[IP] Re: a wise word from a long time network person -- Merccurynews report on Stanford hearing

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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From: Jean Camp [ljeanc@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:01 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   a wise word from a long time network person

From: Tony Lauck [tlauck@madriver.com<mailto:tlauck@madriver.com>]

While many aspects of network performance have become engineering
issues, there are still others that are more properly research issues.
Because of the complexity of this area, in my opinion the FCC would be
ill advised to promulgate regulations that affect congestion management.
On the other hand, I would have no problem with the FTC enforcing
transparent customer agreements.

Reality check::
Please be aware that you are supporting a radical change here, one that would result in a very highly filtered network with the only constraint being your individual ability to forcefully negotiate with Comcast. The position you have here support forged resets.

The _entire_ _point_ of net neutrality is that carriers have an expectation to perform. That it, the phone company is governed as a common carrier and NOT under contract law. If the carriers are governed under contract law their requirements for performance plummet to whatever contract a monopoly can get a customer to sign.

So if you support contract rights as the governing mechanism, then you are supporting arbitrary "traffic management" by carriers. If you support common carriage, which essentially recognizes the unique power of a transport network and thus requires their best effort, then you do NOT support governance by contract law.



L. Jean Camp
http://www.ljean.com
Net Trust
http://code.google.com/p/nettrust/
Economics of Security
http://www.infosecon.net/



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