computerworld.com — Net neutrality advocates celebrated last week after AT&T Inc. said it would pledge to maintain a "neutral network" in exchange for U.S. government approval of its proposed acquisition of BellSouth Corp.
Dec 31, 2006 View in Crawl 4
bigslackerJan 1, 2007
Except the only monopoly in this case is the the Congress. Only a few hundred people in control of the Internet...does that really sound like a good plan to you?
kordmpJan 1, 2007
Ok, does anyone on here work for a large ISP, because I don't know of many people that have millions of customers that they support that fully support full net neutrality.1. Not blocking traffic to public sites unless, the customer wants traffic blocked to anywhere. I don't know of anyone that doesn't want this to be true. This is definitely a keeper.2. No QOS or allow QOS for all like traffic the same. This gets ugly here. To some degree yes, to some degree no. Yes to a degree that it is a nice concept to treat all traffic the same if possible, but this just isn't a reality. There just isn't enough bandwidth built in the backbones. Most backbones are multiple OC-192s moving to OC-768 because the OC-192s are saturated and the OC-768 will saturate shortly after they are put in. You can't just allow all voice or video traffic from anywhere to be in the same QOS. One, there just isn't enough memory on routers and two there is no way to guarantee the traffic is that type of traffic unless you are looking at the content, which is not cost efficient and do you really want ISPs looking at the content of everything you send? If you base it off ports then everyone starts to use those ports and QOS is nulled. If you put everything as best effort it might be ok in the backbone but sucks at the edge, so everything is just crap. Some people say oh just add more bandwidth, but it costs a crap load to do that. Broadband is cheap because it is an oversubscribed network, which means that it isn't a dedicated bandwidth to each subscriber but a shared bandwidth. If you want dedicated bandwidth then you are going to have to pay for the fiber from the router all the way to your house, which I doubt you want to do. Dedicated circuits costs a crap load. Some European companies do this but in metro areas or in a limited fashion, not to 8-10 million customers dispersed over the area of the size of the US. Homes aren't clumped together like in a lot of European countries, in some parts of the US your nearest neighbor might be 20 miles away. Also keep in mind that without QOS then there are no business Internet connections that are any better than Consumer connections and no SLAs.3. On the issue of google pays a lot and subscribers pay a lot... Well google pays a lot to their ISP X, while the subscriber pays a lot to their ISP Y. Sorry to tell you but most Telcos have to pay for peering, it isn't free any longer like the old days of Tier1 free peering. So ISP Y has to also pay ISP X for that bandwidth. So ISP X makes out like a bandit, but the Telco who has to maintain last mile infrastructure has to keep prices cheap $10-$80/mth and still hope that bulk will pay for everything. Last mile infrastructure cost a crap load to support. It isn't like a pure ISP who just supports backhaul and interconnect circuits. A Telco has to pay for and sustain the fiber and equipment all the way up to the side of your house for every house. Scale is everything. The only financial solution here is either free peering for Tier1 and Telco's or for Google to buy bandwidth connectivity on ISP Y's network.4. Telco's currently supply most ISP connectivity at a loss, yes at a loss. There is no money in last mile if you can't be compensated for it in some way like the ability to provide video or phone or QOS resale to corporations. Ever wonder why they like to make you lockin for at least 2 years, its because that is the point at which they will at least cover the costs of just installation, sustaining, and monitoring and start to make a profit. Most Telco's are living off their Cellular companies cash at this point. Most broadband is a future investment operating at a loss or break even at best and when you add up the backbone portion of all of it, it is definitely a loss.In summary, Net neutrality has good points, I think they are things to strive for, but they have a cost. If you want it all today then expect to get crappy internet connections with packet loss and congestion or to have your prices skyrocket. There is no incentive for a Telco to build a network that is not going to make money for them. Net Neutrality has to keep this in mind, if it doesn't then we will all suffer, especially in the US and other largely dispersed populated countries.
fushbuckJan 1, 2007
The problem with a "trusted" company is that it can be bought out by an untrustworthy company. I'd rather have a law in place that no company can violate regardless of who owns the company.
genghis1Jan 1, 2007
All you people who don't work in the telecommunications industry and think you know what you are talking about are being laughed at by us on the inside. You are really making yourselves look like buffoons.
fushbuckJan 1, 2007
@JonForTheWinAgreed. Any company will take into account the expenditures required in order to provide a good or service. Then they add a profit margin both as a reward for their investment and an incentive for them to continue providing the good or service. In other words, they need to eat too. No company in it's right mind knowingly produces a good or service at a loss. If a company is stupid enough to do so, it deserves to go out of business.Applying well-known business models to this situation, if Google or some other content provider was not making a profit, they would merely raise the price OF THE GOOD OR SERVICE they provide. For example, google would raise the cost of their advertising. The businesses which advertise on google would now have higher expenses, and we could expect a slight increase in the cost of their products. Another way would be for ISP to have increased costs, and to pass that cost on to the consumer. The price of your monthly internet access would rise.The problem is that some corporations are trying to convince people that somehow standard business models magically don't apply to the internet, and they need to tell you what sites you can visit at what speed, which would effectively limit free speech, since many people would get tired of waiting for "boring" news content to load. I am assuming of course, that our government is slowly turning into a fascist dictatorship or at the very least a corporate ogliarchy. If you're living under a rock and don't see that as a concern, then of course you won't have a problem with net neutrality at all.Obviously I understand simple business models much better than any other aspect of this controversy, but I believe the average amercican has similar understanding. The geek techs on digg are of course an exception, and understand the componets of the technology better.Here's another thought. It may be that I am confused about what it is that AT&T intends. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt for a minute, and see where logic takes us. They say their only purpose is to restrict high bandwidth and therefore high expense media like videos or movies to a particular network, and to charge accordingly for access to that network; WHILE AT THE SAME TIME to allow the unrestricted access to all other content on the internet to anyone with a connection at basically the same price structure already in place. If this last part is their intention, and we are willing to admit it seems reasonable, then why oh why, with their fancy PR departments and million dollar ad campaigns, can't they come out and say this clearly and simply?The fact that they do not seem to be able to clearly and simply say this indicates to me, a cynical and experienced veteran of bulls**t propaganda, that their intentions are not so innocent. ~oh super geeks of digg, tell me where I have this wrong~
kordmpJan 1, 2007
lock720: For old style ISPs that is how it works, that is not how it works for AT&T or Verizon. As they by a peering connection but since Neither is a transit network it is considered an end user connection which means that both pay for circuits just as Google does. I know this for a fact, the ISPs pay nothing back to the Telco's for the yearly circuit costs connected to their subscriber networks. There are still legal issues blocking Telco's from doing such things.JonForTheWin:I agree with not intentionally restricting bandwidth or traffic to anywhere if the subscriber does not sign up for such a service.True the cost could be pushed to the subscriber, but the subscriber doesn't want increased prices they want lower prices. The point is they can't have both. For instance on a typical BPON there is 622M (not counting overhead) to all the subscribers on that PON, but upstream on the edge router there may only be 2x1G or 2x622M for all PONS on the edge router. An increase in bandwidth is not a simple thing because every time you do it it means overhauling your entire network. For a Telco this means changing out equipment at minimum in the backbone (which is a small amount, and much easier to do) and at the edge which means in every CO. There are a lot of COs and no a distributed model doesn't work because of all of the LATA restrictions that Telcos are under. At worst it means swapping out DSLAMs, OLTs, headends, and/or ONTs on the side of your house. Telco last mile providers are also different than Cable because cable providers can legal design a regional design, whereas the Telcos are not legal capable of this design. For instance my cable service edge is about 70 miles from where I live, which is also why cable sucks so much, but with Telco's your edge is usually down the street or at worst somewhere in your LATA.Regarding your other thoughts. Again, I see no reason to restrict Internet traffic, but that is not the same as giving priority to traffic that the subscriber has paid a premium. What you have to remember is that the traffic is only impacted when there is congestion not as business as usual. If there is congestion, a provider of course wants to alleviate it as soon as possible just because it is good business and honestly it is too costly to have customer calling in all the time complaining :) If all traffic was best effort than there can be no premium services like video or phones. Most people want there phones and TVs to work and don't want to hear sorry there is a new video of someone naked so the porn traffic has made it so that your phone and TV don't work. And no, you can't just give QOS to all traffic. There is a cost to doing QOS. It has to be planned and configured based on the amount of traffic you expect to receive in that queue. Could a provider allow another provider to mark traffic in a trusted way with a priority? Yes, but you better bet they are going to recoup the equipment, management, and circuit costs for doing it for that third party, they aren't going to do it because the "Internet should be a free place". It isn't. It hasn't been since the late 70's. It may have seemed that way but it has always been a business since their were providers. As stated above the Internet is a bunch of networks, but each one is in it to make money.
jbelkinJan 2, 2007
Yea, only a bureaucrat would cheer this decision - it will take AT&T a good 10 months to digest this takeover anyway so saying 2 years, you might as well be saying I agree not to eat a pineapple for 2 hours after I finish at the buffet place. Plus as others point out, it only applies to 768 DSL so big whoppee do.The reason we want net neutrality is NOT because we're getting a free lunch from AT&T when we use Google but a) WE PAID for the street anyway when AT&T was a monopoly and we still continue to pay for it (see $10 billion dollar boonagle for last go around of net neutrality) so it's UP to us to decide how and when we want to use it. Whether I watch YouTube videos, download movies or just send emails, we paid for the street/tube/internet already and we use them as an ISP/provider, then we are paying more to decide how we want to use it. It's be like buying gas and being told, if you drive on that road, you owe us another $.50 a mile but this road has no extra charge - don't mind the speed bumps, we want you to slow down and look at our billboards.The good thing is that the telcos are morons and bunglers. If they ever try to implement it, they will get sued and legistlated ... and failing that, Google will just activate the dark fiber they'd been buying up and we will get our cities to switch to wifi max and shoot up our own birds ... at that point, there is no way a politician will side for them because any money they take against us is a voting death sentence at the next elections ... you think those 4th ammendment gun people are a tough fight ... wait until they try and turn off DIGG ... :-)
jdandreaMay 1, 2007
From Network World, 3 January 2007: <a class="user" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/010307-att-bellsouth.html">http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/010307-att-bellsouth.html</a>AT&T "essentially agreed not to charge content providers such as eBay, Amazon or Google a premium to carry their content" and to "not treat packets traveling to or from certain Web sites differently than other packets on its network." Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin does not see a connection, calling net neutrality an “ill-defined problem."