
Net Neutrality vs. Technical Reality  - naish
http://www.circleid.com/posts/86147_net_neutrality_innovation_081/
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gunderson
I can't believe people are so caught up in the net-neutrality propaganda.

Most people could care less about net neutrality b/c they use their internet
connection for some web surfing, file transfers, and generally fit within the
usage pattern that made their ISP (acting as a bandwidth reseller/speculator)
determine that the price should be around $60/month.

If you're one of the small percentage of users who wishes to use p2p software
and soak up 100% of available bandwidth at all times, then you are not
compatible with the bandwidth estimates that your ISP used to determine the
price of your service.

The ISP has two choices, it can either make its basic plan very restrictive
(for example, forcing everyone to use http through a proxy server and blocking
everything else), or it can use more subtle -- LESS INVASIVE -- measures such
as blocking p2p traffic or imposing a cap on the 1-2% of users who use 99% of
the bandwidth.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's like moving into an
apartment where the landlord offers "free" water service and filling up a
tanker truck each day with the "free" water. You would be violating the spirit
of the agreement, and it would be reasonable for the landlord to be upset, or
to change the policy.

Google wants net neutrality b/c it envisions a world in which http traffic
could be modified (by non-neutral ISPs) to harm its ad network. This is
Google's big, scary, what-if that motivates its current stance. Google also
owns miles of dark fiber which could be used to do any of the non-neutral
objectives Google may have, including offering all kinds of proprietary
services over "the googlenet".

~~~
witten
The dichotomy between average users and power users isn't as clear-cut as you
think. I see power users (those who are actually using P2P now) as nothing
more than early adopters of internet video and other online media.

"Average" users have already begun to take advantage of higher-bandwidth
services such as hulu.com, Netflix's streaming video rentals, VoIP, etc. It's
only a matter of time before the average users catch up with the power users
in terms of bandwidth usage.

So once you recognize this situation as an increasing demand for bandwidth
among the general populace, then it's simply not acceptable to expect that
your users continue to use their internet connections exclusively for email,
occasional web surfing, and nothing else.

The nature of people's bandwidth usage is changing, and the only reason that
many U.S. internet providers think that they can get away with ignoring this
fact is because they've got monopoly or duopoly pricing power.

~~~
gunderson
P2P uses a significantly greater amount of bandwidth than online video does.
Take, for example, iTunes. It takes about 5-10 minutes on my connection to
download a movie. A typical movie lasts 1-2 hours. So assume there are 5
people in a "household" using an internet connection, each of whom spends the
entire day watching movies. That's 15 movies per day per person, which is 75
movies. Assume 10 minutes per download and you have 750 minutes of 100%
bandwidth usage, which comes out to 12 hours, or half the day.

This means that under this extreme scenario for internet video usage, the
connection is only utilized at 50% of downstream bandwidth in a 24 hour
period.

With p2p software, it's typical for 100% of the upstream and downstream
bandwidth to be used all of the time.

Typical usage (which is what the cable companies look at to determine how much
to charge) is much less, which is why the price is around $60/month for 16
megabits/second of download speed.

A 100% usage 16 megabit broadband connection costs significantly more than
this. Even a T1 which offers far less bandwidth costs at least $250 in most
markets.

My point is that there is not an issue here of excessive market power, it's
simply that residential broadband is priced based on a workable usage pattern,
and people who leave their p2p software running 24/7 make the model that works
for everyone else stop working.

I'm not opposed to p2p, but I think it is reasonable for ISPs to charge extra
to to those who need more than what the $60/month connection is intended for.

It's not monopoly pricing power, the service simply can't be offered
profitably if someone is using 100% of the bandwidth. I've paid about the same
for bandwidth since I first got broadband in 2000. I went from having 256K to
having 16 megabits. The service is getting exponentially cheaper and better in
quality every day.

~~~
witten
I agree that today's current "power" users use way more bandwidth with their
P2P traffic, as compared to people just viewing streaming videos. However, P2P
is only becoming more and more mainstream. (One could argue that it already is
mainstream when it comes to MP3 audio.) And with dedicated media devices
becoming more prevalent, downloading video around-the-clock isn't going to be
so rare.

So my point still stands that users are only becoming greater consumers of
bandwidth over time, and it's simply not sufficient for the major internet
providers to pretend that all anyone will ever want to do with their net
connections is check email.

~~~
gunderson
You seem to be assuming that p2p is the most efficient way to distribute
content. It is not. Using a residential cable modem for pushing upstream
content is not using it the way it was designed to be used. There is also a
tremendous amount of peer traffic overhead that doesn't contribute to the
download itself.

P2P technology is great, but I think it's totally reasonable for ISPs to
charge extra to those who wish to use it. After all, with P2P the ISP pays for
all that extra bandwidth instead of the initial content distributor.

~~~
witten
I'm not arguing anything about P2P efficiency. Whether or not it's
comparatively efficient, counter to a particular network design, or even
"fair" to the ISP, it is the case that its use is growing. In a competitive
market, those ISPs who update their networks to accommodate the growing
appetites of their users (just as is happening in every other industrialized
country) stand to gain a competitive advantage.

~~~
gunderson
I totally agree with that.

