areeve
join:2006-07-03
Geneva, IL | Ignorance The Senator's core argument is accurate and yet all I see are a bunch of lemmings hopping on the 'how stupid he is' bus without providing any evidence otherwise.
His statement that the Internet has a finite capacity is 100% TRUE. That's all he's saying. His tube analogy (whether you like or dislike it) is accurate in that the Internet can only handle a finite amount of traffic during a certain amount of time. Does ayone here disagree with that?
Now, I can argue both for and against what I understand net-neutrality to be. On the for size I do recognize that the telecom companies have a lot of money tied up in harware and cabling to support their chunk of the Internet so why shouldn't they want to be compensated for that? On the other side it appears that they're trying to milk both ends of the cow... they already charge us as consumers to feed us our data so it seems a bit less than ethical to start trying to charge the data provider to prioritize the traffic. That would seem like your favorite airline charging each city to bring people there. I'm also not entirely sure I understand every nuance of this legislation as there's a lot of it.
But to jump on Senator Stevens because his terminology is off when his main point... the Internet can only handle so much traffic... is accurate without defending your positions is just sad. He's not a network engineer... obviously.
Feel free to correct my core statement that at some point in everyone's connection regardless of where you get data from there's a bottleneck such that 'the tube could be full' just like a water pipe... sure all of the data will eventually make it, but at some point speed WILL be sacrificed. |
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1 edit | Hmm...your "for" and "against" examples above leave me scratchin my head, don't think you understand what net neutrality means  |
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 tschmidtPremium,MVM
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said by areeve: His statement that the Internet has a finite capacity is 100% TRUE. That's all he's saying. His tube analogy (whether you like or dislike it) is accurate in that the Internet can only handle a finite amount of traffic during a certain amount of time. Does ayone here disagree with that? I do.
Let me clarify my statement. Of course "the Internet" does not have infinite capacity, but then neither do CPUs. I bring that up because improvements in technology have dramatically reduced cost of both networking and computing. What this means is what was once a scarce and very precious resource is now available in abundance. We no longer worry about conserving CPU cycles. The same transformation is occurring in networking. This is a fundamentally different way to think about communication.
For almost all human history bandwidth has been expensive. Much engineering effort went into eking out every last possible iota of network capacity. Today: advances in fiber and electronics have dramatically reduced the cost of transporting bits from one place to another. Most of the cost of Internet infrastructure is not in the high capacity backbone but in first-mile access.
Access control mechanisms have a cost, just like adding more capacity. As networking costs go down then cost for complex prioritization exceeds the cost of adding more capacity. It is important to keep in mind Quality of Service prioritization mechanisms do not create capacity; rather it determines winners and losers.
There may be good reasons to implement QoS mechanisms but I submit they should be implemented as they are in the commercial space as a Service Level Agreement (SLA). I: as the first mile customer contract with my ISP to deliver some fraction of my total usage as a higher priority. This puts power in the hands of the customer not in vertically integrated companies to decide what traffic gets preferential service and who does not.
If I am a gamer my preference is preferential handling of packets destined to the game server. If I use a VoIP service I’d want priority given to voice. The current debate about net neutrality is all about how controls the Internet. Does power continue to reside within the user community or will it shift to network owners?
I agree the response to his terminology has been rather harsh. I think that seems from the frustration many of us feel that Legislators at both Federal and State level do not understand technology and are unduly swayed by lobbyists.
/Tom |
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areeve
join:2006-07-03
Geneva, IL | No argument with that.
And I'll also add that I'm sure not (and obviously he's not) sure if the existing network would allow everyone to start watching movies over it in real time as the Senator discusses.
I would suspect that if EVERYONE started watching movies tomorrow over their broadband connection that that would bog down the existing infrastructure, however obviously that's silly as the transition to movies over IP will be slower than that giving companies an opportunity to upgrade their network infrastructure. |
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tschmidtPremium,MVM
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| said by areeve: I would suspect that if EVERYONE started watching movies tomorrow over their broadband connection that that would bog down the existing infrastructure, however obviously that's silly as the transition to movies over IP will be slower than that giving companies an opportunity to upgrade their network infrastructure. Exactly - Internet TV will be very demanding because it needs lots of bandwidth and uses it for long periods of time. The current ISP business model is built on the assumption Internet traffic is bursty. That is true today but as more and more media are delivered via IP that will change. BTW that is one of the reasons the Cablecos have come down so hard on P2P because it locks up lots of capacity for long periods of time. This has much less of an effect on DSL and FTTP.
Andrew Odlyzko wrote an interesting paper on this subject: Internet TV: Implications for the long distance network. At the time he was at AT&T, the conclusion is very interesting.
/Tom |
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