

Dear ITU, please don't bill Internet use like phone calls - mtgx
http://www.arstechnica.com/business/2012/12/dear-itu-please-dont-bill-internet-use-like-phone-calls/

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zb
The whole concept of "sending party network pays" is just an elaborate
wordplay. Relay-switched telecommunications networks are inherently symmetric.
The concept of a "sending" party is meaningless; the _originating_ party pays.
This makes a lot of sense, since the originating party is the one in a
position to decide whether to place the call and therefore should bear the
cost.

By renaming the originating party to the "sending" party, they can redefine
YouTube/NetFlix/whoever as the "sending" party even though the user is the
originating party. Thus they attempt to justify denying the user the service
_which they already have paid for_ unless they receive the appropriate
kickbacks^W "fees" from whoever is serving the data.

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nitrogen
With regards to Quality of Service, what's wrong with letting the packet flags
decide QoS, with customers paying for a guaranteed percentage of high-QoS
bandwidth during peak network load?

In other words, when the network is underutilized, all packets would be
transmitted with high priority and low latency, with QoS flags allowing
packets to jump ahead in packet queues. When the network is heavily loaded,
high-QoS packets beyond the customer's quota would be relegated to best
effort.

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eridius
In this situation, what's stopping all traffic senders from marking their
packets with the QoS flag? After all, they don't want their traffic getting
stuck behind some other sender's traffic.

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belorn
Each customer only has a limited amount of QoS high priority traffic. If
someone flags every packet with high priority, all the QoS mean is that the
first packages get improved priority and everything else get default low
priority.

That mean a customers software can balance the use of QoS for time sensitive
traffic, and maybe even flag some data as below default to get bonus high
priority traffic points. If its the software that runs on the consumers device
that decide priority, the software developer can pick the exact needed QoS his
program or service need.

The bonus effect here is that if the QoS fail and the program breaks, its the
software developer that are liable and not the ISP. Currently, if a ISP QoS
software breaks, the ISP is actually quite open for lawsuits from both the
user and the service that get effected.

~~~
eridius
The customer isn't the one flagging the packets with QoS, the sender of the
traffic is. So sure, if you're talking about outbound VoIP traffic from the
customer's computer, they could do that. But what about inbound traffic, which
for nearly all customers is the bulk of their traffic? There can be no way to
put controls on who sets the QoS flag, which means everybody needs to set it
or they risk having their own service degraded because someone else decided to
inappropriately set their own QoS flag.

Basically, it's tragedy of the commons. All incoming traffic is going to end
up with the QoS flag set, and thus the internet will basically behave as if it
didn't exist.

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belorn
Put a stateful table in there, and there is no problem identify most inbound
traffic as high priority if the receiver first initiate the communication with
high priority set. There is a bit of issues with mutli-path routing, but its a
rare issue that could likely be ignored as non-QoS worthy packages.

Of course, that only work inside one ISP and its customers, or between ISP
which agree to respect each other limited use of QoS, both this approach would
not fall for the tragedy of the commons. So long the end-user who initiate the
traffic ends up deciding what priority is needed, limited use of QoS could
help solve problem of voip vs bittorent.

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vy8vWJlco
Routers (and bittorrent clients, and operating systems) allow households to
prioritize their traffic already. (IMHO, any "solution" to bittorrent vs voip
should live at the edge where it only affects the person who chose it.)

~~~
18pfsmt
Read the Republic Wireless forums to see how many people actually understand
the QoS settings of their router. These people are seemingly power users at
the least, and certainly early adopters. Perhaps it's the acronym soup
engineers expect the laymen to know, or perhaps it's the laziness of the
typical end user, but I suspect it is a little of both.

~~~
wmf
That's just because many existing routers have bad UI. Some of them just have
a checkbox for automatic QoS that works fine. AFAIK the bufferbloat/CeroWRT
people are working on open source QoS that just works with no configuration.
Downstream QoS really needs to be done at the ISP, though.

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smsm42
I'm not sure I understand this idea at all. To me, it sounds a bit like
gasoline companies asking from Walmart or Costco to pay them because a lot of
people drive to Walmart and Costco using their gasoline. That may be true, but
they pay exactly for that! Moreover, the only reason why people buy gasoline
is to drive to places, so where the idea that somebody owes them extra for
that comes from?

In the same way, internet access is a commodity and the only reason I pay for
it is that I need to get to Google or Netflix or such. Where the idea that
Google or Netflix get "free ride" comes from? I pay for my access, Google and
Netflix pay for their connectivity. If the connectivity is not enough,
customers would complain and depending on where the problem is, end up paying
for better local access (if they know it's slow for them but fine for the
neighbor next door that uses different provider) or have their provider (i.e.
Netflix) upgrade their connectivity by telling them to improve delivery or
they stop paying/visiting/clicking on ads. This all should work as it works
now, where the idea of a "free ride" and additional payments due comes from?

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hardik988
I'm pretty sure I'm exposing my extreme ignorance on the matter, but how does
the ITU have the authority to take decisions like this? Shouldn't W3 have a
say? Or somebody else?

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nitrogen
For one thing, the ITU is a governmental body (that is, its members are
governments; it is an agency of the UN), while the W3C and IETF are open
membership organizations that anyone can join.

In other words, the ITU is run by people whose job is to _run_ things. The
IETF and W3C are run by people whose job it is to _do_ things. Groups of the
former category tend to want to control those of the latter.

Edit to add: the different outcomes of the ITU vs. IETF/W3C can also be
attributed to the purpose of existence of their members. People who _run_
things (e.g. governments) want to _keep running things_. Thus, their work
tends to result in new laws and treaties. People who _do_ things (e.g.
engineers) want to _keep doing things_. Thus, their work tends to result in
voluntary, consensus-based agreements.

~~~
hardik988
Thanks. That clarifies it up a bit. So could this summit result in a real
threat to net neutrality?

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wyck
The summit can result in more then net neutrality threats, it includes
censorship, monitoring, archiving and usage regulations. The ITU comprises of
193 countries and over 700 private-sector entities. It has become more
transparent due to public outcry, but who knows what is discussed over dinner
( aka there is a lot of money and control being looked over as though it's a
map to the new world).

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jrockway
I can't help but wonder why they didn't try this 20 years ago. As it stands
now, it seems hopelessly out of touch with reality. Why would people start
paying more for online services when the price of everything tends to decrease
over time? And why do governments think that the big internet companies are
going to pay for this? They have shareholders too, after all.

~~~
derleth
> I can't help but wonder why they didn't try this 20 years ago.

20 years ago, nobody cared about the few, the unusual, the networked. 15 years
ago, people damned well did care, but everyone was in 'run in circles, scream
and shout' mode and business plans were more-or-less optional. 10 years ago it
was definitively too late. Does that seem like an eye blink to you? It does to
a multinational bureaucracy.

My life fades... the vision dims... all that remains are memories. Looking
back over the history of the Internet, from about 1991 to 2001, I remember a
time of chaos, bizarre dreams, and the growing suspicion that the average
people more-or-less snuck online too quickly for anyone who could have been
said to have been 'in charge' to notice.

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hn-miw-i
Despite efforts of the EU and the ITU to put the Internet genie back in her
bottle, she grows louder and prouder every day. She is still in her formative
days, as the old world money tries to tame her radical free spirit. Let's hope
decisions made by old men in new Dubai doesn't keep her from constantly
changing humanity.

~~~
mtgx
It's not the "EU" as in the EU Parliament. In fact they've passed a resolution
to oppose this sort of changes at ITU's WCIT. The article talks about ETNO, an
European telecom association. So it's the ISP's and carriers from Europe
pushing for these changes. Nothing to do with the EU Parliament or EU
governments (well, Russia and China's censorship proposals are entirely
different from this). Just corporations being greedy. The EU Parliament has
actually legislated their roaming prices twice in the past (downwards),
because they thought roaming prices should be much smaller than they were,
within EU's borders.

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KaoruAoiShiho
A bunch of different corporate entities getting together with governments to
jack up prices, how is this any different from a cartel.

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mariuolo
I really don't understand. I thought the planned ITU involvement was supposed
to be limited to the ICANN/IANA bailiwick.

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ef4
While we're at it, don't bill phone calls like phone calls either.

