Author: RB

Protocol Wars have raged in the network design community since the 1970s, or as long as we’ve had packets to switch. In many ways, the current debate over Internet regulation (AKA “net neutrality”) recaps those debates, albeit in a much more foolish way as the loudest voices are the most ignorant. Dana Blankenhorn spills the beans on the article of faith that motivates the regulators:

The idea of absolute top-down control in any area — entertainment, business, technology, politics — is simply non-optimal. Technology has enabled us all to be participants, in any way we wish to be, as well as audience.

That’s heavy, isn’t it? And true! Or not.

“Absolute top-down control” sounds like a really horrible thing, but so does “absolute bottom-up chaos”, because the two most hysterical terms are the first and last. Strip them off and you simply have “top-down”, a pretty respectable concept in many settings. Functional families are managed top-down, and so are businesses, nations, all social groups of animals, etc. So what’s the problem?

Top-down systems are quite often the optimal solution to engineering problems, as they eliminate from the get-go the fundamental problem with edge-managed or bottom-up systems: flapping. If you have four selfish people in a taxi, each of whom wants to get to a different place as quickly as possible, and they can all bark orders at the driver, you may never get anywhere, you’ll simply go around in circles until you run out of gas. All complex systems revolve around compromise, and the top-down control system is in a good position to assess general benefit and ensure that it’s allocated appropriately. It doesn’t scale well, and that’s where modularity and segmentation kick in.

The classic example in networking is the Ethernet. As originally conceived, it was a completely decentralized system, where all decisions about who got to transmit when were made by contention. Each system listened to the wire until it was silent, and then started transmitting. If two systems transmitted at once, they both noticed the collision of their packets and backed-off. After a semi-random delay, they tried again. Eventually everybody got to transmit, but the delays could be substantial. So along comes the Ethernet re-design, where the decision about who gets to transmit is moved up a level, to the switch. Everybody can transmit anytime the switch says they can, and the switch allows several systems to submit packets at the same time, which it sorts out as bandwidth becomes available. Switched Ethernet is centralized, and capable of using 100% of network bandwidth without losing a millisecond to collisions, backoffs, and dead time. It’s the optimal system, and that’s why you use it today.

In this as in many instances, absolute top-control is more optimal than absolute bottom-up chaos. And better than both is moderate top-down management, driven by a policy of the greatest good for the greatest number, or some similar rule.

As an example of engineering fact, it could well be that the best design for a network that permits all people to be performers is for the network’s tubes to be controlled top-down in the interest of fair access. Some at the edges are spammers, virus-makers, and other low-lifes. Can we always count on them to police their own behavior? I don’t think so, and neither do you.

So why do so many grown men still repeat the most idiotic sayings of the scruffy hippies of the 60s?

It’s a great mystery to me.

H/T Doc Searls.

The always provocative Andrew Orlowski finds a classic theme in the blogosphere’s reaction to the “net neutrality” debate:

For a moment, let’s dispose of the telco lobby’s argument that the phantom of a “free market” means any new regulation is unnecessary. With spectacularly poor timing, AT&T launched its IPTV service this week, pricing it exactly in line with the cable operators it’s competing with. And you thought competition is supposed to lower prices? The cable companies and IP giants are a duopoly – and they don’t like competition. Verizon’s patent infringement lawsuit against Vonage reminds us of that.

For the Neutralists, any suggestion of packet prioritization was interpreted as a speech issue – as censorship. But packet prioritization is very useful to the health of a data network. Neutralists assumed that because some services may have a higher priority, and travel faster – as video packets must – their favorite services would automatically travel slower. This is in spite of the recent doubling – at no extra cost – of internet bandwidth to Verizon fiber customers, who are the only US consumers to enjoy European-style broadband speeds today.

As for business – which you’ll note conspicuously failed to join the campaign – the various attempts at drafting ‘neutrality’ legislation would have rendered today’s Service Level Guarantees, the SGAs, or SLGs which businesses demand – illegal. IP expert Richard Bennett has offered a sensible technical antidote to both the free market utopians who came out to support the big telcos, and the hysterical Neutralists. Bennett argues that the net needs new policies because VoIP and Bittorrent simply saturate it further. You may disagree, but at least it’s a rational argument.

That last line needs a little clarifying as we failed to make telephone contact today: VoIP won’t generate much traffic until a lot more people use it, but it’s the canary in the coal mine that will die as BitTorrent overload sets in.

Technology is all about change, so any movement allegedly grounded in tech that’s resistant to change on principle has some problems.

I did a Yahoo search for the movie Outfoxed for article below, and here’s what I got:

Outfoxed on Yahoo! Movies
Yahoo! Shortcut – About

1. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism Open this result in new window
Documentary examining Fox News and its parent corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX Network, examining what the movie calls Fox’s right-wing agenda through media interviews, insider documents, and reporter testimony.
Category: Movie Titles > Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004)
www.outfoxed.org – 11k – Cached – More from this site – Save

2. Outfoxed | Personalize your internet. Open this result in new window
Personalize your internet. User login. Username: Password: Informer Spotlight. Spyware Warrior. Eric L. Howes provides two great informer pages based on his incredible AGNIS list: Outfoxed. There are over 8 billion web pages. Most of them suck. … Outfoxed uses your network of trusted friends and experts to help you find the good stuff and avoid …
getoutfoxed.com – 9k – Cached – More from this site – Save

3. Out-Foxed (2004) – IMDb Open this result in new window
Includes ratings and details of Robert Greenwald’s documentary Outfoxed.
Category: Movie Titles > Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004)
us.imdb.com/title/tt0418038 – 55k – Cached – More from this site – Save

The first link is where Yahoo tries to sell you the movie. It has a little Yahoo logo on it, but I clicked on that “neutral” result first, as would most people,

Oh, the hypocrisy.

Here’s a great opinion piece on Internet regulation from City Journal by Brian C. Anderson:

Net neutrality would swiftly become a bureaucratic nightmare. “Neutrality regulation might as well have been labeled the ‘Telecom Lawyer & Lobbyist Full Employment Act of 2006’ because it would generate mountains of regulation and litigation in coming years,” says Theirer. “You simply can’t put something as amorphous as ‘digital nondiscrimination’ mandates on the books and then expect that regulators won’t abuse it—and that means competing teams of lawyers, consultants, and economists will be hired to try to figure it all out. When they don’t, the lawsuits will start flying.”

…The biggest reason to be thankful Congress resisted net neutrality: the scary prospect of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi trying to stamp out broadband traffic “discrimination.” Some of the most vocal neutrality advocates, including Save the Internet campaign organizer Free Press, relentlessly agitate for regulation of other media to fight “corporate interests” and guarantee “fairness.” The deeper agenda at work in the net neutrality debate, insufficiently noticed by most commentators, is the Left’s zeal to get a hold of the new media, which have given conservative voices powerful outlets, shattering the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets—and regulate those outlets out of existence, so we can all go back to the days when the New York Times and other elite liberal institutions set the agenda.

Net neutrality was brought to you by the sponsors of Outfoxed, the MSM doesn’t seems to find that remarkable.

CNet’s Daniel Terdiman tried to get inside Google’s new complex in Oregon, and was turned away. See what Ron Wyden’s defending.

UPDATE: One application that’s going to run in this hideaway is Google Checkout. See Donna Bogatin for discussion of Google’s impact on business relationships on the Web. She asks the right question:

Is Google a benevolent promoter of ecommerce, however, or is it an online “wolf in sheep’s clothing”?

There’s plenty of evidence pointing to the latter conclusion.

I’m very happy to learn that the idiotic Snowe-Dorgan amendment to the telecom bill was defeated in committee. It was a close vote, but all Republicans except Snowe voted against and all Democrats voted with the Maine moron. There will undoubtedly be an attempt to re-introduce it as a floor amendment when the bill moves to the next stage, and we’ll hear the same tired old rhetoric about yesterday’s Internet seen the eyes of a bunch of Deadheads.

The Kosola Krowd is hoppin’ mad over losing once again, and I expect they’ll be on to a fresh round of vilifying Mike McCurry to demonstrate their deep understanding of the issues. Some are even hailing the loss as a victory.

Scott Cleland is happy:

“I am encouraged the Senate Commerce Committee rejected onerous net neutrality regulation of the Internet and also specifically protected Americans’ first amendment rights of free speech on the Internet,” Chairman Scott Cleland said today. “Those net neutrality proponents whose true agenda is to protect free speech on the Internet, and not price-regulate the Internet, should support Senator Stevens’ strong Internet First Amendment language on the Senate floor. Blocking final passage of the Stevens Bill would only ensure that net neutrality proponents achieve nothing in their quest for additional Internet safeguards,” Cleland added.

And he should be. The telecom bill has non-blocking rules, but not the flat service level Google wanted. That should be hailed as a victory all around.

And in related news, Sen. Ron Wyden (D, Google) is throwing a tantrum:

(Broadcasting & Cable) _ As the Senate prepares to take up video franchise/telecom reform in the Commerce Committee Tuesday, Senator Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) has threatened to put a hold on the bill if it is not strong enough on network neutrality.

Wyden’s been laughed off the Senate floor recently for his wild claim that Cox Cable blacklisted Craig’s List. I hear Senators are carrying copies of article debunking Wyden’s claim and sharing them. Google is building a massive complex right down I-84 from Portland, with the intent of cornering the market on Internet video downloads.

Wyden is just another politician protecting one of his state’s large employers from regulation.

UPDATE: Save the Internet, the astroturf lobbying front funded by Robert McChesney’s Free Press organization, publishes reactions from three consumer advocates disappointed that consumers might have some price flexibility in their Internet service plans. With advocates like these, who needs enemies?

Mike at Techdirt asks the question of the day: Why Is There So Little Honesty In The Net Neutrality Debate?

Looking the array of interests assembled under the neutrality banner, it’s not surprising:

A. The end-to-end cargo cult, a group of people who understand virtually nothing about how the Internet is put together, but who nevertheless make their living explaining its implications. David Isenberg, David Weinberger, and friends.

B. Big Content companies who want free rein over facilities bought and paid for with other people’s money. Google, Yahoo, Skype, et. al.

C. Political bloggers desperate to win a significant victory in order to get their consulting rates up: Kos, Armstrong, Stoller, Kelly.

D. Bewildered PACs afraid changes in the network will reduce its effectiveness as the ATM for fringe causes: Christian Coalition, Moveon.org, and their ilk.

The only real potential source of understanding comes from Big Content because the others have no more than a pedestrian understanding of the issues (if that) and Big Content has no incentive to tell the truth.

The Telcos have been sticking much closer to the facts than the forces on the other side.

The bogus “net neutrality” debate comes down to one fundamental question: are we going to allow the Internet to adapt to the needs of the future or are we going to strangle it according to the design of the past?

The Internet is under stress by new delay-sensitive applications such as telephony and streaming video and new protocols such as BitTorrent that suck up all available bandwidth and cause delay for other applications. The old TCP-based congestion model doesn’t work any more, and people expect better QoS for their phone calls than they can reasonably hope to get on a network dominated by BitTorrent traffic. And the business model for the wholesale Internet has never been right.

The net neutrality sycophants with their hippie fixation on the past are the real barrier to technical progress for the Net.

It should be easy for policy-makers to simply dismiss any group that claims “new laws pending in Congress permit your ISP to censor web sites.” That charge is so far from reality it doesn’t warrant a serious response.

I’d like to draw your attention to a very disturbing video. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide Web of Computer Internetting, has apparently been captured by terrorists. I say this because the Net Neutrality video clip (proprietary format only, Linux need not apply) on his MIT blog looks like one of those “captured soldier recants” kind of things we occasionally get from the war zones. He’s reading a script, his eyes are flying around wildly, and there seems to be a distinct lack of conviction in his voice. More than anything, it reminds me of little Elian Gonzalez denouncing his father before they were reunited and returned to Cuba.

Can we collect some money and pay the ransom for Sir Tim before he’s tortured again? Web 3.0 won’t be possible without his invaluable contribution.

Power to the people, dude.