby.  It seems like a restructuring of the way bandwidth
pricing currently works.  In the New World, you will not only have to
pay for bandwidth to your upstream provider, but also for all of the
ISPs who deliver the content to their customers, assuming you are
selling products or services in competition with theirs.

This is a new paradigm in Internet operation and opens the doors for
larger companies to effectively shut down any competitor by killing its
access to the consumer.  My problem with this is that someone like
EarthLink, who purchases most of its connectivity for its customers from
LECs like Bells, would be impacted by Bell South's filtering:

EarthLink customers may very well be unable to access services that they
pay for because they have been resold Bell South DSL.

-- 
Greg Poirier    | Reflex Security, Inc.
Sigma Team      | Network Security.  Simplified.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.