 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
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 ·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
1 edit | End user should control packet priority I hate defend the Baby Bells but they raise a valid technical point.
VoIP has very demanding latency requirements. It benefits if ISP and Internet backbone recognizes Quality of Service metrics and give priority to critical packets. This allows high priority packets to move to the front of the queue at each router. There needs to be some sort of pricing mechanism to control the percentage of packets requesting high priority. Without a control mechanism everyone would request the highest priority – the so-called tragedy of the commons problem.
Seems to me the best way to do this is to offer Service Level Agreements (SLA) to residential accounts, much as has been done with business. Customer would pay an additional fee to have some number of packets carried at higher priority level. High priority service is marketed to First-Mile access customers as a value added service. Customer equipment then decides which packets to mark as high priority. A gamer may mark game packets as high priority; another user may want to optimize Voice over IP quality. First-Mile access provider should not be in a position to monitor end user traffic and decide how to prioritize packet flow.
The business issue raised by BellSouth is troubling. This is why I think first-mile access providers should be limited to providing transport and prohibited from directly selling services. We are moving toward a world where First-Mile Internet access will be provided by only a few companies, and in many locations only one company. To maximize profitability First-Mile access providers are trying to bundle as many services as possible. The logical result of this practice is to have business considerations dictate end user Internet experience. Technology will be used to advantage business partners and disadvantage competitors. Priority control decision should in the hands of the end user not First-Mile business relationships.
The Internet spawns innovation and business opportunity because it was designed as a transparent end-to-end deliver mechanism. Anything that reduces transparency will reduce long-term innovation and thwart emerging entrepreneurs.
/Tom
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