George Ou, I respectfully disagree with you on net neutrality

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Your understanding of Broadband is completely wrong

Then there's the matter of what constitutes a "slow down." Say I am a cable broadband service provider running at 4 mbps. Then I upgrade my downstream to, say, 7mbps. I promote the hell out of it, offering showcase streaming media content that can be seen at 7mbps. I make the 7mbps a new tier at say, $9.99 extra a month.
That's OK, but what if those new tier's subscribers are proscribed from viewing content that's not optimized for 7mbps? And far worse, what about those 4mbps subscribers who not only won't be able to see the faster speed but will be locked out of the slower speed as well??
First of all, you?re not making any sense here at all and I don?t think you understand what?s going on here at all. NO ONE offers 7 mbps upstream and no one offers 7 mbps CIR ?Committed Information Rate? on a DSL or Cable connection. That 4 or 7 mbps connection is the burst rate for the last mile. The truth of the matter is, the biggest slow down you?ll ever face is not the prioritization of a small percentage of premium customers and a small percentage of their data. No ISP sells prioritization on all of your data, that would be insane! Prioritization only makes sense for things like VoIP which is a measly 40 to 80 kbps. This is like your neighbor drinking two cups of water when everyone else only drinks one cup from the lake, and you somehow think that the extra cup of water your neighbor drank means you have to go without your cup of water. Silly ain?t it? The truth of the matter is, 100 priority customers getting a small bump in their VoIP packets doesn?t put as much load on the backbone as the guy down the street downloading videos of naked women without priority service.
Heck, the biggest culprit in lousy DSL service is oversubscriptions. This is where you might have 1000 customers with 6 mbps service but there is only a single 45 mbps uplink to the Internet. Oh and then there is a sale on DSL service and then the ISP adds another 500 6 mbps customers on that same uplink and then what do you have? You?re so busy worrying about a neighbor that might take an extra sip of water from the lake that you didn?t even notice the other 500 people moving in to share that same lake. What I?m proposing is that all ISPs provide full accurate details of their subscription ratios and all other performance metrics.
?An argument could be made that if these broadband access providers try something that runs afoul of the FCC, then the FCC can smite 'em. But one thing is for sure: without the specificity of a strong, "thou shalt not" net neutrality law, the fee-meisters and the regulators may differ on interpretation of what is being charged, for what purpose the fee exists, and who must pay.?

Did you read page 3 of my last blog? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=243&page=3. I?m about as specific as it gets. Here is a sample: ?The Internet has become such a crucial public resource like the public highways that we need to be more proactive by clearly defining the limits of what constitutes ISP abuse.? You?ll have to click on the link to read the rest of the page.

Russell, you did not address any of my questions about the Markey bill and the fact that it would ban anyone from charging for premium service and if you support this idea. You completely got my position wrong, and you missed the most important part of my proposal where I go in to extremely detailed specifics on the definition of reasonable ISP behavior. Until you can at least understand and represent my position accurately, I don?t see how we?re going to get anything meaningful out of this debate.

Posted by: georgeou   Posted on: 06/09/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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