On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:28:09 EDT, Rodrick Brown said:
Its unrealistic to believe payment for priority access isn't going to happen this model is used for many other outlets today I'm not sure why so many are against it when it comes to net access.
Sure - I would have to pay $$/mo if I wanted satellite radio. But failure to do so doesn't interfere in the slightest with my ability to receive local free-air stations, or impact my neighbor's radio. If 15 of my neighbors pay extra each month to watch HBO or other premium content, I still get a reasonable level of performance watching MSNBC in the basic-cable package. That's the way it works for many other outlets now - you pay extra, you get extra, but if you don't, other people's choices don't affect you. But it's *not* how it works for the Internet. Think about it for a moment - if the net is uncongested, then paying for priority doesn't make economic sense. If it *is* congested, then the only way to give priority to some traffic is to screw the non-paid traffic. That's the dirty little secret of QOS. For the sake of argument, let's call TCP's current implementation of window management and congestion avoidance "the fairest and most equal we know how to build". I don't mind fighting for bandwidth with 30 (or whatever it is) neighbors on my cable feed on that sort of an equal basis. Yes, I recognize that I'm actually sharing resources upstream, so my "6M" pipe may get sluggish because I'm sharing with 15 people watching some live pay-per-view event. I'm OK with that. What I'm *NOT* OK with is some media conglomerate literally coming along and buying 4M of that bandwidth (that *I* *already* *paid* *for*, remember?) out from under me, and using it for that pay-per-view event. It's the difference between how mad you get at the supermarket when the person in front of you has a full basket and was already in line when you got there, and a person with a full basket slipping the cashier a $20 to cut in line in front of your half-full basket. Does that explain it better?