Brad Ideas - Remaining neutral on network neutrality -- it's the monopoly, stupid - Comments

He's backpedaled

brad — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:21:15 -0700

But I doubt it was the transit pipes because Google doesn't use those for free, as far as I know, nor does anybody else. Some large ISPs have no-accounting peering but they pay for their own transit to the peering points. Google, it is reported, buys a lot of long haul pipes, more than many ISPs.

Free peering has always been a controversial issue. Large ISPs peer with one another for free, smaller ISPs pay to do this, though in theory only paying for transit. But what makes an ISP an ISP? Can't Google or YouTube argue they are an ISP (with very popular data) with one giant customer, bigger than the combined customers of many medium sized ISPs.

Who is the traffic for? When I search Google, it's for me. When they present me ads, it's for them. The internet decided on the "I pay for my half, you pay for yours" rather than trying to figure out who the traffic was for, and having "toll paid" traffic and "800 number target paid" traffic like the phone system or the X.25 networks. Who won?

a minor correction

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:01:58 -0700

not that i support whitacre, but when he spoke of google using "his" pipes,
he was, i think, referring to transit traffic, not last mile traffic (which customers
have rented).

Thanks

Yonemoto — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:07:02 -0700

Thanks for a well thought out commentary on the issue -- that's been very lacking. I never thought about how proponents of "keeping the internet free and accessible to all" will likely wind up causing usage-based fees, which will make the 'net more restrictive. I may just have to change my stance on net neutrality.

In any case, why not just allow ISPs to do whatever, just require them to disclose their bandwidth rules free of charge to anyone who requests it?

I don't doubt the temptation

brad — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:38:14 -0700

I understand the motives of those promoting network neutrality as law, and sympathsize with them, and understand the temptation.

But it’s not correct to say that even the laws you cite are not making legal requirements about architecture. Saying you can not do something with your architecture is still legislating architecture. Saying that you can’t charge for something is still legislating architecture. Just because I believe that the flat rate open net is the best architecture doesn’t mean this is the only valid opinion or the only valid way to design, and bill for, a network.

That bill also does exactly what I don’t advise. It regulates “broadband providers” with a definition that’s quite broad (200kbps in one direction) and would thus include satellite, cellular and just about anything else that’s not a dial-up modem. There is no problem here except from franchised broadband providers that have been granted some sort of monopoly. That means MSOs, ILECs and to some extent the new WISPs that have been granted monopoly rights to poles. (It might also include use of licenced spectrum.) We would not want to affect anybody else.

And I don’t think you or others want to affect the small upstart ISPs. I presume it was felt that if you singled out the monopoly ISPs they would complain this was unfair. Either way they will certainly work to amend any bill to make sure it provides regulatory legwork for small competitors. That’s what they do. It’s what they always do. And members of congress don’t seem to understand how much paperwork and permission equal asphixiation.

It is also important to understand that the network of an ISP is not the internet. The internet, by definition, is the network of networks, tied together because they all use IP and can route amongst themselves. You can regulate how private networks interconnect to form internets, but it’s much harder to do it for the private networks at the end, but that’s the likely place they will want to interfere with network neutrality if you could stop them at the interconnect.

While we’ve been concentrating on this legislation, they seemingly snuck past us something far more damning to the internet than network non-neutrality is ever likely to be — the USF. A fat tax on small players, VoIP companies and ISPs, paid to the big telcos, along with a bureaucracy which will involve ISPs having to register, report revenues and pay fat fees.

We want to keep it hands off as much as we can. Which alas, does not mean “hands off except on the things we want.”

I respectfully disagree

Bill Herman — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:06:03 -0700

Mr. Templeton,

Your post was invoked by Tim Lee in a post defending the wait-and-see approach to net neutrality. I respond to Lee, Felten, and you, though I suspect you and I are probably closer on this issue than are Lee and I.

In any case, my extended blog post is here.

Remaining neutral on network neutrality -- it's the monopoly, stupid

brad — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:35:23 -0700

People ask me about the EFF endorsing some of the network neutrality laws proposed in congress. I, and the EFF are big supporters of an open, neutral end-to-end network design. It’s the right way to build the internet, and has given us much of what we have. So why haven’t I endorsed coding it into law?

If you’ve followed closely, you’ve seen very different opinions from EFF board members. Dave Farber has been one of the biggest (non-business) opponents of the laws. Larry Lessig has been a major supporter. Both smart men with a good understanding of the issues.

I haven’t supported the laws personally because I’m very wary of encoding rules of internet operation into law. Just about every other time we’ve seen this attempted, it’s ended badly. And that’s even without considering the telephone companies’ tremendous experience and success in lobbying and manipulation of the law. They’re much, much better at it than any of the other players involved, and their track record is to win. Not every time, but most of it. Remember the past neutrality rules that forced them to resell their copper to CLECs so their could be competition in the DSL space? That ended well, didn’t it?

Read on…