Month: June 2006

Phoenix Center president Lawrence Spiwak has a good and concise column on Internet regulation and competition up on CNet:

When it comes to updating our telecom laws, we have taken our proverbial eyes off the prize.

We should be focusing on franchise reform, which would remove (in the Federal Communication Commission’s own words) the “most important policy-relevant barrier to entry” for video and broadband competition and finally get the “twin titans” of the cable companies and the phone companies to duke it out.

Instead, we’re becoming sidetracked by a hasty push for stringent legislation to remedy the undefined concept of Net neutrality, without careful analysis of the possible consequences.

I think neutrality regulations are unlikely to pass because they’re too hysterical even for Washington. But if they do, there will be no alternative to cable Internet access but wireless.

H/T Kung Fu Quip.

Tech journalist Jason Miller is all upset about efforts to build better broadband. He thinks a new service offering by Shaw Cable in Canada is proof that Net Neutrality regulations are necessary. Here’s the Shaw announcement on Quality of Service:

Shaw is now able to offer its High Speed Internet customers the opportunity to improve the quality of Internet telephony services offered by third party providers. For an additional $10 per month Shaw will provide a quality of service (QoS) feature that will enhance these services when used over the Shaw High Speed Internet network. Without this service customers may encounter quality of service issues with their voice over Internet service.

Is this the End of the Internet as We Know It? Not really, it’s exactly the sort of thing that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee says is legitimate:

We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio.

So who are going to believe, a journalist with an ax to grind or the Father of the Web? Dude, that’s not even a close call.

Miller also claims, falsely, that Shaw offers its own VoIP. Actually, they offer the same kind of triple-play that American cable franchises offer, and it’s nothing to do with IP.

UPDATE: Go see Save the Internet try and spin this story to their advantage. It’s not enough that they were caught lying about Craig’s List, now they want to make the feeble-minded believe a legitimate service upgrade is going to kill the Internet.

Craig Newmark, the fellow who co-owns (along with eBay) Craig’s List, posted an entry on his blog saying Authentium won’t talk to him about the problem his web site had with Authentium’s firewall. Here’s the Authentium response

Re Craig’s post today, in which he says – “I wanted to give the Authentium folks to today to respond; that didn’t happen, and I guess we’ve waited long enough.”

This isn’t accurate. Three business days ago (i.e. last week), Ray Dickenson, our head of products, initiated a phone call to Craig – at his offices – and spoke with Craig directly. During that call, Ray shared with Craig the following information:

1. The technical issue caused by the conflict between Craigslist servers and the Authentium firewall is fully resolved, and was resolved back in March. The beta fix was made available to all customers at that time. It was made available through their support organizations to every subscriber requesting it. This is normal procedure for our beta software releases.

2. In terms of our responsiveness, Authentium reacted immediately upon hearing about the issue by calling Craig. Upon understanding the issue, we acted immediately to resolve it. We posted a fix within days of its emergence in February. The fix has been available ever since.

3. Regarding release dates, this fix involved rewriting of a core system-level component. Our process for releasing these kind of components is very strict – the final version enters GA only after the completion of several cycles of QA testing on the next full version release of our security suite, and beta release testing. This practice is followed by most, if not all, system-level software developers.

As I’ve said before in other posts, we have no ax to grind here – this isn’t a story about net neutrality – it is basically a story about different approaches to handling data.

For more on the technical details of this, please browse to the Craigslist link at www.authentium.com/support/ or contact your Authentium service provider partner support center.

Thank you,

John Sharp
Founder & CEO
Authentium

Once again, Craig Newmark has been caught lying without a clue.

Here’s Dave Utter’s account of the story, and here’s Authentiums’s customer advisory.

Authentium and Cox should sue Craig Newmark for libel and slander.

My prior story is here.

For more info, see George Ou’s dissection of the Craig’s List misconfiguration, Matt Sherman, and James Lippard.

UPDATE: See Jim Lippard’s wrap-up, and TLF’s belated commentary.

FINAL UPDATE: Craig has issued a retraction. Apparently he didn’t know that his people were talking to Authentium all along. I know that’s hard to believe, but his company is a weird little enterprise.

Neutrality ain’t exactly what you may think it is, you see:

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation allowing Internet Service Providers to do traffic shaping, giving some priority to certain types of content, which would presumably be either the ISPs’ own content or that of ISP customers paying a premium for such access. The U.S. Senate is considering similar legislation, as well as other legislation designed to do exactly the opposite — guarantee that all data packets receive equal service. The prevailing assumption, by the way, is that right now all packets ARE created equal, which of course they are not.

Some pretty good detail on how the Internet actually works follows, but he gets all conspiracy-freakish at the end.

IPTV and VoIP are two examples of applications that need priority service, and there’s also that whole issue of payment. Read a lot, you’ll get a little here and a little there that sheds light on the issue, and you’ll pay for your illumination with propaganda.

In a Wall St. Journal (subscription required) Op-Ed, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden makes several outlandish and false claims:

Mr. Forbes claims there is no evidence of discrimination by Internet providers. This is simply not true. Cox Communications, a broadband provider that also has a large classified advertising business, is currently blocking access to craigslist.org, a large, free classified Web site that competes with Cox. In another instance, Madison River, a broadband provider and phone company, blocked access of its Internet customers to Vonage, a competitor in providing phone services. Luckily, because net neutrality rules were in place when Madison River blocked Vonage, the FCC was able to act in ending Madison River’s discriminatory practices. Unfortunately, today those same net neutrality provisions are no longer in effect, and the FCC would no longer be able to protect Vonage from discrimination.

We’ve examined the Cox Cable myth, and found it totally lacking in substance so we won’t repeat that rebuttal here; scroll down.

The rules that enabled the FCC to act in the Madison River case were actually strengthened in the COPE Act, which gave agency the power to fine offenders up to $500,000.

Wyden then goes on to tout the success of the highly-regulated DSL system, but fails to mention that it lags far behind the less-regulated Cable broadband system in the USA:

To the contrary, policies that spurred competition, including forcing incumbents to provide network access to competitors, are exactly what drove the rapid broadband deployment in South Korea and Japan. Over the past 10 years, while South Korea and Japan were opening up their incumbent’s networks to spur competition, here at home the Baby Bells spent millions of dollars and filed numerous actions at the FCC to prevent competition.

Korea and Japan don’t tell us a thing about investment in US broadband, we’ve done the experiment and can see the results.

Wyden closes with the following colossal load of crap:

Mr. Forbes also makes a poor analogy that many opponents of net neutrality have used comparing the Internet to the Postal Service and mail delivery. This analogy is wrong. Net neutrality protections are not analogous to the post office charging consumers different rates for regular mail and overnight delivery. Rather, net neutrality would protect the person who pays for overnight delivery from having it take five days for his package to be delivered because the person receiving it did not pay for receiving overnight delivery as well. Internet providers want to prevent consumers who pay for priority delivery of data from receiving the data unless Web sites also pay for priority delivery. Net neutrality protections would prevent them from doing so.

Wyden’s regulation prevents broadband carriers from charging anyone for expedited delivery. There is no language in it about “double-charging”. The issue on the table is whether service providers have the option of paying for expedited delivery to customers who did not pay for it themselves.

Any movement that relies on misrepresentation, deception, and falsehood to make its case probably doesn’t have a good set of facts on its side.

H/T Matt Sherman.

This seems like a reasonable trade:

Stevens has added a new section to his proposed bill aimed at preserving consumers’ ability to surf anywhere on the public Internet and use any Web-based application, according to the latest draft obtained by Reuters this weekend.

However, the draft by the Alaska Republican does not include a ban on pricing content companies have demanded.

Earlier versions of the bill only called for the Federal Communications Commission to report on Internet access, prompting Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, the top Democrat on the committee, and some others to call for more protections.

Screaming neuts aren’t going to like it, however; anything but Internet-as-telegraph offends them.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Cox Cable is blocking Craig’s List; the Net Neutrality militias tout this as an example of the kind of discriminatory behavior they’re going to protect us from. Their leader, the self-described know-nothing Matt Stoller says:

There’s a pervasive myth that there has been no discrimination on the internet against content companies. That is simply untrue. For one, Craigslist has been blocked for three months from Cox customers because of security software malfunctions.

Back on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn’t fixed the problem, more than three months later. That’s a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist. And this company also supplies security software to other large ISPs.

Without net neutrality protections, cable and telecom companies will have no incentive to fix these kinds of problems. Already, it’s quite difficult to even know that this is happening because they are quite easy to disguise.

The telcos are of course lying about this, claiming that no web sites have been blocked. And gullible reporters are falling for the lies.

But the real story is that Craig Newmark’s administrators don’t know how to set up their system. Here’s a comment I found on Save the Internet that will probably be deleted pretty soon:

Has anyone here actually read the response from Authentium? Far from “opaque,” it pretty clearly (if technically) explains the problem and why this has nothing to do with blacklists:

“The network packets coming from the Craigslist.org web site were unusual in that they contained a zero-length TCP window that usually indicates a server is too busy to handle more data. The Authentium firewall driver responded by sending data only one byte at a time. This slowed down the web request and made the Craigslist.org web page load very slowly or not at all.”

From RFC 793 (which defines TCP/IP):

” Flow Control:

TCP provides a means for the receiver to govern the amount of data sent by the sender. This is achieved by returning a “window” with every ACK indicating a range of acceptable sequence numbers beyond the last segment successfully received. The window indicates an allowed number of octets that the sender may transmit before receiving further permission.”

Returning a 0 means “please talk to me very slowly.” Literally it means “don’t talk to me at all” but because that’s nonsense, sites generally interpret it as “I’m overloaded; slow down.”

I’ve verified this response myself by connecting to craigslist:

15:52:00.751836 IP www.craigslist.org.http > lemming.ranjan.org.47734: S 1639327951:1639327951(0) ack 3799817961 win 0

Note the final “win 0? that confirms exactly the problem that Authentium claims.

Summary: craigslist told Cox to please speak to it very slowly. Cox did, but for longer than craigslist explicitly requested. Fixing this for craigslist could break other sites, so some caution in shipping a fix is justified.

The fact that SaveTheInternet posted this as an “opaque” response without further comment raises a question of how much STI actually knows about how the Internet works.

Somebody’s lying here, and it’s not Cox Cable or Authentium.

PS: I did my own inspection of Craig’s List’s TCP packets and found the same thing: their initial ACK advertises a Window Size of 0. By comparison, my blog advertises one of 5792, and so does Technorati.

Craig Newmark’s site is screwed up and he’s blaming Cox for it – and seeking a new law. That’s taking Internet retardation to a whole new level.

UPDATE: See Jim Lippard’s blog for a fuller explanation.

UPDATE 2: George Ou at ZDNet is on the case. This story originated with Tom Foremski at ZDNet, and getting him to issue a correction is very important.

UPDATE 3: It’s worth noting that Matt Stoller blogs on myDD.com, half of the Kosola pay-to-blog scandal. Read more about that here or here. Some people will say anything for money. Net neutrality advocate Glenn Reynolds says blogs are a “low trust environment.” He doesn’t speak for this one.

UPDATE 4: Welcome Instapundit readers. Tom Foremski and Save the Internet refuse to own up to misrepresentation of the story.

Here are the facts:

1. Craig’s List isn’t blacklisted by Cox Cable and never has been.
2. Craig’s List puts out an improper TCP window size; other sites don’t.
3. Improper TCP causes some personal firewalls grief, and Cox used to distribute one, from Authentium.
4. As soon as the Craig’s List bug came to Authentium’s attention they created a patch, which you can get from Cox today. This patch probably ignores the initial window size Craig requests.
5. Craig’s List still puts out an improper TCP window size.

So how about a little honesty, Craig, Matt, Tim, and Tom?

UPDATE 5: Craig Newmark still refuses to acknowledge his bug. All he has to do is correct his TCP settings and the whole problem goes away. Why won’t he?

UPDATE 6: Go look at the system status page at Craig’s List and you’ll see some interesting problems with all sorts of other firewalls, including their own. And you’ll also see that their problem with the personal firewall Cox Cable gives away has had a known workabound since Feb. 23th. Why all the misdirection from Craig, Save the Internet, and Matt Stoller?

Incidentally, eBay is a minority shareholder in Craig’s List, and the sole owner of Skype. Is Craig doing his master’s bidding?

UPDATE 7: Authentium responds to Craig’s lying post. Their story is verifiable, Craig’s is fabricated.

Andy Kessler, that tricky devil, has an essay on net neutrality in the Weekly Standard where he paints both sides as the bastards they are:

IN THE LONG RUN, technology doesn’t sleep. You can’t keep competitive King Kong in chains. But why wait a decade while lobbyists run interference? If Congress does nothing, we will probably end up paying more for a fast network optimized for Internet phone calls and video and shopping. But this may not be the only possible outcome. Maybe the incumbent network providers–the Verizons, Comcasts, AT&Ts–can be made to compete; threatening to seize their stagnating networks via eminent domain is just one creative idea to get them to do this. A truly competitive, non-neutral network could work, but only if we know its real economic value. If telcos or cable charge too much, someone should be in a position to steal the customer. Maybe then we’d see useful services and a better Internet. Sounds like capitalism.

What new things? It’s not just more bandwidth and better Internet video–how about no more phone numbers, just a name and the service finds you? How about subscribing to a channel and being able to watch it when and where you want, on your TV, iPod, or laptop? How about a baby monitor you can view through your cell phone? Something worth paying for. And that’s just the easy stuff.

We don’t even know what new things are possible. Bandwidth is like putty in the hands of entrepreneurs–new regulations are cement. We don’t want a town square or a dilapidated mall–we want a vibrant metropolis. Net neutrality is already the boring old status quo. But don’t give in to the cable/telco status quo either. Far better to have competition, as long as it’s real, than let Congress shape the coming communications chaos and creativity.

He has some interesting alternatives to the bankrupt regulations coming from the content side.

H/t: Red Bank TV.

Commenting on a tete a tete between Tom Evslin and yours truly, Doc makes a a very astute point:

Tom Evslin nails a number of problems with Net Neutrality, while not sparing the carriers, either. Be sure to read the comments, too. They start with one from Richard Bennett. In this post on his own blog Richard points to this Wharton report, which for the most part I agree with.
The key point is Tom’s. What we need is competition.

Indeed we do need more competition, and we’ll get it from Cable going head-to-head with with DSL and fiber-to-the-home, with WiMax and WiFi in the background. And on that note, the Wireless Communications Association has come out in opposition to the regulations.