[TUHS] V7 Addendem [ really lawyers and AT&T consent decree ]

[TUHS] V7 Addendem [ really lawyers and AT&T consent decree ]

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Clem Cole

    > IP and datagrams were very much built on no central control

Well, yes and no. One can easily have a centrally controlled datagram network
(q.v. the ARPANET) - although it's true that its path-selection algorithms,
etc were not centrally controlled - but other aspects of the network were.
(Interestingly, after various routing disasters the Internet caused by
improper configuration, some aspects of path selection in _parts_ of it are
now effectively centrally controlled; but I digress.)

The IP Internet was designed with no _overall_ central control, but as a
collection of autonomous entities.

    > In the end, it was MetCalfe's law (which was formulated on observations
    > about the phone system) that caused IP to win

Over any and all comers, including other decentralized datagram networks like
CLNP. MetCalfe's law doesn't talk about decentralized, it's just about 'first
to field'.


    > all want to see the net neutrality go away

This whole 'net neutrality' campaign drives me completely crazy.

If all people wanted was a rule saying 'ISPs can't give third parties _worse_
service, or - more importantly - deny service altogether, unless those parties
pay up' (i.e. what would amount to targeted extortion), I'd be _all for_ a
rule like that.

But the 'net neutrality' aficionados (most of whom, I'm fairly sure, are not
aware of/thinking about these details) are all signing up for a much more
expansive rule, one that says 'no ISP can offer anyone _better_ service for
paying more money' - which is quite different. My problems with this latter
form are two-fold.

First, what's wrong with that anyway? Do we have a rule saying you can't get
better road service if you pay? Absolutely not - restricted toll lanes are
becoming more and more common. So there's clearly no societal agreement on
this principle. (I suspect this 'net netrality' campaign has as a goal some
sort of 'forced equality' thing - unless the people behind it simply don't
even understand the difference.)

Second, that rule is, with a little extra work on the ISPs' part, ineffective
anyway. All they have to do is build _two_ networks, one better provisioned
than the other - and priced accordingly. You want better service? Sign up for
the second network; you'll pay more, but it's your choice.

    Noel

[TUHS] net neutrality

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 02:23:28PM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> This whole 'net neutrality' campaign drives me completely crazy.
> 
> If all people wanted was a rule saying 'ISPs can't give third parties _worse_
> service, or - more importantly - deny service altogether, unless those parties
> pay up' (i.e. what would amount to targeted extortion), I'd be _all for_ a
> rule like that.
> 
> But the 'net neutrality' aficionados (most of whom, I'm fairly sure, are not
> aware of/thinking about these details) are all signing up for a much more
> expansive rule, one that says 'no ISP can offer anyone _better_ service for
> paying more money' - which is quite different. My problems with this latter
> form are two-fold.

So that's not at all the case.  Go look at the history, various ISPs like
Verizon, Comcast, etc, have done stuff like block bittorrent, skype, etc,
anything that they decided wasn't in their interest.

The problem is I paid for the bits.  Bits is bits.  I paid for a rate, 
that's what they got paid for, why should they get to charge a second
time for the same bits?  That's exactly what they want to do.  You 
pay them, you pay netflix, you've paid for the carrier, you've paid
for the content, oh, you want it to actually stream?  Too bad, Netflix
didn't pay their extortion so your movie watching sucks.

Don't believe me?  OK, how about this?

https://np.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/7i595b/will_the_repeal_of_net_neutrality_actually_help/dqwzn1g/

[TUHS] net neutrality

[Clem Cole]

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On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 2:36 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

>
> The problem is I paid for the bits.  Bits is bits.  I paid for a rate,

​Amen brother...   they must be made a common carrier.  Just like a
shipping contain is 'said to contain' - they don't get to peek inside.
The bits are not theirs.   They have one and only one job -- delivery them.
Just like the electric company, needs to deliver electrons at some
rate/force.   They don't get to say I what I use them for.   The bits
coming in/going out are between me and the side I am communicating.

They are carriers i.e. plumbing --- which of course they do not like.   It
means its a lot hard for them to differentiate themselves other than in
service and price for delivery.   Period.

Clem​
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[TUHS] V7 Addendem [ really lawyers and AT&T consent decree ]

[Random832]

On Mon, Dec 11, 2017, at 14:23, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> If all people wanted was a rule saying 'ISPs can't give third parties
> _worse_ service, or - more importantly - deny service altogether,
> unless those parties pay up' (i.e. what would amount to targeted
> extortion), I'd be _all for_ a rule like that.
>
> But the 'net neutrality' aficionados (most of whom, I'm fairly sure,
> are not aware of/thinking about these details) are all signing up for
> a much more expansive rule, one that says 'no ISP can offer anyone
> _better_ service for paying more money' - which is quite different. My
> problems with this latter form are two-fold.

The rule that I want is that I am the customer. If Comcast wants to give
better service to my neighbor who is paying more, that's fine, but
that's not remotely the same thing as making it harder for me to connect
to Netflix than to their own streaming service because Netflix didn't
pay up. They're essentially taking money from me twice - once from
actually charging me for internet service, and once from the portion of
my Netflix (etc) subscription that goes to paying their extortion fees
(because let's not pretend that "fast lanes" won't go hand-in-hand with
degradation of the standard service). If they want more money from me
they should have to raise the actual price they bill me with instead of
being sneaky about it.

[TUHS] [ really net neutrality - don't you folks believe in subject lines? ]

[Jon Steinhart]

Random832 writes:
> The rule that I want is that I am the customer. If Comcast wants to give
> better service to my neighbor who is paying more, that's fine, but
> that's not remotely the same thing as making it harder for me to connect
> to Netflix than to their own streaming service because Netflix didn't
> pay up. They're essentially taking money from me twice - once from
> actually charging me for internet service, and once from the portion of
> my Netflix (etc) subscription that goes to paying their extortion fees
> (because let's not pretend that "fast lanes" won't go hand-in-hand with
> degradation of the standard service). If they want more money from me
> they should have to raise the actual price they bill me with instead of
> being sneaky about it.

To me this all comes down to the network stack model.  At the low level
I'd like to be paying X dollars for Y bits per second.  There shouldn't
be any restrictions on what I can do with those bits.  Netflix et. al.
should be doing the same.  Of course, they buy a lot more bits/second.

There's a big difference between the internet and the old phone system
which comes down to "peering agreements".  In the phone system, if an
AT&T customer called a GTE customer a connection would be made for that
call.  If an AT&T customer in an isolated district called another AT&T
customer it was AT&T's problem to route the call; it didn't go through
GTE's network.

Quick diversion here for a good story.  The town in which I went to
college was exactly one of these districts; we were New York Telephone
but separated from the rest of that network by a GTE district.  Dialing
1 in the pre-computer days said "hit the microwave tower 'cause it's
long distance".  We found a local number that had a 300-3300 Hz sweep
test tone.  We could dial 1 which would send the call out over the
microwave, then dial the local number.  There was no checking to see
that it could just be connected as a local call.  So the sweep tone
would start at 300 Hz and continue until it hit 2600 Hz at which point
the it would disconnect and leave the originator with an unallocated
trunk circuit just waiting for MF tones.  The great thing about it was
they NYT was looking for the 2600 Hz tone coming from our end but it
was coming from theirs.  They eventually caught on and installed a
notch filter.

Anyway, there is a real issue with the internet is that traffic can go
anywhere.  Netflix can be on provider A, I can be on provider A in some
other part of the world, and the traffic might get routed through provider
B who doesn't have anybody paying for either end of the connection.  If I
were a provider B customer then I'd at least be paying them something for
those bits.  Topology means that some providers route more traffic for
non-customers than customers.  It would be as if NYT sent all of its long
distance calls via GTE to another NYT customer; GTE wouldn't get paid for
the service.  It would seem that this might be addressed by having monthly
traffic settlements or something.

This is a different issue that end providers screwing their end users.  This
is more a matter of providers owning too much of the stack.  It's why I
support providers being common carriers of bits for all content providers.

There is a separate political issue here which is control of information.
It's obvious that the net is part of a huge propaganda machine now, and
that "bad folks" want to keep people from messing with them.  This is
similar to how ADM and Koch Industries getting seats on the NPR board
has eliminated any good reporting that they don't like.  Like a lot of
things today, sounds like news but isn't.  This is a non-technical issue
that probably doesn't belong on this list but is very very important.

Jon