Thought Garage

Excellent debate on Net Neutrality at Center for American Progress, that covers a lot of background on the issue and how legislation could have helped the cause of open Internet.

The Great Debate: Net Neutrality

In navigating the complex issue of “net neutrality,” the government should protect consumers’ rights amid a rapidly changing and dynamic Internet. Two experts agreed on that much Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress, but they disagreed on how to do that without stifling innovation.

Bringing together two of the Internet’s founding figures, the Center welcomed Vint Cerf, Vice-President of Google; and Dave Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Carl Malamud, the Center’s Chief Technology Officer, moderated.

Listen to audio of the event (mp3)

Tags: net neutrality, Vint Cerf, Google, Dave Farber

Its time to say Good Bye to the free INTERNET we know, where your packet is never discriminated based on what it contains, where it is coming from and where it is going. Senate Commerce Committee, rejected the compromise language on Net Neutrality by splitting11-11, which would  mean a defeat for Net Neutrality.

The Senate Commerce Committee, splitting 11 to 11 and therefore rejecting compromise language, set the stage for a carrier-controlled Internet. If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by the President, you can kiss the Net you know "goodbye." Farewell, open networks and open standards. Soon every packet will be subject to inspection and surcharges based on what it carries and who sent it or where it is going. [ZDNet: Saying "goodbye" to the Net  ]

So very soon carriers will be empowered to inspect the packet and charge a premium not only based on the content, but possibly where it is coming from and where it is going. or a Tiered internet based purely on content type, means carriers will now offer a package Internet connection deal which literally says basic internet connection is $14.99 with which you can access emails and visit a few allowed websites, with optional adds ons : music internet $4.99 (you can listen and download MP3s), Video internet $4.99 (you can watch and download videos) and the list goes on. Having a package like cable television will not be a big surprise even.  America Top 60 for $15.99, which allows you to access top 60 websites mostly news and general. America Video Classics, $11.99 which allows you to watch and download videos from any video website. America top 100 Music, that allows to listen and download music from 100 listed websites. In a variation, carriers may set Band Width limitations where if you visit carrier owned music site, you will have unlimited Bandwidth while if you visit a site like Youtube or Flickr, every byte is counted towards the bandwidth limit and the consumer will have to pay premium charge for the additional bandwidth if he chooses to use.  Or something very creative and unbelievable package deal, but you have pay like $140 to goto any website you like.

We just have to watch and see how creative these Telcos can go. This is particularly interesting keeping in view the fact that most Telcos have been threatened by internet innovation and have been lossing business starting from IM to Skype phones. Recent hurried consolidiations is nothing but an indication that they can not compete for the same already cutdown pie and possibly survive longer. So, now its time for them to take a revenge and show internet companies what it feels like to be threatened. Time again to put some bucks on these telcos, after a long long time.

During the christmas, be ready to hear the analysts, confirming "Christmas sales revenue is down 5% from last year owing to increase in internet access fees".

Tags: internet, netneutrality, senate, telecom, packet inspection, cable, Inspions

Answer to that question is, I don’t think so. There is so much technical complexity involved, that except few geeks  who work right on computer networks, not many people can detect if their Internet traffic is ever discriminated.  That is one of the reasons, I guess,  why we need Net Neutrality as a law, so that the Telcos will never try to discriminate your traffic, though you are not quite aware of.

There is a post at Save The Internet, that alleges Cox Communications of blocking Craigslist for almost three months. The security company Authentium, who handles security for Cox Communications reportedly explained with technical details why users can not reach Craigslist website. It looks like there is problem with the computers that hosts the craigslist website. Here is the reply from rnapier, strongly suggesting that the behaviour is normal and as per the specification. .

• rnapier Says:
  June 17th, 2006 at 4:15 pm

Has anyone here actually read the response from Authentium? Far from “opaque,” it pretty clearly (if technically) explains the problem and why this has nothing to do with blacklists:

“The network packets coming from the Craigslist.org web site were unusual in that they contained a zero-length TCP window that usually indicates a server is too busy to handle more data. The Authentium firewall driver responded by sending data only one byte at a time. This slowed down the web request and made the Craigslist.org web page load very slowly or not at all.”

From RFC 793  (which defines TCP/IP): ” Flow Control: TCP provides a means for the receiver to govern the amount of data sent by the sender. This is achieved by returning a “window” with
every ACK indicating a range of acceptable sequence numbers beyond the last segment successfully received. The window indicates an allowed number of octets that the sender may transmit before
receiving further permission.”

Returning a 0 means “please talk to me very slowly.” Literally it means “don’t talk to me at all” but because that’s nonsense, sites generally interpret it as “I’m overloaded; slow down.”

I’ve verified this response myself by connecting to craigslist:

15:52:00.751836 IP www.craigslist.org.http > lemming.ranjan.org.47734: S 1639327951:1639327951(0) ack 3799817961 win 0

Note the final “win 0″ that confirms exactly the problem that Authentium claims.

Summary: craigslist told Cox to please speak to it very slowly. Cox did, but for longer than craigslist explicitly requested. Fixing this for craigslist could break other sites, so some caution in shipping a fix is justified.

The fact that SaveTheInternet posted this as an “opaque” response without further comment raises a question of how much STI actually knows about how the Intenet works.

This brings out an interesting question. Will some geeks atleast, if not common users be able to detect  if any internet traffic is discriminated by any service provider at all? Is it always possible to detect so? It looks like from this post at Save the Internet, every body is confused and I don’t have a comfort feeling that we can surely detect if ever some traffic is discriminated and it is done for normal or allowed reasons or not. I think, with such a naivette, that if net neutrality is enabled as law, may be no telco will try to do it. 

Update: Richard Bennet’s blog posting “Know-nothing claims about site blocking” has lot more information and discussion about this issue. And also Richard Bennet and PBCLiberal commented on this blog that it is possible to detect if internet traffic is differentiated using existing tools, if you understand the internet protocols. For those of us who do not understand, we have to wait for somebody to write a simple tool to hint if there is any unusual stuff detected. See comments for more.

Tags: Net Neutrality, Telecom, internet, inspions

As reported at ZDNet news,  the Senate Commerce Committee released a revised version of the Telecommunications bill that includes no Net Neutrality Regulations. There may be a revision to include Net Neutrality later in the week.

As it stands today, FCC will be authorized, ONLY to monitor and report incidents that are considered as violations of Net Neutrality principles. The committee might put the final version of the bill on 20th of June. So, probably we won’t hear much about it until later of the week, where a revision that include Net Neutrality is available, if any.

Mean time, Washington Post in its editorial revealed itself to the public that its Broadband network means a lot more than the principles behind the whole Net Neutrality battle. Read its twisted arguments revealed at ‘Post Editors Get Slippery on the Facts‘.

How come they missed the whole point?

The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. ….. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest — and the provider would lose customers.

As pointed out by the posting at http://www.savetheinternet.com, not many of us really have a choice to move around. I have stayed in 4 different neighbourhoods in the last 2 years within Texas. I never had a choice to choose my ISP, because there is only one sevice provider available. Even at my current location, we only have Verizon for phone and DSL and dish network for television. The net quality is so bad, that we almost complain every weekend. We have no choice, but to live with it.  To add to it, now they have 1 or 2 year contracts making it difficult to switch even when a choice is available.

The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors.

We don’t even know if this is already happening with my service provider. How can a common consumer detect that his traffic is differentiated?  Read MULTIPLE PLAY: PRICING AND POLICY TRENDS published by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), for some facts and statistics about already enforced Bit Caps around the world. And why would a body like OECD mentions the following if there is nothing happenning?

Bit caps (data usage restrictions on broadband connections) could be used to provide an unfair competitive advantage for infrastructure operators, provided the services obtained from independent service providers count towards traffic limits but services from the network operator do not. Today, some operators block ports for security or marketing reasons. Others have left open the possibility of blocking outside services in the future as a way to increase security and control bandwidth usage. By blocking ports or Web sites, multiple play providers could potentially create a “walled garden” whereonly the operator’s own services would be available to subscribers.

The real problem if Net Neutrality not as a Law is that normal subscribers would never realize that they are being subjected to differential treatment. They think that the website itself is loaded, so responding slowly, but never that their traffic is being gated.

We need Net Neutrality essentially as a legal assurance that common consumer will not be exploited and to safeguard the free market, where consumer will have final choice and freedom to choose what he/she wants.

Tags: Net Neutrality, Telecom, INSPIONS, OECD, bitcap

Happy with the last nights rejection of Net Neutrality in the House of Representatives, Telecom companies will soon be giving a generous gift to its consumers, called ‘Bit caps’. They have promised themselves to give this gift to their consumers now or little later but definitely. This time, they mean it. People, that rejected the Net Neutrality, do you know what is in the making and what can be expected from these greedy Telcos? Here you go.One tiny step. Bit caps.

If you have a internet connection from one of these greate Telecom companies, they setup a bit cap, a limit on the amount of data you can download or upload. That is not bad at all. But here is the problem. If you download video from the Telecom company, then that data will not count to the cap. You can download almost unlimited video from your company. But if you download a video from Google or youtube for example, then that video would count to the cap. Once you reach the cap you must pay for each bit you download. In plain words what Telecom companies are saying is that, “Use our service or Pay for each bit!“. This is one of the benefits what telcos call ‘competition brings so many benefits to customers’ if net neutrality is not enforced. This is how they define competition. Dictionaries and common sense calls it ‘exploitation’ of their size and network to reach. FTC calls it ‘Anti-competitive’. But these guys know how to play it to their advantage, just like they got Net neutrality rejected in HR. 

If you are following Net Neutrality debate, you must have heard that Telcom companies said there is no discrimination at this point. And so we don’t need a law to prevent something that does not happen. Read the report “MULTIPLE PLAY: PRICING AND POLICY TRENDS“  published by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). There is some thing called ‘Bit caps’ mentioned in the document that is already in force in many countries.

Bit caps : One potential bottleneck in multiple-play markets is the anti-competitive potential of bit caps in a few OECD markets. Bit caps are  limits on the amount of data traffic that subscribers can use in a given month. Once a subscriber reaches a bit cap they either pay an additional fee per Megabyte transferred or have their connection reduced to dial-up speed. The potential problems arise because providers typically do not include video streams from their own servers in the calculation of bit caps but the caps would apply on content such as videos from other sources. For example, TV quality video streaming would require roughly 2 Mbit/s for standard definition television. That equates to 256 KB per second of video or roughly
15.4 MB per minute of television viewing. A subscriber with a 2 GB bit cap would run over their monthly allotment in only 129 minutes of television viewing from a competitive provider.

Folks, who rejected the Net Neutrality bill, do you understand what is in the making?

Tags: net neutrality, internet, inspions, telecom, bitcap, oecd, multiplay, triple play