Guest post from Rep. Zoe Lofgren
May 26th, 2006 by Ben ByrneYesterday, the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 5417, the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006,” which I introduced with Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member John Conyers and Rep. Rick Boucher last week. This is the first bill with real protections for Net Neutrality that has passed any committee in Congress, and I am proud to be a part of it.
The bill requires broadband providers to operate their networks in a non-discriminatory manner and makes sure that the phone and cable companies cannot favor or block access to the Web sites or online services that they pick instead of the consumer. It will keep the Internet an open and free marketplace of ideas and services chosen by consumers instead of big corporations. It will also guard against those who own “the pipes” gleaning profits by creating a virtual toll road.
H.R. 5417 was introduced by a bipartisan coalition from the Judiciary Committee and passed out of the Committee by a vote of 20-13. Fourteen Democrats and six Republicans voted in favor of it, and 13 Republicans voted against it. One Democrat voted present.
The Internet has revolutionized the way Americans communicate with one another and do business. It’s only right to keep that revolution where it belongs — in the hands of Internet users instead of the phone and cable companies.
The next hurdle for Net Neutrality is whether we will have a full vote on the House floor. If you care about the freedom that Net Neutrality protects, contact your Member of Congress and ask that H.R. 5417 be scheduled to come before the full House of Representatives as either a separate bill or an amendment. Urge them to vote for Net Neutrality protection!
May 26th, 2006 at 10:02 am
[…] Next up: The next hurdle for Net Neutrality is whether we will have a full vote on the House floor. If you care about the freedom that Net Neutrality protects, contact your Member of Congress and ask that H.R. 5417 be scheduled to come before the full House of Representatives as either a separate bill or an amendment. […]
May 26th, 2006 at 10:47 am
[…] A battle may have been won, a small victory gained, but the war isn’t over. […]
May 26th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Re: The Original Blog:
Okay, I’m calling bull***t here. Ever heard of NetNanny? How about WebSense? How about any one of a thousand Internet filtering tools, ranging from free to enterprise-class?
Why in the name of Bob Saget would you want an ISP to filter content? That’s like having the water company decide when your lawn needs sprinkling and turning the irrigation system on and off as needed.
Let’s get this straight: the ISPs are in the bit-moving business.
Letting them delve into application- and content-filtering is opening Pandora’s box for a pure, unmitigated disaster.
May 26th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
ISPs have always done packet filtering, Director, how to you think they handle spam and DOS attacks?
(Note to the chickenshit editor who deletes my comments from this blog: get to it, dude, you wouldn’t want to make the overlords at Google unhappy.)
May 27th, 2006 at 4:22 am
Richard, the only comment that was deleted was one in which you compare musician Moby to pedophiles and call the people here who oppose your position “morons.” Among the many things you haven’t read are our “Rules for Commenting.” You violated these.
I’m allowing your “chickenshit” comment because it underscores your whole approach to civil debate. I’m happy to allow others to take apart your arguments — which they have done point by point throughout this blog — as long as we all play nice in the sand box. Read the rules — “dude” — and abide.
Should you decide to continue your ad-hominem attacks against those who don’t share your views, you will be banned from this blog all together. Should you decide to play by these simple rules, you’re a welcome member of the community.
It’s worth noting that your friends at “Hands off the Internet” have added a fake “blog” to their site. What’s the difference between theirs and a real blog? HOTI doesn’t allow the public to comment. No one, not even you, can respond to their postings. Go no further than that should you need evidence of how these people view public participation on the Web.
May 27th, 2006 at 4:31 am
And regarding Google. Again, Richard, you haven’t been reading. Start here and pay special attention to the part that says: “No corporation or political party is funding our efforts.”
What part of ‘no corporate support’ don’t you understand?
In the three months that I have been intensely focused on managing this campaign, I have never met, emailed nor spoken by phone with a person from Google. The more than 750,000 people who have contacted Congress to support Net Neutrality — people you consider “morons” by the way — weren’t prompted to do so by your tin-foil Google conspiracy but out of legitimate concern for keeping Internet content free of corporate gatekeepers.
By repeating this myth ad nauseum, you undermine the credibility of all your arguments — for what they’re worth.
May 27th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Thank you tkarr…
In the hope that this doesn’t violate the commenting rules but rather, makes a valid point about the type of person I’d want to align myself with in any “valid” argument - character assassination is just not a responsible method to collect allies, is it? Consider these;
“Zoe Lofgren is a moron”
“Droolin’ Jim Sensenbrenner fascist bastard Stupid”
“Scruffy Hippies = protestors”
“Craig Newmark big fat lying liar”
“Sir Tim Berners-Lee either an idiot or a fraud”
“Crazy John McCain”
“Ethan Zuckerman neutrino ‘neutrinos are simply uninformed’
“Mrs. Combs promptly went for a dip in the cement pond with the Clampetts and then headed off to Wal*Mart for a case of mayonnaise and some white bread to go with her baloney”
“The San Jose Mercury News - retarded editorial, a bunch of journalism majors regurgitating Google’s lies and helping criminalize network engineering”
“Save the Internet and Don’t Mess with the Internet are peddling baloney”
“the chickenshit editor from this blog”
One thing in your favor Mr. Bennett, you show no prejudice with your remarks. Unfortunately, you’re simply displaying your self-righteousness by calling everyone childish names.
Irregardless - your arguments carry no weight as a result of the immature attacks you spew daily. Belies your obvious intelligence…
May 27th, 2006 at 9:48 am
(Just registered, and I have to say I like the site design. ^^ Anyways.)
I jumped on you guys’ bandwagon back when Kurtz posted about Net Neutrality on PvP. Did some more reading since then, and realized I was missing a fundamental principle. As a result I now find myself opposed to Net Neutrality.
Why? It is very simple. The ISPs own the services they provide, yes? Then it should be their right to decide how their services work, and what you, their customers, can DO with said services. That’s it. You own it, you decide how it works. If we customers don’t LIKE what our ISP decides to do with the service, we take our buisiness elsewhere. That’s what the free market is all about. Now, if there are laws in place that allow ISPs to have monopolies or whatnot (and I don’t know if there are, just saying), I would say we should concentrate on getting THOSE removed, so that it really can be a free market.
To be honest, I’m very worried by the thought of what some of these companies would do. The scenarios you people predict of abuse and whatnot seem rather likely. But I’m not going to let my fear of that rule me and make me forget principles. We, the people, are the ones with the power. You folks MUST understand this or you wouldn’t be doing what you are doing with Save the Internet. But what you are supporting basically says, “We will be helpless before the big ISPs unless the government saves us!”
I don’t buy into that. The internet may be all important nowdays, but it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) control our lives. Furthermore, you sell the human race incredibly short when you suppose that people will not invent a solution if the ISPs abuse their power. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. Humanity can and will find a way… provided it is given the chance. For which it needs a free market, as free as possible from goverment regulation.
Calling on the government for help is like setting a rattlesnake loose in your house to kill off the mice. Sure it will get rid of some, maybe all of the mice. But its damned likely to turn on you too, in the end.
…Assuming rattlesnakes eat mice. Which, y’know, they might. I guess. ^^;
May 27th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Here’s a quote from Tim Wu’s paper in which he coined the term “network neutrality:”
As the universe of applications has grown, the original conception of IP neutrality has dated: for IP was only neutral among data applications. Internet networks tend to favor, as a class, applications insensitive to latency (delay) or jitter (signal distortion). Consider that it doesn’t matter whether an email arrives now or a few milliseconds later. But it certainly matters for applications that want to carry voice or video. In a universe of applications, that includes both latency-sensitive and insensitive applications, it is difficult to regard the IP suite as truly neutral as among all applications.
This point is closely linked to questions of structural separation. The technical reason IP favors data applications is that it lacks any universal mechanism to offer a quality of service (QoS) guarantee. It doesn’t insist that data arrive at any time or place. Instead, IP generally adopts a “best-effort” approach: it says, deliver the packets as fast as you can, which over a typical end-to-end connection may range from a basic 56K connection at the ends, to the precisely timed gigabits of bandwidth available on backbone SONET links. IP doesn’t care: it runs over everything. But as a consequence, it implicitly disfavors applications that do care.
The Save the Internet Coalition is lobbying for a continuation of the Internet’s structural bias against real-time applications. That’s not “net neutrality”, it’s backwardness.
May 27th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
[…] Then visit: Guest post from Rep. Zoe Lofgren […]
May 28th, 2006 at 10:52 am
MelTorefas, if there were real choices for broadband to the home, you’d have a point. Unfortunately, options for high-speed, last-mile fiber to the home are quite limited (must Americans have 0, 1 or 2 choices: telco or cable company). Giving this “duopoly” control of the content transiting their networks is sure to kill the good that laid the golden egg. Amazon, Vonage, eBay, Skype, and countless other services would likely never have come into being had they first needed to negotiate with a telco.
“In the long run there will be only one full-blown fiber optic network in any locale. For all natural monopolies (like electrical utilities, like water service, like fiber) building out two extremely expensive competing sets of infrastructure to serve every home with a cheap commodity simply doubles the cost the community must pay to provide the service.”
I wrote a blog post about this a couple of days ago: “Dissecting “nine” choices for last-mile broadband service in Phoenix“.
May 28th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Richard -
Any you are suggesting that the CEOs of AT&T, Verizon, etc., understand latency, IP networking, and QoS…and that because of their deep understanding of these and how the Internet is structured are pushing this movement so that they can improve real-time applications responsiveness for all Internet users??
In my many years, one thing I have learned is the motives of large corporations are seldom if ever to improve anything other than the bottom line.
May 28th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
ISP’s sell bandwidth and access to bandwidth. ISP’s, by definition, make money by providing internet service. PERIOD!
If the costs of providing bandwidth go up then their prices should go up to allow for profit. If the costs go down; then prices go down. All this is driven by competition. As more ways of providing cheaper bandwidth are developed then prices should go down even more.
If an ISP wants to start an eBay or a Skype or a porn site, let them try! It’s a different business.
The way they’re “selling” this attempt to hijack the internet is downright EVIL in its deceptiveness!!!
Hell, I look forward to a day when basic bandwidth and access to a global internet is considered a basic public utility like water and sewer and roads!!!
BTW As for ebay/paypal, someone needs to come along and do it better and cheaper they’ve gotten way too big for their britches. The same applies to Microsoft, and even Apple. We need MORE competition not less.
The internet hasn’t realized a hundredth of its potential! We have a long way to go. Only stupid short sighted irrational greed can kill this baby.
May 29th, 2006 at 12:34 am
rgiskard, I’m suggesting that the New Network has to supplement the Internet’s default delivery service with a new tier of service that de-jitters packets, and that without this service the Internet will never be able to support the needs of real-time applications, regardless of who supplies them.
As to the CEOs of the phone companies, they haven’t impressed me with their impolitic statements about wanting a share of Google’s advertising revenues and the like. It’s clear that those statements have helped fuel the paranoia that drives the Net Neutrality movement.
But the CEOs of Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo aren’t helping either, because they insist that any new delivery services should be uniquely accessible to them at the same price they pay today for ordinary delivery.
Anybody who’s promoting the fiction that tiered service levels for QoS has something to do with creating a “hierarchy of web sites” should simply be taken out and shot. After a trial, of course.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Richard -
Here is the real issue as I see it.
If corporations are able to splice and section off their pipes from everyone elses (I would presume by some advanced SMS or the like), blocking access to any traffic that isn’t authenticated, the costs to consumers and other corporations skyrockets. Think of all the services you use now, the sites you access, … each site will have to pay a fee to each and every ISP/phone company so people on their network can access their site. A hosting fee will me meaningless without the network fees.
What about consumers? You have cable access at $45.00/mo. But that is just with one provider. To get to the sites that aren’t paying the fee, you will have to pay your ISP another fee to access any other ISP network. So essentially a dilemma will be created between web site owners and consumers. Site owner pays the fee for you, or you pay the fee to your ISP. But there are multiple networks to connect to, how many fees are there? What about international?…ooops, don’t want to open that can of worms.
Either way, the ISP gets additional monies and the net outcome of this will be solely to line the pockets of the pipe owners. Now why would they do this now, at this point in time? Real time applications notwithstanding (get to that in a moment)…the reason is VoIP and new technologies. While only a small percentage of total consumers are using this right now (I’m one!), the ISPs/phone companies have seen the writing on the wall. Their business is eroding and they will do anything to survive. They have apparently lost the Cable/DSL war. Most early adopters of DSL have moved to cable, and that trend continues. Cable has proven superior, DSL prices are dropping to entice subscribers, but that is a survival strategy. Every service they have traditionally offered is being eroded by new and different technologies. Cable providers go along with this because it will further inflate their profits.
Taking this into consideration, I see only their worsening bottom lines as their reasoning for pushing this issue.
Concerning IP. You seem knowledgeable enough, you know the history of TCP/IP. It is an open standard, primarily developed and enhanced in the open community after it “won out” over OSI. Anyhow, the point is it wasn’t controlled or developed by a company. It was an open standard that allowed the Internet to be orderly and so all computers, sites, applications, etc., could ‘talk’ to each other. It is probably the most important single step that was taken that allowed the Internet to be what it is today.
If a new delivery protocol is necessary to enhance the way data is delivered over the Internet, that is best handled by the IETF. There is not a direct relationship with non-net neutrality and real-time application needs. It is all about $$. Plain and simple. Otherwise you are suggesting that AT&T will develop a delivery service that imroves real-time applications. With the advent of AJAX and the like, we see creative developers and system engineers will always find ways to build applications to work within the framework provided. If you think something is needed to improve the latency of the Internet (which I don’t agree it is a hot issue), I place my bet with the IETF, W3C, and the like. Not with Verizon, AT&T, and other companies. Just because they make fancy commercials with Kiefer Sutherland voice-overs, doesn’t make them innovative or capable.
It is a complex issue, and simple analysis is what they expect and want from consumers. While a ‘hierarchy of sites’ is not the root motivation or intent, it is a possibility. If they are allowed to control who gets on their network with fees, than it is a possibility. Period. Take me out and shoot me with the other free thinkers.
R
May 29th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
rgiskard, let’s try and stick to the facts. The new delivery protocol is the same as the old delivery protocol, IP. The enhancements to IP to support real-time were in fact defined by the IETF: DiffServ, MPLS, and SIP. All the phone company wants to do is implement these standard IETF features in order to provide users of VoIP with the kind of service they require, with low jitter.
Charging extra for low-jitter service on the same wire that supports IP with standard service isn’t the end of the world, doesn’t limit anybodies free speech, and won’t automatically send Google into bankruptcy. It’s the natural evolution of the Internet.
You correctly observe that Cable was won the Cable/DSL war. Now consider this: Cable has never been as heavily regulated as DSL. There has never been an “open access” unbundling rule for cable like there has been for DSL. And cable carries TV and phone service side-by-side with standard Internet with no degradation of service for anyone. It simply slides Internet access into the space that would otherwise be used for a couple of TV channels and there you go.
The Telcos want to offer a service that directly competes with Cable, using IETF protocols instead of Cable’s proprietary scheme. Their approach is more open and more standards-based than Cable.
So why are you against it?
May 30th, 2006 at 8:24 am
I am familiar with those, and they are not new. They have been around for years, and are implemented in various places. One need only to refer to Cisco manuals on how to implement them or to their website for reference implementations.
I don’t see the point. These are technologies that are already implemented in the real world. Not theoretical ideas that present a monumental shift or advancement in the Internet that require government regulation so they can be implemented.
If AT&T wants to implement them to optimize their network, then let them go ahead. Nothing is stopping them from doing so.
The fact is, all these companies are already charging everyone fees. We pay our ISP $45.00 per month, and corporations pay much larger fees for their access. So, if they want to implement these, let them go ahead. Why would they not go ahead and implement them simply as a measure to ensure their existing infrastructure is scalable and the most competitive for businesses as it is the most responsive for real time video conferencing, etc.? If their intentions are not restrictive, then why would they fight legislation that says content or applications won’t be restricted or made unavailable.
To date, I have not heard a level headed discussion on this topic. The fact is, unless the Telcos are planning on some level to restrict access, they shouldn’t fight any legislation that simply states content or applications won’t be restricted in terms of QoS. There is nothing wrong with giving VoIP and like applications higher priority, I have done so on my network. But there is difference in giving one app a higher priority, and restricting anothers (or a competitors) to a crawl to the point it is unavailable.
Again, if the Telco’s aren’t planning on doing this, they shouldn’t be fighting any legislation that states all content (as it is now) will be readily available to all on the Internet. They should embrace it.
Why aren’t they embracing it?
May 30th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Here’s what the Lofgren bill actually says:
“If a broadband network provider prioritizes or offers enhanced quality of service to data of a particular type, it must prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of that type (regardless of the origin or ownership of such data) without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhanced quality of service.”
Does that answer your question?
May 30th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Professor Wu’s “network neutrality” vision is one that permits tiering for types or classes of content (used broadly) on a non-discriminatory basis, i.e. the telecoms and cable companies may give priority to IP voice services or video services (which are sensitive to delay and jitter), but they have to provide access to such priority transmission to competing video and/or IP voice service providers without compensation (no QoS fees) so that the telecoms and the cable companies are not permitted to use QoS fees to create a competitive advantage for their own video and/or IP voice services. Can someone (like Richard) explain how the draft legislation does not capture this idea by permitting QoS priority while prohibiting QoS fees? Is the draft legislation too broad? If so, how?
May 30th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Yes, the legislation passed by the Judiciary is way too broad, so broad that it kills QoS for everybody, but you’re misstating Wu’s views.
He doesn’t have a complaint with bundling, and opposes the “open access” school of regulation because he appreciates the close coupling of applications with network services. He’s also not opposed to special fees for QoS.
The technical issue here is that opening the QoS queues for voice and video to any application that wants to use them is an invitation to abuse. What’s to prevent Bit Torrent from marking all its packets for QoS if there’s no fee for it? And what happens to the QoS traffic when the QoS queue in the network is overloaded? And unlike the wide-eyed idealists who designed the Internet in 1980, we know there are bad actors on this network.
QoS needs to discriminate to be effective, and communications apps need QoS. So the real issue is how the network balances the needs of the applications that need a delivery service that’s highly regular against those applications that just want to download a ton of stuff.
QoS is not a threat to anybody’s free speech, quite the contrary it’s the greatest thing since the telephone.
May 31st, 2006 at 9:13 am
A good artice at Wired News about this issue:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71012-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2
Richard - that answers on one level why they are fighting it. But I don’t read that and think it is too extreme that a compromise can’t be reached. Both sides are at polar opposites right now, and each needs to take a step back and assess the whole.
My issue is the corporations are strictly looking at it from the perspective of their bottom line…and when that happens, and if they get their way, we are the losers. I don’t trust them one bit that their solution would be the best for the consumer. In fact, if the resolution were to be slanted drastically to their liking, I fear it would be a very bad thing for the Internet and consumers. Big business has proven time and time again they don’t have the interests of consumers as a priority…I am not about to give them any leeway on this.
On the flip side, as the article points out, the Internet is not a Utopia now. It seem clears it can be improved upon. QoS is just one aspect of that.
Potential Solution:
1. Peer level agreements regulated - exist for all, arbitration required for modification if sides can’t resolve, no downtime allowed
2. QoS for identified data types prioritized
3.a. QoS prioritizations standardized, with higher level of priority optional (i.e., something akin to a VoIP level 2)
3. QoS aggreements voluntary - fee based
4. No QoS agreement, all data at standard prioritizations
5. No blocking of competitive traffic or content, or custom lower non-standard QoS prioritizations
What would be wrong with something like that?
I expect there is a way technically to restrict yor Bit Torrent scenario. Some form of two-factor authentication for routing and QoS. So even if they did mark their packets with VoIP Level 2, since it doesn’t meet the 2nd criteria, it gets the standard QoS prioritization.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:26 am
“MelTorefas, if there were real choices for broadband to the home, you’d have a point.”
That, my good directorblue, is scarcity thinking. If it really does reach the point where there is only one option and we all hate what that option offers, you know what will happen? Someone will invent a way to get around the big ISPs and provide internet service more freely. That’s what happens again and again throughout human history. There is a need, a necesity, and then someone comes up with a way to meet that need. But for that kind of innovation to happen we need a free market. Inviting the government to get in on this is asking for trouble.
‘ISP’s sell bandwidth and access to bandwidth. ISP’s, by definition, make money by providing internet service. PERIOD!”
That’s a good point, Nick. But you’re missing the principle. The ISP OWNS the service they are providing you, and therefore that can change that service in any way they choose. If they want to switch to a tiered service like Cable TV, that is no-one’s choice but their own. If you don’t want to PAY for that new type of service, that is no-one’s choice but YOUR own. But forcing them to provide the service that YOU want wether or not THEY want to provide you with that service is tyranny.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer your vision of a free ‘net where the ISPs continue to allow access to whatever, whenever, wherever. But that IS their choice to make. Not ours, and not the government’s.
May 31st, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Richard, you are right that Professor Wu is opposed to “open access,” that is, a structural separation requirement that the telecoms had to satisfy to provide ISP services (or content) over their wirelines during under the Computer Inquiries regime.
However, he is also opposed to QoS fees. By QoS fees, I mean new fees based on the specific applications or services rather than fees based on bandwidth usage (which are currently charged). Professor Wu supports rules that “ban abusive behavior like tollboothing and outright blocking and degradation.” Hearing on Network Neutrality before House Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. (Apr. 25, 2006) (statement of Professor Wu). Further, he suggested a neutrality principle with Professor Lessig that would prohibit ISPs from filtering specific content except for those who pay a supplemental fee. See Lessig & Wu, Ex Parte Submission in CS Docket No. 02-52 at 15 (Aug. 22, 2003); see also Tim Wu, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, 2 J. Telecomm. & High Tech. L. 141, 149 (2005). To sum up: prioritization based on application type: good; QoS fees: bad.
Richard, for me to understand, you have to elaborate as to why the legislation would kill QoS for everybody. I understand that in theory if th elegislation passed and everyone decided to provide live video from their home computers, that the QoS-dedicated bandwidth would get jammed, and no one would be able to get quality video. But I am not sure that this concern is warranted. There doesn’t seem to be that many video providers. If and when that happens, perhaps we will have enough platform competition (from satellite, etc.) that we can abandon net neutrality legislation altogether.
rgiskard has begun to answer my question by raising the peering issue. The draft legislation is targeted at “last mile” facilities owners, which, without regulation, could filter out, degrade, or charge cost-prohibitively high fees to competitors’ voice and video services (assuming that the FCC has overstated its authority under Title I). But I am curious as to the draft legislation’s potential effect on Tier 1 relationships. I am not sure whether or how the legislation would impact the arrangements among the various Tier 1 players, and any thoughts would be appreciated.
I also have a few questions about rgiskard’s proposal. Are you suggesting mandating and regulating QoS? For QoS to work well, QoS provisions probably would have to be in the peering agreements, but couldn’t that be worked out without regulation? The ISPs are interested in providing their own content with QoS assurances, and to do so under the draft legislation, they would need to work out QoS arrangements with other Tier 1 providers.
Further, rgiskard suggests voluntary, fee-based QoS agreements. Are those arrangements between (1) ISPs and unaffiliated content providers or (2) among ISPs? If the former, is that only for companies who want priority higher than the government’s standard prioritization for that particular type of content?
The downtime problem in peering relationships is significant, but I would like to defer that discussion for right now and focus on network neutrality.
May 31st, 2006 at 4:22 pm
ChadB, you continue to misstate Prof. Wu’s views. His paper doesn’t come down on QoS fees as you claim, he’s only opposed to discrimination between applications in the same class: “Selling different tiers of service (low, medium, and high bandwidth) does not favor or discriminate against particular application types. In the presence of a means for differentiating among customers in a way that does not distort the process of competitive innovation, we should view discrimination on the basis of application with suspicion.”
This is a very important distinction that goes to the heart of the Save The Internet Coalition’s misunderstanding of network neutrality. There is nothing sacred about bandwidth that should make it the only allowable differentiator for service tiering purposes. It’s simply one of three dimensions of network performance that are crucial to this debate; the other two are latency and jitter.
You say: “The draft legislation is targeted at “last mile” facilities owners, which, without regulation, could filter out, degrade, or charge cost-prohibitively high fees to competitors’ voice and video services (assuming that the FCC has overstated its authority under Title I).”
In the first place, what is this “draft legislation” nonsense? A bill has passed the House Judiciary, and that puts it beyond “draft” stage. In the second place, the plain language of that bill is such that it’s not limited to the “last mile” in residential access, it apples to ALL broadband links, even those run today by NSPs that supply QoS for a fee. It’s a radical change in the way the Internet is regulated, completely unprecedented in its scope and its destructive effects. Business Internet users can buy QoS today, and many do; under this law, that would be prohibited and companies like Global Crossing and WebEx would be out of business. The authors of this bill didn’t practice essential principles of statutory construction and went for an overly broad approach that criminalizes vast swathes of the Internet of today.
Now on the final point, QoS depends on strict traffic limits in the low-latency class, and these are enforced on real networks by adjusting priority when the user over-uses his subscription. The Judiciary bill prohibits this practice and therefore makes QoS illegal, even free QoS.
This poorly-constructed mess of a bill illustrates the danger of trying to regulate a complex system that the would-be regulator doesn’t understand, and it would be a total disaster to the Internet if it were to become law.
You say you want a neutral Internet? Fine, and dandy, so do I. But how can you support Lofgren’s bill when it doesn’t go in that direction at all?
May 31st, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Richard, you are right in that Professor Wu is concerned about discrimination among applications in the same class (or “type,” as the legislation says). But prohibiting this type of discrimination would preclude QoS fees, as I defined them above, based on specific applications. I am not talking about tiering service by bandwidth, which you correctly point out Professor Wu thinks is fine. The legislation also permits this. H.R. 5417 Section 3, part (b). On page 171 (wrong pinpoint citation above) of Professor Wu’s article, he talks about a “supplemental fee” for specific applications that his vision of net neutrality would preclude–it’s that application-specific QoS fee I’m talking about. I think we have had a simple semantics problem.
However, you have also touched on another of my concerns about the bill: commercial access. Like I said, the legislation is targeted at “last mile” residential access (based on the congressional hearings), but, as you argue and I hinted at, its language might be too broad. Can you explain how “Business Internet users can buy QoS today” and how the legislation would prevent them from continuing to do so? A word of caution: The answer might involve interpreting the word “public” as it is used in the definition of “broadband service provider.”
You also suggest that the legislation would preclude an ISP from cutting off a user when the user exceeds his subscription for low-latency applications. Could you explain that? Citations to the text would help.
BTW “legislation” is an ambiguous word that can refer to either a bill or enacted law. (Look it up.) I used “draft” to make clear that the bill is still subject to revision and has not been enacted.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Once again, ChadB, the Lofgren bill says: “If a broadband network provider prioritizes or offers enhanced quality of service to data of a particular type, it must prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of that type (regardless of the origin or ownership of such data) without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhanced quality of service.”
It’s not specific as to what market the “broadband network provider” serves, is it?
This provision is the most massive over-reach in the name of antitrust in the history of the United States, dude. It doesn’t just say that you can’t charge some applications for a given QoS level and not others - Wu’s issue - it says you can’t charge anybody for QoS anywhere at anytime.
Total baloney.
Do you not know that business Internet users can buy service from a number of NSPs with jitter guarantees today? I’ve listed some of them already, so go re-read my comments. It’s boring to answer the same question over and over just to have you say you don’t understand.
May 31st, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Richard, the question is whether Global Crossing is a “broadband network provider” as that term is defined by the bill. The bill limits “broadband network provider” to those that “provide broadband network service to the public.” I am not sure that Global Crossing offers its services to “the public.” Global Crossing’s business seems to be limited to providing services for businesses, not everyday people. Nevertheless, perhaps the language could be clearer if it is making this distinction. That said, if we assume that “the public” does not include businesses, the bill’s language might inadvertantly prohibit ISPs or NSPs that provide services to both the public and businesses from providing QoS to businesses for a fee. That might be a drafting problem, or it might result in the (perhaps) unintended consequence of creating “public-only” ISPs and “business-only” NSPs, but I do not think that was your complaint.
If the bill is not making a distinction with the term “public,” I think it is important to understand its affect on NSPs currently providing QoS fees to businesses. As you pointed out, the NSPs would have to stop charging for QoS, but what does that mean? Do NSPs stop providing enhanced QoS? Do they simply adjust their pricing schedule? What happens? (This is an earnest question. I do not know the answer, so please be patient with me.)
As for Professor Wu’s vision of net neutrality: He argues in favor of a nondiscrimination principle that would preclude the ISPs from using their market power in wireline ownership to give them an advantage over competitors in the Internet content/applications/services markets. One way for ISPs to discriminate is to charge QoS fees to their competitiors, which could squeeze out most or even all of them, because their competitors would face higher costs. The ISPs would not have to pay QoS fees (who would they pay QoS fees to?), while their competitors would. Professor Wu has argued in favor of QoS tiering, a practice which could make more efficient use of available bandwidth. However, I have not read where he has endorsed QoS fees. If you think Professor Wu is in favor of QoS fees, it is your burden to reconcile QoS fees with the nondiscrimination principle for which he has advocated.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:36 am
Pitting QoS tiering against QoS fees for tiering is making a distinction without a difference. QoS isn’t operational unless access to QoS queues is limited. So a law that says: “you have to give QoS away for free to every packet that wants it” says you can’t really do QoS. It’s like saying you can have a private club, but only if you admit anybody who wants in and don’t charge a fee. It’s completely hypocritical and totally absurd from an engineering point of view.
Lightweight QoS of the DiffServ variety is an exercise in separating packets that have an actual need for low-jitter delivery from those that don’t have such a need. To put it in terms you might understand better, it’s like Affirmative Action. Some people come from the sorts of background where they need a little help. Others are fat, privileged, white, male, and heterosexual and obviously deserve no help.
Voice packets are like underprivileged black lesbian welfare mothers with disabilities. They’re smaller than bulk download packets, but they have to be delivered quickly or they wilt in the Summer heat. They can never be duplicated, because they’re very special. Download packets, on the other hand, are big and easily replaceable. They don’t care if they have to wait in the lobby for a while because they’re basically lazy and if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Mostly, they’re just patches for Windows security bugs anyway, and it doesn’t matter if you install them today or tomorrow.
That’s what QoS is about.
Wu argues against blanket rules on what the carriers can and can’t do, such as the open access rule. This rule — common carrier treatment of DSL — simply stifled investment in the last mile. Cable was less regulated and it’s a better network. Wu says these issues are so complex that they have to be carefully scrutinized. We may know enough about the 21st Century Internet at some point to draft broad rules, but we certainly don’t today, when all we have to go on is rumor, panic, and hysteria.
I hope this helps you see some of the more egregious drafting errors in your bill, most of which are actually conceptual errors in grasping the requirements of the 21st Century Internet.
June 2nd, 2006 at 5:08 am
Again, how would you propose stopping network operators from discriminating against content? And don’t give me that “let the free market decide” argument. The duopoly controlled marketplace is anything but “free.”
Or are you for discrimination?
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:05 am
You ask this on the next post, and here’s how I answer:
I’m for rational discrimination, such as the discrimination against spam, DOS attacks, worms, viruses, and fattest-pipe abusers. “Discrimination” isn’t a dirty word in network engineering, it’s the essence of what we do.
The Internet Protocol has a field in each packet called the “type discriminator” that’s used to specify the payload, with values like TCP, UDP, BootP, and ICMP. Are you against “type discrimination?”
The sensible approach to regulation, in this sphere or in others, is to draft broad principles, set up an enforcement regime, and let case law evolve. The FCC currently has the “Four Freedoms” which were drafted in response to the Madison River case, the only documented case of arbitrary service blocking in the USA. These principles are part of the COPE Act, which also gives the FCC the authority to levy fines up to $500,000 per infraction. The Stevens Senate bill directs the FCC to do a study of provider abuses and report back.
Once we see some actual abuse that isn’t covered by these provisions, Congress will still be in the business of drafting laws and we’ll be able to go ask for whatever approach is necessary to solve the real problems. What you people are proposing is pre-emptive legislation that will most likely do to the Internet what Bush’s pre-emptive war did to Iraq.
I appreciate your sentiments, and firmly believe that you have good intentions. But I’ve worked with legislative bodies before and have seen the unintended consequences that can flow from legislation that’s guided by too much emotion and not enough information.
There’s no immediate crisis here so the best thing course of action is to simply gather information. We all want a “neutral” network that enables innovation to flourish, and the fact that we’ve never really had one shouldn’t discourage us.
Networks are technical artifacts that improve with time, and even the Internet is not so perfect that we should freeze it.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Dave…
Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future…
November 11th, 2007 at 5:22 am
real home based internet business…
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