On Jul 13, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
Randy Bush wrote:
ahhh. so not government regulated == wild west lawless, big guys fighting with little guys in the middle == wild west at this point, maybe john curran, who you may remember from nearnet, usually steps in with a good screed on industry self-regulation.
yeah John, where are you (John and I sat a few doors from each other at one point, way back)
Oh joy, a network neutrality discussion, and it's taking place 1) on nanog, 2) over the weekend, and 3) when I no longer run an ISP or a data-center/content-source... It took some doing, but I was able to quell my urge to respond immediately (being at the beach with family likely helped enormously... :-) So the right answer to this entire mess would have been to provide competitive cost- based access to the underlying facilities (copper, coax, fiber) including associated colocation and power services, and consider that justified given the long regulated history that made the establishment of the cable plants and rights-of-way possible. (Note - we actually had this equal-facility-access framework in the US at one point, but it was later "fixed" by a determination that effective competition could be provided among service providers of different technologies (e.g. FTTH, cable, dish) and that nothing more was needed. The result was the vertical integration that we often see today - from access loop through Internet service and up to and including content in many cases. Attempting to now address this problem (of equitable access to Internet users) via regulation of interconnection arrangements may not be very productive in the end; it is a palliative measure that has potential for great complexity - similar to having every gated community in the country file paperwork describing their programs for handling of local delivery and pizza companies, and/or any fees for priority access along the community roads, and all of this despite most of the community's insistence that third-party vehicles should just be allowed to pass through. There generally should be a point of interconnection which allows for settlement- free handoff of traffic to local customers; the current industry-based "peering model" has done a reasonable job of finding such accommodations when they can be achieved, even if it does so with only nominal outside visibility. I understand the desire for more consistency and public visibility into such industry agreements, but would have greatly preferred efforts in that area as a prerequisite step (which would allow for actual data and analysis to be introduced in the discussion) before any further measures such as per-agreement regulatory review or formalization of tiered priority mechanisms... Alas, that sort of structured approach is not how government generally works, so we're going to go from standstill to "the complete solution" in one large leap and have to hope it works out for the best. /John Disclaimer: My views alone - I would appreciate not having my packets molested if you should happen to disagree with them... ;-)