Astroturfing exists on both sides of the political spectrum but as far as I can see, like Joly says, Bennett doesn't astroturf. Not that some leading proponents of net neutrality would even know a router if it bit them, so there's enough FUD to spare all over. On Saturday, July 26, 2014, Joly MacFie <joly@punkcast.com> wrote:

Personally, I don't get it.

To mock the Brett Glass Google obsession (PK.EFF, Susan Crawford etc) - as I do - while casting aspersions on Bennett and the ITIF, is hypocrisy.

Astroturfing - defined as paid spoofing of grass roots support for a position - definitely exists, and is heavily practiced by Telecom incumbents, but Bennett isn't it. There is no way he is "grass roots".

He is a pundit, an advocate, arguably a shill, but astroturf, no.

j

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 12:17 PM, William Allen Simpson < william.allen.simpson@gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:

...

On 7/22/14 12:07 PM, Paul WALL wrote:

...

Provided without comment:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality

Thanks! This is nothing new for him. There's astroturf from him going back to '08 on NANOG.

Remember when he was shilling for ITIF -- a "think tank" whose board was then co-chaired by conservative congress-critters and dominated by corporate governmental affairs (nee lobbyists)?

-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -

-- --srs (iPad)

The debate is dominated by the parties of the first part unfortunately (and add professors of law to this already toxic mix) On Saturday, July 26, 2014, Eric Brunner-Williams <brunner@nic-naa.net> wrote:

On 7/25/14 4:29 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

...

Not that some leading proponents of net neutrality would even know a router if it bit them ...

i'm _trying_ to imagine the lobbyists, corporate counsels, and company officers above the v.p. of engineering i know who have vastly superior clue and i'm finding my imagination lacking.

$friday.

-- --srs (iPad)

5 too. Agglutinating multiple separate problems into a single complex title 2 regulation solution Enough hot air driven thrust is being generated to ensure porcine aviation too, as section 3 assures us. On 26-Jul-2014 6:32 am, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jul 2014 06:10:09 +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian said:

...

The debate is dominated by the parties of the first part unfortunately (and add professors of law to this already toxic mix)

So what you're saying is that the debate is in total violation of RFC1925, section 4? :)

So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch. It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks. Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor: "A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>, of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz has reported <http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/>, companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike up deals <http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/> with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones version of their service without charging customers for the data. "It is not clear whether operators receive a fee <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/> from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are widespread. Internet giants like it because it encourages use of their services in places where consumers shy away from hefty data charges. Carriers like it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a gateway to the wider internet, introducing users to the wonders of the web and encouraging them to explore further afield—and to pay for data. And it’s not just commercial services that use the practice: Wikipedia has been an enthusiastic adopter of zero-rating as a way to spread its free, non-profit encyclopedia." http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac... Internet Freedom? Not so much. RB On 7/27/14, 5:07 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

Now, this is astroturfing.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180781/leading-civil-rights-group-just-sold-ou...

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com <mailto:richard@bennett.com>> wrote:

This is one of the more clueless smears I've seen. The "astroturf" allegation is hilarious because it shows a lack of understanding of what the term means: individuals can't be "astroturf" by definition; it takes an organization.

Groups like Free Press are arguably astroturf because of their funding and collaboration with commercial interests, but even if you buy the blogger's claim that AEI is taking orders from Comcast (which it isn't), it doesn't pretend to be speaking for the grassroots. After 76 years in operation, people engaged in public policy have a very clear idea of the values that AEI stands for, and the organization goes to great lengths to firewall fundraising from scholarship. AEI's management grades itself in part on being fired by donors, in part; this is actually a goal.

The thing I most like about AEI is that it doesn't take official positions and leaves scholars the freedom to make up their own minds and to disagree with each other. Although we do tend to be skeptical of Internet regulation, we're certainly not of one mind about what needs to be regulated and who should do it. AEI is a real think thank, not an advocacy organization pretending to be a think tank.

The article is riddled with factual errors that I've asked Esquire to correct, but it has declined, just as it declined to make proper corrections to the blogger's previous story alleging the FCC had censored 500,000 signatures from a petition in support of Title II. See: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality?fb_com...

The blogger came to my attention when he was criticized on Twitter by journalists who support net neutrality for that shoddy piece of sensationalism; see the dialog around this tweet: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/489212137773215744

The net neutrality debate astonishes me because it rehashes arguments I first heard when writing the IEEE 802.3 1BASE5 standard (the one that replaced coaxial cable Ethernet with today's scalable hub and spoke system) in 1984. Even then some people argued that a passive bus was more "democratic" than an active hub/switch despite its evident drawbacks in terms of cable cost, reliability, manageability, scalability, and media independence. Others argued that all networking problems can be resolved by throwing bandwidth at them and that all QoS is evil, etc. These talking points really haven't changed.

The demonization of Comcast is especially peculiar because it's the only ISP in the US still bound by the FCC's 2010 Open Internet order. It agreed to abide by those regulations even if they were struck down by the courts, which they were in January. What happens with the current Open Internet proceeding doesn't have any bearing on Comcast until its merger obligations expire, and its proposed merger with TWC would extend them to a wider footprint and reset the clock on their expiration.

Anyhow, the blogger did spell my name right, to there's that.

RB

On 7/22/14, 9:07 AM, Paul WALL wrote:

Provided without comment:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-astroturfing-net-neutrality

Drive Slow, Paul Wall

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of "strong net neutrality?" Professor van Schewick is pretty clear about making the users pay for the edge providers in her tome on Internet architecture and innovation. Competition is a wonderful thing where it can work, but it's not a panacea, especially for the poor and for high-cost, rural areas. Communication policy has pretty much always relied on some form of subsidy for these situations, that's the universal service fee we pay on our phone bills. Susan Crawford explicitly complains that American ISPs "gouge the rich" by charging more than the OECD norm for high-speed (50 Mbps and above) service, but she fails to point out that they also charge less than the norm for low-speed (15 Mbps and below) service. I think it's easy to create unintended consequences if you don't look at how specific regulations affect real people, no matter how high-minded and principled they may appear at the surface. RB On 7/27/14, 7:08 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

Conflating zero-rating with NN is not necessarily helpful. I somehow doubt that is ultimately what convinced all those groups to suddenly come out against NN at the last minute.

The EFF did recently address the issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divi...

<quote>

However, we worry about the downside risks of the zero rated services. Although it may seem like a humane strategy to offer users from developing countries crumbs from the Internet's table in the form of free access to walled-garden services, such service may thrive at the cost of stifling the development of low-cost, neutral Internet access in those countries for decades to come.

Zero-rating also risks skewing the Internet experience of millions (or billions) of first-time Internet users. For those who don't have access to anything else, Facebook /is/ the Internet. On such an Internet, the task of filtering and censoring content suddenly becomes so much easier, and the potential for local entrepreneurs and hackers to roll out their own innovative online services using local languages and content is severely curtailed.

Sure, zero rated services may seem like an easy band-aid fix to lessen the digital divide. But do you know whatmost <http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/more-competition-essential-for-future-of-mobile-innovation.htm>stakeholders <http://a4ai.org/policy-and-regulatory-best-practices/>agree <http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/27.aspx>is a better approach towards conquering the digital divide? Competition—which we can foster through rules that reduce the power of telecommunications monopolies and oligopolies to limit the content and applications that their subscribers can access and share. Where competition isn't enough, we can combine this with limited rules against clearly impermissible practices like website blocking.

</quote>

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com <mailto:richard@bennett.com>> wrote:

So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

"A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>, of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz has reported <http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/>, companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike up deals <http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/> with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones version of their service without charging customers for the data.

"It is not clear whether operators receive a fee <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/> from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are widespread. Internet giants like it because it encourages use of their services in places where consumers shy away from hefty data charges. Carriers like it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a gateway to the wider internet, introducing users to the wonders of the web and encouraging them to explore further afield—and to pay for data. And it’s not just commercial services that use the practice: Wikipedia has been an enthusiastic adopter of zero-rating as a way to spread its free, non-profit encyclopedia."

http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac...

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

RB

On 7/27/14, 5:07 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

...

Now, this is astroturfing.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180781/leading-civil-rights-group-just-sold-ou...

-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 <tel:218%20565%209365> Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

Bill Woodcock wrote:

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

...

The essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose? I won’t presume to speak for Netflix, and I won’t presume to provide a canonical definition of “network neutrality.” However, I can say what global prevailing business practice is, since I’ve actually surveyed and quantified it:

Each network (regardless of whether they term themselves “eyeball,” “content,” “edge,” or whatever) delivering a packet pays their own way to the IXP of their choice that the other party is present at, each network receiving a packet pays their own way from the IXP of their counterpart’s choice that they’re present at, independently in each direction. Thus, where content networks interconnect with eyeball networks, when they follow the best practice engaged in by 99.73% of all network-pairs, the eyeball network’s customers pay them to deliver traffic to an IXP of their choice and from an IXP of the content network’s choice, while the content network’s customers pay them to deliver traffic to an IXP of their choice and from an IXP of the eyeball network's choice, long in, short out. No money changes hands between the two networks, because no value is exchanged between the two networks. Each network pays their own way, and is in turn paid by their customer. Because they’re each providing value to their customers, not to each other.

In 0.27% of cases, the parties aren’t able to see their way to following best practices, and some fraction of those are disputes between content and eyeball networks of the sort that you’re describing.

-Bill

Bill, Can you say more about what you've done to "survey and quantify" prevailing practices? And... given that Netflix is reportedly about 1/3 of Internet traffic these days, and Verizon is huge - how does that come out to .27% of cases (leaving aside other recent disputes like L3-Cogent, and Netflix-Comcast)? Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

Bill Woodcock wrote:

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:39 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

...

Can you say more about what you've done to "survey and quantify" prevailing practices? https://www.pch.net/resources/papers//peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011...

We’ll do another one in the run-up to the next OECD carrier interconnection paper.

Interesting study. Thanks for the pointer.

...

Given that Netflix is reportedly about 1/3 of Internet traffic these days, and Verizon is huge - how does that come out to .27% of cases? Netflix/Verizon would be 0.0007% of cases, if it’s represented in the dataset. The survey was of interconnection norms, not of hugeness.

It is worth noting, though, that not all interconnection are created equal. I wonder how your numbers would come out if you grouped interconnection agreements by amount of traffic exchanged, level of asymmetry, and so forth. And then perhaps by level of competition in the associated markets (do monopoly carriers behave differently than ones where there is a lot of competition?). Just by analogy, the answer to "what kind of protocol traffic dominates the net" (or is "more important") differs considerably if you look at bandwidth vs. transactions (last time I looked, admittedly a little while ago, email still dominates network traffic when you look at transactions; but video clearly eats of most of the bandwidth). Regards, Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

On Jul 28, 2014, at 9:28 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

The data set suffers three flaws:

Depending on your point of view, a lot more than three, undoubtedly.

1. It is not representative of the actual traffic flows on the Internet.

There are an infinite number of things it’s not representative of, but it also doesn’t claim to be representative of them. Traffic flows on the Internet is a different survey of a different thing, but if someone can figure out how to do it well, I would be very supportive of their effort. It's a _much_ more difficult survey to do, since it requires getting people to pony up their unanonymized netflow data, which they’re a lot less likely to do, en masse, than their peering data. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to do it on a large and representative enough scale to matter for twenty years, without too much headway. The larger the Internet gets, the more difficult it is to survey well, so the problem gets harder with time, rather than easier.

That having been said, kudos for the excellent research. As far as objective numbers go, yours are more thorough than any others I've seen.

Thank you. We look forward to your participation in the next one! :-) -Bill

On Jul 28, 2014, at 9:52 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

...

...

It is not representative of the actual traffic flows on the Internet.

Traffic flows on the Internet is a different survey of a different thing.

He didn't mean "TCP Flows", I don't think; he was simply -- as I understood him -- talking about the 40,000ft view of connections between pieces of the Internet. I don't expect your dataset to have flow-level data, and I don't think he did either.

How else do you get a representative measurement of “actual traffic flows on the Internet?” We’ve got adjacency information. Telegeography has hand-waving 40,000 ft. flow estimates in the form of different widths of arrows on a map. But if you want to know how large actual flows of data are between two regions of the Internet, and you can’t actually instrument the whole Internet, you need two things: (1) a broad and representative sampling of flow data, and (2) a complete measurement of a few portions of the network that are represented in the sampled set. That gives you a horizontal and a vertical view, from which you can extrapolate to a whole, or any other part, with some minor assurance of reasonability. If someone has an easier methodology to suggest, that still produces usable results, I’m all ears.

it isn't really germane to the conversation we're having.

I thought I’d made that point? -Bill

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Dorian Kim <dorian@blackrose.org> wrote:

This most likely won’t happen unless it becomes some sort of an international treaty obligation and even then it would end up in courts for a long time. Leaving aside data privacy requirements many carriers have, most companies guard their traffic information rather zealously for some reason.

-dorian

"We'll allow you to keep these connections in place as a legacy favour, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they don't exist; we don't pass routes from it along to others, and neither will you. They get used for internal traffic only." Those types of situations are why traffic flow data tends to be kept very, very secret. Every network has its dark corners, its dirty little secrets that shouldn't see the light of day. It's easy to make sure those aren't drawn on the maps released to the public. It's a lot harder to make sure the presence of those edges doesn't become visible if you export actual flow data. Matt

In fact Netflix is asking to connect to eyeball networks for free: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html " Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge." This isn't the traditional understanding of net neutrality, but this is the beauty of murky notions: they can be redefined as the fashions change: "You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing? That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more traffic while I sit back and call you a crook for not anticipating my innovation." Very wow. RB On 7/27/14, 9:49 PM, Matt Palmer wrote:

...

I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of "strong net neutrality?" In a word: no. Net neutrality is about everyone paying their own way to get

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 09:08:17PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote: their packets to where they want them to go. Netflix doesn't get to use the Internet "for free"; they pay a whole heck of a lot each month to L3 and Cogent.

- Matt

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:53 AM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

In fact Netflix is asking to connect to eyeball networks for free:

http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case-for-strong-net.html

You are aware that there are, probably, thousands of eyeball networks doing this right now, right? Drive Slow, Paul Wall

Wait, I'm confused? Of the ISPs can't handle 5mbps of traffic when a customer wants to watch TV, why the hell are they selling 100mbps plans!?! Answer that with something other than "because the ISPs more lucrative content business is threatened by Netflix"? Stop trying to hide what this so obviously is. Others: Do you know if Netflix peers with tier 1s (level 3, cogent, etc) or purchases capacity? Bennett: Sorry for the double mail, still getting used to gmail on the Android. Jed Robertson On 28 Jul 2014 17:56, "Richard Bennett" <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

In fact Netflix is asking to connect to eyeball networks for free:

http://blog.netflix.com/2014/03/internet-tolls-and-case- for-strong-net.html

" Strong net neutrality additionally prevents ISPs from charging a toll for interconnection to services like Netflix, YouTube, or Skype, or intermediaries such as Cogent, Akamai or Level 3, to deliver the services and data requested by ISP residential subscribers. Instead, they must provide sufficient access to their network without charge."

This isn't the traditional understanding of net neutrality, but this is the beauty of murky notions: they can be redefined as the fashions change: "You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing? That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more traffic while I sit back and call you a crook for not anticipating my innovation."

Very wow.

RB

On 7/27/14, 9:49 PM, Matt Palmer wrote:

...

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 09:08:17PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

...

I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of "strong net neutrality?"

In a word: no. Net neutrality is about everyone paying their own way to get their packets to where they want them to go. Netflix doesn't get to use the Internet "for free"; they pay a whole heck of a lot each month to L3 and Cogent.

- Matt

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

Paul WALL wrote:

route-views will confirm that Netflix peer with a number of access providers, including the large ones; press releases related to "OpenConnect" imply that no money is passing hands.

You'll note that, in spite of his wordy replies, never once does Richard Bennett disclose who is funding him and AEI. Call it whatever you want, I think "lobbyist" is the best word choice.

It's pretty well established that AEI is primarily a right-wing, conservative, pro-business think tank - with a mission statement that starts: "The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise." (http://www.aei.org/about/) AEI policy studies are pretty consistently anti-regulation. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

It's hard to see a revolution when you're in the middle of it. As consumers transition from watching multicast TV on the networks' schedule past time-shifting and on to VoD, the traffic demands on the infrastructure will grow by 25 - 40 times. Similarly, the Internet will shift from a tool for reading web sites and watching occasional cat videos to a system whose main job (from the perspective of traffic) is video streaming. The magnitude of the change will necessarily cause a re-evaluation of the norms for interconnection, aggregation, content placement, and protocol design. I think it's a mistake to approach this transformation in a "nothing to see here, move along" manner. It's reality that packet networks are statistical, especially at the level of aggregation and middle-mile distribution. The Internet's traditional financial model is one in which infrastructure providers make the most serious investments and edge services extract the highest profits. This model may not be the most sustainable one, and it may not be consistent with supporting the upgrades the infrastructure needs for adaptation to this new application. Alternative models - such as Europe's open access regime - fare even worse in this regard than the vertical integration model that's the norm in North America and East Asia. I don't claim to have all the answers here, or even any of them, but I think it's important to keep an open mind and pay attention to what works. I'm also not enthusiastic about relying on government programs to upgrade infrastructure to fiber of some random spec, because the entry of government into this market suppresses investments by independent fiber contractors and doesn't necessarily lead to optimal placement of new fiber routes. The First Net experience is proving that to be the case, I believe. In other words, the Internet that we have today isn't the best of all possible networks, it's just the devil we know. RB On 7/28/14, 10:56 AM, William Herrin wrote:

...

"You've designed your network to handle the traffic demands of web browsing? That's cute, now rebuild it to handle 40 times more traffic while I sit back and call you a crook for not anticipating my innovation." Right, because how could anyone anticipate that more than a handful of folks might want to use 5 or 6 mbps of traffic on a 25mbps flat-rate

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:53 AM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote: product for hours at a time. How rude to suggest that an allegedly high speed network designed only to handle the traffic demands of web browsing is little different than that age old confidence scheme, the pig in a poke.

Regards, Bill Herrin

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

It's hard to see a revolution when you're in the middle of it. [...], the Internet will shift from a tool for reading web sites and watching occasional cat videos to a system whose main job (from the perspective of traffic) is video streaming. The magnitude of the change will necessarily cause a re-evaluation of the norms for interconnection, aggregation, content placement, and protocol design.

Richard, Before Netflix it was Bittorrent. Before Bittorrent it was Usenet. Before the Internet, history records no shortage of companies willing to falsely advertise a product that did less than was claimed. Nor is fraudulent double-billing a recent invention. There is nothing new under the sun, no matter how much you may protest otherwise, and every one of these eyeball networks sold products which, on paper, were consistent with the use of Netflix. Without requiring additional payment beyond the customers' subscriber fee. And continued selling the product as described, long beyond any reasonable doubt their customers expected it to work with Netflix. Right through this very minute and beyond. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 01:38:03PM -0700, Michael Thomas wrote:

On 7/28/14, 12:39 PM, William Herrin wrote:

...

And continued selling the product as described, long beyond any reasonable doubt their customers expected it to work with Netflix. Right through this very minute and beyond.

It would be amusing to see Netflix just call their bluff. And maybe donate some lawyers for the inevitable class action lawsuit for false advertising against the eyeball networks. I imagine other self-interested 900lb gorillas might join the fun too.

I think we've seen the first shots of this battle fired already -- Netflix was putting up notices saying "your video is crap because $ISP is congested" for a little while. I expect that wasn't the last we'll see of that kind of tactic. - Matt -- You know you have a distributed system when the crash of a computer you’ve never heard of stops you from getting any work done. -- Leslie Lamport "Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems"

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

On 7/28/14, 12:39 PM, William Herrin wrote:

...

There is nothing new under the sun, no matter how much you may protest otherwise...

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy that reflects the intense conservatism of a certain part of the Internet establishment. I'm inclined to go for new services, new norms, and progress. But that's just my personal bias, not a law of nature.

Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a little bit worse. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Jim Richardson <weaselkeeper@gmail.com> wrote:

I pay for (x) bits/sec up/down. From/to any eyecandysource. If said eyecandy origination can't handle the traffic, then I see a slowdown, that's life. But if <$IP_PROVIDER> throttles it specifically, rather than throttling me to (x),I consider that fraud.

I didn't pay for (x) bits/sec from some whitelist of sources only.

Hey, just wait until the eyeball networks decide they can charge different amounts depending upon their view of the morality of the content being sent... #engage_fly_on_wall_of_boardroom_mode "OK, let's see...Netflix traffic, they get charged $2/mb extra, because they show adult situations and brief nudity. Pornhub show explicit material, but it's mostly boobs and butts, so we'll look the other way, and only charge them $4/mb to get past the choke point (because there's no such thing as a fast lane with QoS, there's only normal and "be glad we didn't throw it *all* on the floor"). Oh my...doublefistingdudes.com...we don't like the idea of naked dudes getting it on over our wires...for them, it's $100/mb if they want their bits to make it to our users. Guess they'll have to jack the price of their content *waaay* up. *sound of high fives all around* " #end_fly_mode Hey, if they don't have to be neutral about it, why not enforce their morality through differential pricing, while they're at it? We could even have differential pricing based on days of the week. "Oh, you want to send your movies to our users on the holy day, when they should be praying? For that privilege, it will cost you 10x what it does on any other day, for you are luring our users into vice and depravity." That "whitelist" must be sounding pretty darn tempting to some executives right about now. Forget about censoring content on the internet that they don't like...they can just bill arbitrarily high rates to let it get through. Price it high enough, and nobody will watch it anymore, and they can go to bed happy. Matt getting ready to start a mail-order DVD service that doesn't charge extra based on what you want to watch...

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

I don't think it's conflation, Joly, since the essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose under the guise of "strong net neutrality?" Professor van Schewick is pretty clear about making the users pay for the edge providers in her tome on Internet architecture and innovation.

This is as absurd as the people you shill^wpoopy-head (per your request) for. The users pay either way. Either the content provider(s) pay the carriers and then bill the users (at a mark up) or the users pay directly (hopefully without the markup). We are, after all, not talking about data that Netflix wants to inflict on the unsuspecting user. We are talking about data that the user REQUESTED from Netflix. Saying “Content providers should pay” sounds great, because it sounds like it gives the end-user a free ride, but the reality is a little different. Let’s have a look at the unintended consequences of such a policy: 1. End users get billed more by the content providers to cover this additional cost. 2. Content providers have to mark up what they are charged by the end-user’s ISPs, and they want to charge a uniform rate to all customers, so the most likely result is that they bill end users based on a marked up rate from the most expensive eyeball ISP they are forced to pay. 3. As a result of these additional charges, you create barriers to competition in the content space which begins to turn content into more of an oligopoly like access currently is. Its a giant step in the exact opposite direction of good. Frankly, I give Netflix a lot of credit for fighting this instead of taking the benefits it could provide and screwing over their customers and their competition.

Competition is a wonderful thing where it can work, but it's not a panacea, especially for the poor and for high-cost, rural areas. Communication policy has pretty much always relied on some form of subsidy for these situations, that's the universal service fee we pay on our phone bills.

How would you know… Let’s _TRY_ it and see what happens? Subsidy for those situations is probably necessary, but so far, subsidy has always been structured to subsidize monopolies and block competition (at the request(demand) of the very people you shill^wpoopy-head for). If we changed the subsidies a tiny bit so that all subsidized infrastructure was built in a manner open to multiple higher-level service providers (e.g. subsidized open fiber builds to serving wire centers with colocation capabilities) and made those facilities available to all service providers on an equal footing (same cost, same ToS, same SLA, same ticket priority, etc.) I bet you’d see a very different situation develop rather quickly.

Susan Crawford explicitly complains that American ISPs "gouge the rich" by charging more than the OECD norm for high-speed (50 Mbps and above) service, but she fails to point out that they also charge less than the norm for low-speed (15 Mbps and below) service.

Whatever… The bottom line is that overall, throughout the US, even in the most densely populated areas, we are far behind what you can get in places like NL, KR, SG, SE, etc. and paying generally more for it.

I think it's easy to create unintended consequences if you don't look at how specific regulations affect real people, no matter how high-minded and principled they may appear at the surface.

OK, so please tell me what are the horrible unintended consequences of making layer 1 an open platform available on an equal footing to all competing L2+ providers that want to compete? As you point out, most L1 has been built with taxpayer money and/or subsidy, so what’s the horrible downside to letting it actually work or the taxpayers instead of the oligopolistic law firms masquerading as communications companies? Owen

RB

On 7/27/14, 7:08 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

...

Conflating zero-rating with NN is not necessarily helpful. I somehow doubt that is ultimately what convinced all those groups to suddenly come out against NN at the last minute.

The EFF did recently address the issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divi...

<quote>

However, we worry about the downside risks of the zero rated services. Although it may seem like a humane strategy to offer users from developing countries crumbs from the Internet's table in the form of free access to walled-garden services, such service may thrive at the cost of stifling the development of low-cost, neutral Internet access in those countries for decades to come.

Zero-rating also risks skewing the Internet experience of millions (or billions) of first-time Internet users. For those who don't have access to anything else, Facebook /is/ the Internet. On such an Internet, the task of filtering and censoring content suddenly becomes so much easier, and the potential for local entrepreneurs and hackers to roll out their own innovative online services using local languages and content is severely curtailed.

Sure, zero rated services may seem like an easy band-aid fix to lessen the digital divide. But do you know whatmost <http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/more-competition-essential-for-future-of-mobile-innovation.htm>stakeholders <http://a4ai.org/policy-and-regulatory-best-practices/>agree <http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2013/27.aspx>is a better approach towards conquering the digital divide? Competition—which we can foster through rules that reduce the power of telecommunications monopolies and oligopolies to limit the content and applications that their subscribers can access and share. Where competition isn't enough, we can combine this with limited rules against clearly impermissible practices like website blocking.

</quote>

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com <mailto:richard@bennett.com>> wrote:

So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

"A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>, of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz has reported <http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/>, companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike up deals <http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/> with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones version of their service without charging customers for the data.

"It is not clear whether operators receive a fee <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/> from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are widespread. Internet giants like it because it encourages use of their services in places where consumers shy away from hefty data charges. Carriers like it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a gateway to the wider internet, introducing users to the wonders of the web and encouraging them to explore further afield—and to pay for data. And it’s not just commercial services that use the practice: Wikipedia has been an enthusiastic adopter of zero-rating as a way to spread its free, non-profit encyclopedia."

http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac...

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

RB

On 7/27/14, 5:07 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:

...

Now, this is astroturfing.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180781/leading-civil-rights-group-just-sold-ou...

-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 <tel:218%20565%209365> Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 05:28:08PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

I've got to say, this is the first time I've heard Verizon and Comcast described as "poor and disadvantaged".

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

[...]

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

I totally agree. You can't have Internet Freedom when some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks, are paying to have eyeballs locked into their services. Far better that users be given an opportunity to browse the Internet free of restriction, by providing reasonable cost services through robust and healthy competition. Or is that perhaps not what you meant? - Matt

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 08:16:36AM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

On 28-Jul-2014 8:06 am, "Matt Palmer" <mpalmer@hezmatt.org> wrote:

...

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 05:28:08PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

...

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

I've got to say, this is the first time I've heard Verizon and Comcast described as "poor and disadvantaged".

...

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

[...]

...

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

I totally agree. You can't have Internet Freedom when some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks, are paying to have eyeballs locked into their services. Far better that users be given an opportunity to browse the Internet free of restriction, by providing reasonable cost services through robust and healthy competition.

Or is that perhaps not what you meant?

I think he meant the actual poor people that broadband subsidies and free walled garden internet to access only fb and Wikipedia are supposed to benefit, but I could be wrong

I've got a whopping great big privilege that's possibly obscuring my view, but I fail to see how only providing access to Facebook and Wikipedia is (a) actual *Internet* access, or (b) actually beneficial, in the long run, to anyone other than Facebook and Wikipedia. I suppose it could benefit the (no doubt incumbent) telco which is providing the service, since it makes it much more difficult for competition to flourish. I can't see any lasting benefit to the end user (or should I say "product"?). - Matt

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 08:59:14PM -0700, Richard Bennett wrote:

Maybe it would help if you tried to address the issues in a serious way instead of just trying to be cute.

I will when you will, "poopy head". - Matt

Astroturfing doesn’t require a fake organization, just fraudulent use of an organization claiming to be grass roots. I guarantee you that the majority of the communities represented by those organizations probably don’t even understand the issue. Of those that do, I suspect that if you polled them, you’d find most of the not backing the position contained in the document. Somehow, the anti-internet-freedom collection of monopoly/oligopoly interests managed to coopt the leadership of those organizations into this astroturf. Owen On Jul 27, 2014, at 5:28 PM, Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com> wrote:

So we're supposed to believe that NAACP and LULAC are phony organizations but pro-neutrality groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge that admit to collaborating with Netflix and Cogent are legit? Given their long history, I think this is a bit of a stretch.

It's more plausible that NAACP and LULAC have correctly deduced that net neutrality is a de facto subsidy program that transfers money from the pockets of the poor and disadvantaged into the pockets of super-heavy Internet users and some of the richest and most profitable companies in America, the content resellers, on-line retailers, and advertising networks.

Recall what happened to entry-level broadband plans in Chile when that nation's net neutrality law was just applied: the ISPs who provided free broadband starter plans that allowed access to Facebook and Wikipedia were required to charge the poor:

"A surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. This week, Santiago put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/>, of big companies “zero-rating” access to their services. As Quartz has reported <http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/>, companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia strike up deals <http://qz.com/69163/the-one-reason-a-facebook-phone-would-make-sense/> with mobile operators around the world to offer a bare-bones version of their service without charging customers for the data.

"It is not clear whether operators receive a fee <http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/twitters-emerging-market-strategy-includes-its-own-version-of-a-facebook-zero-like-service-called-twitter-access/> from big companies, but it is clear why these deals are widespread. Internet giants like it because it encourages use of their services in places where consumers shy away from hefty data charges. Carriers like it because Facebook or Twitter serve as a gateway to the wider internet, introducing users to the wonders of the web and encouraging them to explore further afield—and to pay for data. And it’s not just commercial services that use the practice: Wikipedia has been an enthusiastic adopter of zero-rating as a way to spread its free, non-profit encyclopedia."

http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac...

Actually, I don’t see this ruling as such a bad thing.

Internet Freedom? Not so much.

We can agree to disagree. I don’t think leveraging one semi-captive audience to build a captive audience for other companies is a good thing. It reduces the potential for new entrants to compete on an even footing. (Not that there aren’t already plenty of barriers to competing with Facebook and/or Google, but adding cross-subsidies from TPC shouldn’t be an additional one. Owen

I prefer the term "poopy head" because it's so much more sophisticated. RB On 7/27/14, 5:39 PM, goemon@anime.net wrote:

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014, Richard Bennett wrote:

...

This is one of the more clueless smears I've seen. The "astroturf" allegation is hilarious because it shows a lack of understanding of what the term means: individuals can't be "astroturf" by definition; it takes an organization.

Individuals can be paid shills though.

-Dan

-- Richard Bennett Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy Editor, High Tech Forum