Re: WORTH READING "not rely on carriers" ????

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: October 30, 2008 11:09:23 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] WORTH READING "not rely on carriers" ????


Dave,

Nobody that I know at least would seriously "get rid" of the Internet
carriers (well, with the possible exception of Bob Frankston of
course).  The real questions are much simpler.  How and to what
degree should Internet carriers and ISPs be regulated?  To what
extent is the Internet infrastructure now viewed as a crucial
resource that calls out for such regulation, particularly of the
massively dominant carriers?  Should carriers be free to operate
their Internet systems totally free of society's concerns and
appropriate oversight, checks, and balances?  Should municipalities
be allowed to operate their own Internet networks without carriers
continuing to lobby toward making such municipal networks illegal?
And so on.

We've discussed this all here lot of times.  This isn't a binary
decision.  There are lots of options between a totally government
owned and operated Internet, vs. Internet carriers and ISPs doing
whatever they want, whenever they want, with society being forced
to just take whatever is offered.

We've long viewed water, power, natural gas, roads and other essential
services as falling into the sphere of necessary regulation.  It's
clear that the Internet should now appropriately be brought into
that same space.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
  - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
  - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com

- - -

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: mo () ccr org (Mike O'Dell)
> Date: October 29, 2008 8:03:06 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: "not rely on carriers" ????
>
>
> this is an interesting tale,
> but if you don't "rely" on carriers,
> what exactly do you plan to use for wires
> and fiber?  surely you are not suggesting
> simply re-implementing it all somehow
> (or even just the parts you like).
>
> people seem to forget what a carrier really is.
>
> first and foremost, it's a business entity which can successfully
> raise enough money to build and operate communication
> infrastructure. that involves cutting deals for rights of way,
> negotiating with regulatory bodies at the local, state, national,
> and international levels, deploying a lot of hardware, and
> then owning and operating that hardware.
>
> note that nothing I said up to this point says anything
> about "business models". whether a carrier's service
> is selling IRUs for dark fiber, access to lambdas,
> point-to-point 10gigEthernet, or any other interface
> exposed by transport equipment is interesting only
> to the degree it determines whether they sell what
> you want to buy.
>
> the most important fact is:
>
> carriers move bits.
>
> that's it. that's the killer app
> for true carriers.
>
> there are ISPs which provide global delivery of IP packets
> by using the bit-moving services of carriers.
> they add other infrastructure on top of the bit-pipes
> supplied by carriers and generate Internet Service from it.
>
> Note: it is not uncommon to find a carrier and an ISP
> squished into the same higher-level corporate entity
> (usually indicated by pervasive logo stains), but there
> *are* two different entities inside there. it's the
> upper-level logo who is blenderizing the "business models".
>
> these upper-level logos often peddle other wares, too,
> but they are of concern only to the degree they get in
> the way of using the carrier or ISP services.
>
> this picture is obviously simplified - some carriers specialize
> in escorting bits across ocean passages. the dollars required
> to do that magic are considered large by "dry-land" carriers,
> and dry-land carriers can spend multiple hundreds of millions
> of dollars on deployment with surprising ease. why?
> the world is a big place, and as we used to say,
> "The fiber am where the fiber is." it doesn't go
> everywhere and cannot go everywhere, so some places
> are more equal than others when it comes to delivering
> different kinds of bit-pipe service. the same is true
> for every other bit-pipe technology.
>
> so what i really don't understand is what part of this
> we can do without?  certainly the brain-damaged blenderizing
> of business models could be jettisoned, but i don't see
> how you build anything like what we now know as
> "The Global Big-I Internet" without fiber and submarine
> cables and metro distribution and local tails.
> and like it or not, unless you intend to completely
> re-implement all of that, you are going to need the
> facilities of "carriers".  true, it would be nice if
> they would find a way to be happy with their true
> killer app, but that doesn't make those bit pipes
> less necessary.
>
>         -mo
>
>
>
>
>
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