IP: re: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers!

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>From: Joe McGuckin <joe@via.net>
>Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 13:39:00 -0700 (PDT)
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>Subject: Re: IP: Cisco offering cable+content cartel discriminatory routers!
>X-Mailer: Ishmail 1.3.1-970608-bsdi <http://www.ishmail.com>
>
> >This isn't paranoic rants without substance.  It is hard evidence of
> >PLANNING and INTENT to discriminate against unfavored (competing?) content
> >providers and users by cable+content cartels such as AOL-TimeWarner and
> >AT&T-MediaOne.
>
>I disagree with Jim Warren's previous message. I think that that James 
>Love & Co.
>are wrongly attributing sinister intent to QOS (quality of service) 
>features that will be appearing
>in nearly all router products in the near future.
>
>The topic of usage or QOS based pricing as applied to internet services is 
>not a new or
>even controversial topic of discussion in the internet networking 
>community. As inexpensive
>high speed internet connections to the home become widely available, some 
>traffic engineering
>mechanism will be needed to apply reasonable limits to different types of 
>network traffic
>to ensure that the network doesn't become oversaturated and suffer 
>complete failure when
>a minority of users attempt to monopolize the available bandwidth. A 
>relevent example would be
>todays MP3 downloading frenzy caused by the emminent shutdown of Napster.
>
>While backbone networks will eventually utilize QOS capabilities, the low 
>cost broadband
>companies (DSL and cable modem for example) require those features now. 
>The economics of offering
>low cost broadband services dictate that the bandwidth has to be oversold 
>- you can't offer 10Mbits/sec
>for $29/month and make a profit if the customer is actually using 
>10Mbits/sec continually.
>The service is meant to give an 'average' user fast response to services 
>like ftp, www,
>telnet and email. The consequence of too many end-users using  the full 
>bandwidth of
>their connection for protracted periods of time is the total failure of 
>the network. So, some
>sort of controls have to be in place. Until now, the tools network 
>operators had at their
>disposal to control bandwidth usage of end-users were rather crude. 
>Turning down everyone's
>DSL speed 15% or using CAR to limit aggregate real-media flows to some 
>fixed value are typical
>examples. The QOS features mentioned in Jim Warren's previous message 
>would provide network
>operators with fine grained controls that can be applied to each type of 
>traffic or even individual
>end-users.
>
>
>It's a very long-winded way of saying: QOS features are not a plot by guys 
>in black helicopters -
>they are designed to allow PacBell, @Home, Time-Warner, etc to offer 
>internet services with
>predictable levels of quality even during times of severe network overload.
>
>Could they be used by a network operator to discriminate against a 
>competitor? Sure, but, so can the
>current filtering and bandwidth limiting features that are present in 
>Cisco equipment. There's nothing
>new about this.
>
>Joe
>
>
>
>--
>
>Joe McGuckin
>
>ViaNet Communications
>994 San Antonio Road
>Palo Alto, CA  94303
>
>Phone: 650-969-2203
>Cell:  650-207-0372
>Fax:   650-969-2124