In message <3.0.5.32.19980628013015.01253100@priori.net>, "Patrick W. Gilmore" writes:
At 10:28 AM 6/27/98 -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:
Proxies are fine WHERE CUSTOMERS HAVE AGREED TO THEIR USE.
STEALING someone's packet flow to force it through a proxy is NOT fine.
I think this is the heart of Karl's argument. (Karl, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) The rest of the rant about how transparent caches, proxy server, etc. work and other opinions about how the Internet and web content will look in the future is ... not my concern at present.
But the original topic is of great concern to me. Is there one person on this list - even someone from DIGEX - who can give me one reason why altering the destination of a packet a customer paid you to deliver, without that customer's consent or foreknowledge, is in any way morally or ethically permissible? Hell, for that matter, is it even legal?
OK, what about class of service? This implies applying different sets of rules to different class of packet flows, and implictly giving some flows lower priority and dropping their packets. The key is the customer expectations, if they expect to lose packets and have slow performance, they you can probably get away with it. There is fundenmentally little difference between class of service and transparent caching. While I think Digex's move may be a little unusal, I would find it difficult to believe there is anything contractual or legal that prevents it. It seems like a lot of moral grandstanding to me, but I guess I should be used to that. I would have expected better from most Nanog people to use this as some sort of "My company is more ethical than your company forum". The average reader of Nanog is perfectly capable of judging this for themselvs.
I know that when my downstreams pay me for transit and give me a packet, I do my damnedest to get that packet TO THE DESTINATION. If I can give my customers better service though proxy or caching or any other method, I will definitely OFFER it to them. (We are currently looking into transparent and other caching techniques, but have not begun such an offering as of yet.) However, I will not shirk my responsibility to deliver packets where the customer (rightfully) expects them to go without the customer's permission. I find it repugnant that one of my peers has done so. I would be interested in how other's feel about it - without all the discussion about whether caching is any use or not.
Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin
TTFN, patrick
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