[83891] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: NANOG as the Internet government?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Todd Vierling)
Tue Aug 30 15:26:30 2005
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:25:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org>
To: "J. Oquendo" <sil@politrix.org>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0508301411180.25540@kungfunix.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, J. Oquendo wrote:
> /* ARTICLE
> Does the model still work? I'm not sure. In my view, the biggest concerns
> facing the Internet today are regulatory and operational, rather than
> technical. For example, how do we encourage providers to respect each
> other's QoS tags? Is it acceptable for providers to censor traffic for
> competitive advantage? Should providers be required to devote some of
> their revenues toward services "for the common good," such as universal
> Internet access?
> */
> Not only that how many large providers are willing to take a hit in the
> pockets getting everything running the way it should be run. Why should
> they when they could do some shoddy patchwork until the next big hit.
It's more than just that. The article excerpt above mentions:
>> For example, how do we encourage providers to respect each other's QoS
>> tags?
This part is *not* regulatory in nature; it's financial. QoS is still (even
today) a lucrative market. Why would Tier-1 A care to carry packets from
Tier-1 B at a higher priority than anyone else's, unless Tier-1 B paid more
$$$ for the privilege? If regulation were to step into this market, you'd
have the entire industry crying foul.
The other way round, however:
>> Is it acceptable for providers to censor traffic for competitive
>> advantage?
is indeed a regulatory issue. For the most part, Tier-1s and other
providers high up the food chain don't filter because doing so is (1) too
much of a load on switching hardware, (2) too much risk of violating peers'
or downstreams' contracts, or (3) both. The issue of traffic filtering is
much more prominent with the small-fries and leaf networks.
These two rhetorical questions are pretty clear. Unfortunately, the
dividing area between regulatory and non-regulatory issues is a deep gray,
and it's much broader than most netizens realize.
--
-- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
