Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: re: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers!
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 17:28:01 -0400
From: Joe McGuckin <joe () via net> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 13:39:00 -0700 (PDT) To: farber () cis upenn edu Subject: Re: IP: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers! X-Mailer: Ishmail 1.3.1-970608-bsdi <http://www.ishmail.com>This isn't paranoic rants without substance. It is hard evidence of PLANNING and INTENT to discriminate against unfavored (competing?) content providers and users by cable+content cartels such as AOL-TimeWarner and AT&T-MediaOne.I disagree with Jim Warren's previous message. I think that that James Love & Co. are wrongly attributing sinister intent to QOS (quality of service) features that will be appearing in nearly all router products in the near future. The topic of usage or QOS based pricing as applied to internet services is not a new or even controversial topic of discussion in the internet networking community. As inexpensive high speed internet connections to the home become widely available, some traffic engineering mechanism will be needed to apply reasonable limits to different types of network traffic to ensure that the network doesn't become oversaturated and suffer complete failure when a minority of users attempt to monopolize the available bandwidth. A relevent example would be todays MP3 downloading frenzy caused by the emminent shutdown of Napster. While backbone networks will eventually utilize QOS capabilities, the low cost broadband companies (DSL and cable modem for example) require those features now. The economics of offering low cost broadband services dictate that the bandwidth has to be oversold - you can't offer 10Mbits/sec for $29/month and make a profit if the customer is actually using 10Mbits/sec continually. The service is meant to give an 'average' user fast response to services like ftp, www, telnet and email. The consequence of too many end-users using the full bandwidth of their connection for protracted periods of time is the total failure of the network. So, some sort of controls have to be in place. Until now, the tools network operators had at their disposal to control bandwidth usage of end-users were rather crude. Turning down everyone's DSL speed 15% or using CAR to limit aggregate real-media flows to some fixed value are typical examples. The QOS features mentioned in Jim Warren's previous message would provide network operators with fine grained controls that can be applied to each type of traffic or even individual end-users. It's a very long-winded way of saying: QOS features are not a plot by guys in black helicopters - they are designed to allow PacBell, @Home, Time-Warner, etc to offer internet services with predictable levels of quality even during times of severe network overload. Could they be used by a network operator to discriminate against a competitor? Sure, but, so can the current filtering and bandwidth limiting features that are present in Cisco equipment. There's nothing new about this. Joe -- Joe McGuckin ViaNet Communications 994 San Antonio Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 Phone: 650-969-2203 Cell: 650-207-0372 Fax: 650-969-2124
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- IP: re: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers! Dave Farber (Jul 28)