On the subject of Net Neutrality, the editorial team at Telephony Online (www.telephonyonline.com) wrote an interesting note on “traffic shaping”, or the practice by telcos to inspect packet traffic and do bandwidth prioritization. User-generated content or P2P traffic like Video (YouTubes of the world) are congesting the global network and telcos want to control this kind of traffic and police it. The telephonyonline article can be accessed at :
http://telephonyonline.com/software/commentary/dpi-p2p-traffic-0519/
Editor Carol Wilson at telephonyonline.com writes “By enabling ISPs to identify P2P traffic and employ “traffic shaping” that prevented that traffic from taking over available bandwidth during times of congestion, DPI was supposed to give ISPs greater control over the quality of their networks.” DPI stands for “Deep Packet Inspection” or an ability to inspect data traffic and apply throttle control above certain loads. “Latency-sensitive traffic such as voice and video would get one level of QoS, best-effort data another, and P2P another. “, according to Wilson.
Wilson gives example of BCE, Canada which resorted to traffic shaping causing a headache for various ISPs. This has angered independent ISPs whose traffic is being policed by BCE.
Network Congestion and Traffic Shaping are vexing problems with great ethical and regulatory implications. We feel telcos should be able to recoup their heavy return on investment in the core network and have a right to resort to some bandwidth control eg we disagree with the idea that a couple of apps like YouTube and others should hog the bandwidth on the internet and all other low volume apps are left hanging high and dry with regards to bandwidth availability. But a balance is needed via regulation where carriers cannot control the internet traffic to the extent that they inhibit internet from functioning and end up throttling innovation instead.
MT
May 20, 2008
AT&T Vice President of Legislative Affairs, Jim Connoni, warns that by year 2010, internet will hit full capacity. Says Connoni : “Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute”. Whew. That sounds almost ominous. How will internet traffic flow - countless businesses, corporations not to mention daily lives of people would be effected. Well may be, I am exaggerating a bit. By that time, the truth is that our capable internet backbone providers would have added tremendous amount of bandwidth firepower in preparation for this coming internet congestion. Firms like Cisco are busy churning out heavy duty routers which will allow heavier and heavier load to be carried on the IP network.
Point is that firms like AT&T want to use such arguments to overcome the network neutrality camp led by likes of Google, Microsoft, video transmitters, user-generated content (UGC) and other high bandwidth hogs which run large amounts of video and content on the internet. These firms and individuals would not want to see backbone providers like AT&T charge a premium to carry their bandwidth gobbling content like YouTube videos, online gaming etc. Whereas backbone providers want to prioritize the internet where higher bandwidth users have to pay more to use the IP backbone. Internet firms like Google which thrive on high bandwidth applications like YouTube would like legislation which bans such prioritization arguing that such priority access control is against the tenets of a free internet and that all traffic must be considered equal and should compete for bandwidth. Vint Cerf, co-inventor of Internet Protocol, supports a light legislation to ensure net neutrality. Of course, Google’s preferred solution would lead to bulk of the internet capacity being utilized by few high usage firms or individuals causing slowness or lack of service for bulk of the population.
What is the right answer. Depends on whom you ask. We feel this issue still needs some analysis before one take sides on this. We feel that backbone providers deserve some way of ensuring that internet continues to provide a reasonable QOS (Quality of Service) for the larger population instead of being jammed by a few big network hogs. On the other hand, internet was founded on the premise of true democracy and free flowing content and its sheer growth is attributable to lack of regulation and control. Hence one has to tread a delicate balance between a “managed internet” and a “Free-use internet”.
Your thoughts are welcome.
MT
April 28, 2008
